MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 0 (2019)

Free Will and Moral Responsibility:

Manipulation, Luck, and Agents’ Histories
ALFRED R. MELE

Problems posed by manipulation and by luck have attracted a lot of attention

in the literature on free will and moral responsibility. Problems of the former
kind are often raised as objections to compatibilist views or to compatibilism
in general, and problems of the latter kind are featured in some familiar
objections to typical libertarian views. In this article, I suggest that a key
ingredient in a solution to a much–discussed problem posed by some cases
of manipulation sheds light on a route to solving the problem posed by luck
that is at issue here.1

1. Here is a glossary for the uninitiated. In terms of possible worlds, compatibilism about free
will and determinism, as I understand it (following standard practice), is the thesis that there are
possible worlds in which determinism is true and free will exists. Incompatiblism is the denial of
compatibilism. If free will is possible but absent in all possible worlds in which determinism is true,
incompatibilism (about free will) is true. Incompatibilism (about free will) also is true if free will
is impossible. (Most incompatibilists take free will to be possible.) In both cases, there is no
possible world in which determinism is true and free will exists. Similarly, in terms of possible
worlds, compatibilism about moral responsibility and determinism is the thesis that there are
possible worlds in which determinism is true and moral responsibility exists; and incompatibilism
is the denial of this thesis. Libertarianism is the conjunction of two claims—the claim that
incompatibilism about free will is true and the claim that free will exists. If moral responsibility is
absent in all possible worlds in which free will is absent, as is often assumed (see Mele 2015), then
libertarianism has implications for moral responsibility. Peter van Inwagen describes determinism
as “the thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future” van Inwagen
(1983: 3). The thesis he has in mind, expressed more fully, is that at any instant exactly one future
is compatible with the state of the universe at that instant and the laws of nature. There are more
detailed characterizations of determinism in the literature; but this one is fine for my purposes.
(An exception may be made for instants at or very near the time of the Big Bang.)

DOI: 10.1111/misp.12105
© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

1
2 Alfred R. Mele

I thought about writing an article on this topic, off and on, for quite
a while. Some pretty serious tactical obstacles gave me pause. Making the
problem about luck that I will discuss here gripping to a broad audience—
especially the libertarian part of the audience—requires a fair bit of ink.
Making the problem about manipulation that I will discuss as vivid as I would
like—especially to some compatibilists—also takes considerable work. And in
the absence of gripping, vivid presentations of the problems, I cannot fully
display the attractiveness of the solutions I have offered to these problems
(see especially Mele 2006: ch. 5 and Mele 2019).
In the end, I decided to finesse all this. For a detailed presentation
of what I call “the problem of present luck” (Mele 2006: 66) or, more
fully, “the problem of present indeterministic luck” (201), see Mele (2006),
5‐9 and chs. 3 and 5. And for an even more extensive presentation of a
problem for some compatibilist (and libertarian) theories posed by a range
of cases of manipulation, see Mele (2019). Here I get by with relatively
brief descriptions of the problems at issue. What I want to emphasize in
this article is a way in which my proposed solution to a problem about
manipulation for compatibilists provides some motivation for my proposed
solution to the problem of present luck for libertarians.

1. MANIPULATION

I set the stage for a brief discussion of manipulation with a pair of quota-
tions from the work of Harry Frankfurt:
To the extent that a person identifies himself with the springs of his
actions, he takes responsibility for those actions and acquires moral
responsibility for them; moreover, the questions of how the actions and
his identifications with their springs are caused are irrelevant to the
questions of whether he performs the actions freely or is morally respon-
sible for performing them. (1988: 54)

If someone does something because he wants to do it, and if he has

no reservations about that desire but is wholeheartedly behind it, then—so
far as his moral responsibility for doing it is concerned—it really does
not matter how he got that way. One further requirement must be
added… : the person’s desires and attitudes have to be relatively well
integrated into his general psychic condition. Otherwise they are not
genuinely his…. As long as their interrelations imply that they are une-
quivocally attributable to him … it makes no difference—so far as evalu-
ating his moral responsibility is concerned—how he came to have them.
(2002: 27)
Frankfurt is claiming here that as long as an agent is in a certain internal
condition when he A‐s, he A‐s freely and is morally responsible for A‐ing,
no matter how he came to be in that internal condition.
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 3

