Seven Views of Contemporary Compatibilism 185indeterminism in the decision- making process, and Dennett argues that there is
no way to show that there is a defensible place for it; its presence cannot aid in
enhancing freedom as is required by libertarians. So it should be jettisoned as a
plausible condition on a kind of freedom worth wanting. As for the manipulation
argument, he charges incompatibilists with argumentative trickery by appealing
to what he calls “intuition pumps” (1984: chapter 1). Intuition pumps, according
to Dennett, are examples designed to sway our philosophical intuitions, but are
themselves philosophically suspect. Such examples involve cases of (apparently)
normally functioning agents being manipulated, for example, as if like a puppet
hooked up to some wires (1984: 8–10). Dennett is suggesting here that real
human agency is not like this—and it is laughable to think that it is. In this
respect, Dennett is prepared to adopt unqualifiedly what we described (Section
7.4) as a softline reply to manipulation arguments, since, in his view, there is
always going to be a relevant difference between a manipulated agent and a
normal agent acting at a determined world, one whose design is the product of a
long evolutionary history. But this response might be questioned. If a world is
determined, it seems at least in principle possible to imagine artificial ways of
replicating the causes of local chunks of that world, or all of it. And if this can
be imagined as a coherent conceptual possibility, what reason is there for think-
ing that we cannot test our concepts of freedom and responsibility by appeal to
manipulation cases that make use of these thought experiments?
8.5. Wolf ’s Reason View and Nelkin’s Rational
Abilities View
In Freedom within Reason (1990), Susan Wolf develops a position in the free
will debate that she called the Reason View. According to the Reason View,
moral responsibility requires “the ability to act in accord with Reason” (67). This
ability, Wolf argues, is compatible with determinism. More recently, in Making
Sense of Freedom and Responsibility (2011), Dana Nelkin has advanced her own
version of a good- reasons-tracking theory, which Nelkin calls the Rational Abil-
ities View:
Stated most simply, the view is that one is responsible for an action if and
only if one acts with the ability to recognize and act for good reasons. (3)Nelkin also argues that the ability in question is compatible with determinism.
Both Wolf and Nelkin are thereby committed to an intriguing asymmetry.
First, the freedom required for moral responsibility when one acts for good
reasons does not require the ability to do otherwise. If an agent recognizes good
reasons and acts for their sake, she thereby exercises an ability to recognize and
act for good reasons. Hence, praiseworthiness does not require leeway freedom.
But when an agent fails to act for good reasons, moral responsibility requires
that she is able to recognize and act for good reasons instead. Thus, blame-
worthiness does require leeway freedom.