Mesh, Reasons-Responsive, Leeway Theories 2239.9. McKenna’s and Sartorio’s Agent- Based Reasons-
Responsive Source Theories
Michael McKenna (2013) and Carolina Sartorio (2016) have each developed
agent- based, reasons- responsiveness theories, while, unlike Nelkin, retaining
allegiance to source compatibilism. Each offers arguments to show how in the
context of a Frankfurt example an agent can be reasons- responsive—and most
crucially—reactive to reasons to do otherwise. The hurdle for both McKenna
and Sartorio is that, as Fischer and Ravizza would put it, in a Frankfurt
example an agent will not be reactive to sufficient reasons to do otherwise
because even if such reasons were present and the agent was receptive to them,
the agent would not react otherwise by acting any differently. The intervener
would take over.
McKenna (2013) attempts to avoid this problem by distinguishing between an
agent’s reacting otherwise by acting differently in a Frankfurt example and react-
ing otherwise by not acting upon the reasons she otherwise would act upon. The
former is ruled out in a Frankfurt example, but, McKenna argues, the latter is
not. To explain, recall the case of Black, Jones, and Smith. Suppose that, as
things happen, Jones shoots Smith on his own while Black waits secretly in the
wings, doing nothing. Now add further details about Jones’s reasons-
responsiveness. Suppose that Jones is an aptly reasons- responsive agent in the
manner that accords roughly with the requirements Fischer and Ravizza identify
(setting aside the mechanism route). Among the reasons to which Jones would
be responsive include Smith’s having his child with him at the time—let’s
suppose this might easily have been the case. Were Smith’s child with him, and
were Black not present, Jones would not shoot Smith, as Jones would respond to
a reason not to shoot Smith (sparing the child a horrible experience). As Fischer
and Ravizza see it, with Black present, Jones—the agent—is not reasons-
responsive because he would not react to this reason (not to shoot Smith) by
acting otherwise. Black would cause Jones to shoot Smith. But McKenna pro-
poses that in the scenario in which Black intervenes, Jones is differentially
reactive to reasons to do otherwise, and this is so even if it is not manifested in
Jones’s acting otherwise. How so? The presence of the reasons including worries
about Smith’s child are such that Jones does not react to them by acting for his
own reasons to kill Smith. Indeed, this is so whether or not Black is present.
That is a kind of reactivity—not one leading all the way to action—but reactivity
all the same.
Sartorio (2016) has proposed what seems to be a simpler and more elegant
way to avoid the problem Fischer and Ravizza identify for agent- based, reasons-
responsive, source compatibilist theories. She argues that the absence of a reason
can be part of the actual cause of why an agent acts as she does. As such, contra
Fischer and Ravizza, it is not true that, for an agent to be responsive and reactive
to reasons to do otherwise in the context of a Frankfurt example, it must be that
if those reasons were present she would have reacted otherwise. It is enough that
the absence of the reasons plays a causal role in an agent’s actually acting as she