Comment by Oisin on Causality and Moral Responsibility · 2008-06-13T18:19:23.000Z · LW · GW

Even compatibilists about moral responsibility and determinism tend to distinguish between deliberative and reason-responsive mechanisms which have (1) a deviant history, as in implantation or manipulation cases (such as those you describe), and those merely involving (2) determinism. You appear to run the two together. Of course, some philosophers argue that cases involving (1) and (2) are indistinguishable, or at least are not relevantly different in terms of our making ascriptions of moral responsibility on their basis. But these philosophers are usually incompatibilists, who question whether or to what extent we could be morally responsible under determinism. I take it that you want to be a compatibilist. But then it seems that you will have to grant that there is a difference between cases involving (1) and (2).