An agent’s internal condition at a time, t, may be understood as some-

thing specified by the collection of all psychological truths about the agent
at t that are silent on how he came to be as he is at t.2 Elsewhere, I have
argued that two agents whose action‐generating internal conditions are not
significantly different intrinsically and who perform an action of the same
sort—intentionally killing an innocent person, say—may nevertheless be such
that only one of them acts freely and morally responsibly, owing to differ-
ences in how they came to be as they are at the time.3 In that work, my
concern was to show that compatibilists can and should avoid alleged problems
posed by some cases of manipulation by embracing the idea that free will
and moral responsibility have a historical dimension of a certain kind.
It has become common to distinguish direct from indirect moral respon-
sibility and to distinguish between directly and indirectly free action. This is as
good a time as any to put these distinctions on the table. I will say that an
agent is directly morally responsible for A‐ing when and only when he is mor-
ally responsible for A‐ing and his moral responsibility for that is not wholly
inherited from his moral responsibility for other things. Being directly morally
responsible for A‐ing, so construed, is a matter of having at least some direct
(that is, uninherited) moral responsibility for A‐ing. It may be that an agent’s
moral responsibility for A‐ing sometimes includes a combination of direct and
inherited moral responsibility. Analogously, an agent directly freely A‐s when
and only when he freely A‐s and the freedom of his A‐ing is not wholly inher-
ited from the freedom of other things. An agent’s moral responsibility for A‐ing
is wholly indirect when and only when it is wholly inherited from his moral
responsibility for other things, and an action is wholly indirectly free when and
only when its freedom is wholly inherited from the freedom of other things.
A standard illustration of the distinction between direct and indirect
moral responsibility features a driver who is so drunk that he does not even
see the pedestrian he runs over and kills with his car. Depending on the
details of the case, the driver may be directly morally responsible for drinking
excessively while being only indirectly morally responsible for killing the pedes-
trian. His moral responsibility for the killing may derive wholly from his
moral responsibility for earlier pertinent actions. Someone who maintains that
paradigmatically free actions are performed at times at which the agents could
have done otherwise than perform those actions may view some actions that
do not satisfy that condition as indirectly free. For example, if Martin Luther

2. How should such psychological truths as that at t Ann remembers that she witnessed an
armed robbery last week be handled? If remembering that p entails p, then this truth is not silent
on how Ann came to remember that she saw the robbery. It implies that a past robbery is among
the causes of the memory at issue. However, the related psychological truth that Ann has at least
an apparent memory of seeing a robbery last week is silent on how she came to be that way. It
leaves various options open, including Ann’s having hallucinated a robbery, an apparent memory
of a robbery being implanted in Ann by a manipulator, and, of course, Ann’s having seen a
robbery last week.
3. These arguments of mine date back to Mele (1995). The latest versions appear in Mele
(2019).
4 Alfred R. Mele

really could not have done otherwise than nail the edict to the church door,
it may be said that his so doing inherits its freedom from earlier paradigmati-
cally free actions of his that molded his character in such a way as to render
him unable to do otherwise on the occasion at issue. In this article, my
concern is direct moral responsibility and directly free action.
Consider the following stories.4

1.1 Sweet Sara

Sara is one of the kindest, most generous people on Earth. For years, she
has devoted a great deal of time and energy to helping needy people in her
community and the local Girl Scouts. Her system of values plays a major
role in generating her generous behavior, of course.5 Sara was not always
kind and generous, however. When she was a teenager, Sara came to view
herself, with some justification, as self‐centered, petty, and somewhat cruel.
She worked hard to improve her character, and she succeeded.

1.2 Pre‐Manipulation Chuck

Chuck enjoys killing people. When he was much younger, Chuck took pleasure
in torturing animals, but he was not wholeheartedly behind this. These activi-
ties sometimes caused him to feel guilty, he experienced bouts of squeamish-
ness, and he occasionally considered abandoning animal torture. However,
Chuck valued being the sort of person who does as he pleases and who
unambivalently rejects conventional morality as a system designed for and by
weaklings. He freely set out to ensure that he would be wholeheartedly behind
his torturing of animals and related activities, including his merciless bullying
of vulnerable people, and he was morally responsible for so doing. One strand
of his strategy was to perform cruel actions with increased frequency in order
to harden himself against feelings of guilt and squeamishness and eventually
to extinguish the source of those feelings. Chuck strove to ensure that his
psyche left no room for mercy. His strategy worked. In hardening his heart
as he did, Chuck also ensured that he had no values at all that could moti-
vate a charitable deed. To be sure, he might buy some Girl Scout cookies
to lure an innocent child away for evil purposes; but a cookie‐buying motivated
in that way is not a charitable deed.

