The Manipulation Argument and the Deep Self

Compatibilist philosophers often suggest that you act freely whenever your actions stem in the right sort of way from your own psychological states. (For example, they may say that you act freely to the extent that you act on your own values, or to the extent that you engage in the right sort of deliberation.) Of course, your psychological states might themselves be determined by your genes and environment, but compatibilists often say that the causal origin of your psychological states is neither here nor there. As long as your actions arise in the right way from your own psychology, those actions are free.

But now suppose we introduce a somewhat fanciful thought experiment. Suppose that a skillful manipulator has set things up from the very beginning of your life to make sure that you perform a particular action. He carefully arranged your whole childhood, exposing you to certain friends, certain TV shows, etc. In the end, his plan works perfectly. You end up acquiring exactly the beliefs, desires and values he wanted you to have, and as a result of having those psychological states, you perform exactly the action he was trying to get you to perform.

Now we face a problem. According to many compatibilist theories, since your actions stemmed directly from your own values, your action should count as perfectly free. Yet it seems intuitive that your action is not free at all. So it seems intuitive that an action can stem directly from your own values but nonetheless be unfree. This is the famous manipulation argument, and it is widely thought to be a big problem for certain compatibilist theories.

In a new paper (forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research), Chandra Sripada takes on this argument and reports some intriguing new experimental data.

Sripada shows that people do indeed see the manipulated agent as unfree, but he also shows something more surprising. It turns out that people do not think that the manipulated agent's action is truly expressing his own beliefs, desires and values. Instead, they seem to be drawn to a more complex picture. They think that the manipulated agent does endorse his action on a superficial level but that, deep down, there is a part of him that completely rejects what he is doing.

So maybe the case isn't actually a counter-example to compatibilism after all. The reason people don't see the agent as acting freely is that think the action didn't stem from the agent's own deepest self.

[I'd love to hear what people think of this argument, so feel free to write in, even if you haven't gotten a chance to take a look at the actual paper.]

Comments

[Gordon Cornwall]

I don't see any limitation on this guy's freedom. The 'manipulator' is just doing what parents, teachers, and peer groups do: trying to instill values in someone he cares about.

[Tyler]

this argument I think is equivocation. Nietzsche (I reference him since I read him the most) would argue that OF COURSE your perspective is influenced by the values around you, whether they be an active manipulator or a form of normalization by the state. HOWEVER, that does not mean that do not act according to your will. It SEEMS this is not freedom, but that's only because you're using the LFW version of freedom, in which case, of course it is not because such a thing is not possible.

[harvey brockman]

Hi Joshua -
May i suggest some changes to the wording of the paragraph that begins "Now we face a problem" --- Shouldn't the next sentence be written: "According to many compatibilist theories, since your actions stemmed directly from your own values, your action counts as perfectly free"? And the next as: "Yet it seems intuitive to some people that your action is not free at all"? And the next as: "So some people disagree, 'intuitively', with the compatibilists as to what counts as a free action"? I think this hints at the murkiness of the philosophical problem here (or the murkiness of my understanding of the compatibilist?!); if the problem is murky, then the utility of "thought experiments" is in doubt...
Cheers,
hb