238 Contemporary Incompatibilism: Libertarianism
component in Ralph’s neural processes. The position the dial lands on thus
makes the key difference as to which decision Ralph makes. If the dial settles
on one position, Ralph makes one choice, and if it lands on the other, he makes
the other. Suppose, in addition, that Ralph, just like Ralph, has reasons for
making the choice, he chooses for these reasons, he wants to choose for these
reasons more than any others, he is not being coerced or compelled in choosing.
It nevertheless appears that the indeterminacy of the sort exhibited by Ralph’s
decision does not provide for moral responsibility for the choice, and this is intu-
itively because he lacks the control over his decision that moral responsibility
demands. However, there would seem to be no relevant difference between
Ralph and Ralph*, and so it appears that Ralph also lacks this sort of control. In
each case, it would be the indeterminacy and its exact location that undermined
control.
Pereboom advances another challenge in the same family, one that he calls
the disappearing agent objection. It’s related to a more general objection to
event- causal theories of action (Brent ms.; Hornsby, 2004a, 2004b; Nida-
Rümelin, 2007; Velleman, 1992), one that targets basic desert moral responsib-
ility rather than agency (which we discuss in Section 11). It involves the notion
of an agent settling whether a decision occurs. How do agents typically do this?
Suppose Mary is deliberating about which flavor of ice cream to buy, chocolate
or strawberry. She would typically settle which flavor- buying decision occurs by
settling which flavor to buy. This is in accord with Mele’s view that “in deciding
to A, one settles upon A- ing (or upon trying to A), and one enters a state—a
decision state—of being settled upon A- ing (or upon trying to A)” (Mele, 1992:
158–9). With this understanding in place, here is the objection:
The disappearing agent objection: Consider a decision that occurs in a
context in which the agent’s moral motivations favor that decision, and her
prudential motivations favor her refraining from making it, and the strengths
of these motivations are in equipoise. On an event- causal libertarian picture,
the relevant causal conditions antecedent to the decision, i.e., the occurrence
of certain agent-involving events, do not settle whether the decision occurs,
but only render the occurrence of the decision about 50% probable. In fact,
because no occurrence of antecedent events settles whether the decision
occurs, and only antecedent events are causally relevant, nothing settles
whether the decision occurs. Thus it can’t be that the agent or anything
about the agent settles whether the decision occurs, and she therefore will
lack the control required for moral responsibility for it. (Pereboom, 2014;
cf. 2001, 2004, 2007)The concern raised is that because event- causal libertarian agents will not have
the power to settle whether the decision occurs, they cannot have the role in
action that secures the control that moral responsibility demands. One way of
thinking about the disappearing agent objection is that it also has as its core com-
ponent the luck objection Mele and Haji raise, and then adds a supposition about