4. These stories are based on stories I have spun elsewhere (see Mele 1995: 162–65, 2006:
171–72).
5. In Mele (1995), I complain that philosophers often leave it to their readers to guess what
they mean by “values,” and I offer glosses on the verb and the noun. As I understand valuing
there, “S at least thinly values X at a time if and only if at that time S both has a positive
motivational attitude toward X and believes X to be good” (116). When values are understood as
psychological states, I take them to have both of these dimensions by definition. This account of
thinly valuing and the corresponding thin account of values are not meant to be contributions to
the theories of valuing and values; their purpose is simply to make my meaning clear.
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 5

1.3 One Good Day

Chuck awakes with a strong desire to devote his day to helping the homeless
and the Girl Scouts. He is, of course, very surprised by this desire. What
happened is that, while Chuck slept, a team of psychologists that had discov-
ered the system of values that make Sara tick implanted those values in
Chuck after erasing his competing values. They did this while leaving his
memory intact, which helps account for his surprise. Chuck reflects on his
new desire. Among other things, he judges, rightly, that it is utterly in line
with his system of values. He also judges that he finally sees the light about
life: its point and purpose is to make the world a better place. Upon reflec-
tion, Chuck “has no reservations about” his desire to devote the day to
charitable deeds and “is wholeheartedly behind it” (Frankfurt 2002: 27).
Furthermore, the desire is “well integrated into his general psychic condition”
(Frankfurt 2002: 27). Seeing nothing that he regards as a good reason to
refrain from spending the day as he wants to, he comes up with a plan for
the day. Chuck works for 8 hours with a local Habitat for Humanity crew
in his neighborhood. When the work day ends, he drives around town for
an hour and buys several boxes of Girl Scout cookies from every Girl Scout
he sees—about fifty boxes in all. Then he delivers the cookies to a local
homeless shelter. His motives are pure, as Sara’s are when she does her
charitable deeds. Chuck’s view of things as he goes about executing his plan
for the day is utterly predictable, given the content of the values that ulti-
mately ground his reflection. Chuck “identifies himself with the springs of his
action” (Frankfurt 1988: 54), and he does his good deeds “because he wants
to” do them (Frankfurt 2002: 27). When Chuck falls asleep that night, the
brainwashing is undone and he returns to normal (for him); the manipulators
were conducting a 1‐day experiment.
If Chuck is morally responsible for his good deeds, he deserves some
credit for them, from a moral point of view. As I see it, he deserves no
credit at all for them. I infer that he is not morally responsible for these
deeds. If Chuck freely performs his good deeds, it is difficult to see what
would stand in the way of his being morally responsible for them. As I see
it, Chuck performs these deeds unfreely. Now, some sets of sufficient condi-
tions for free and morally responsible action proposed by compatibilists (for
example, Frankfurt’s, as quoted earlier) are satisfied by Chuck’s good deeds
in this story.6 But it is open to compatibilists to reject the claim that these
sets of conditions are indeed sufficient and to add a historical condition to
their compatibilist mix. Elsewhere, I have advocated a negative historical
condition—a condition requiring that the agent lacks a history of a certain

6. Frankfurt would not attempt to avoid this result by alleging insufficient psychic integration.
Chuck, in One Good Day, is an agent of the sort Frankfurt has in mind in the following passage:
“A manipulator may succeed, through his interventions, in providing a person not merely with
particular feelings and thoughts but with a new character. That person is then morally responsible
for the choices and the conduct to which having this character leads” (2002: 28).
6 Alfred R. Mele

kind (Mele 1995: 172–73, 2019). (A negative historical condition leaves it open
that a so‐called “instant agent” might act freely and morally responsibly in
the first moment of its existence.)7
Some readers will regard my claims that Chuck deserves no credit for
his good deeds and does not freely perform them as obviously true. Others
may have some doubts. For readers interested in seeing some support for
these claims of mine, I recommend Mele (2019). The support offered includes
responses to various arguments that stories like One Good Day are
incoherent.

2. THE PROBLEM OF PRESENT LUCK

Presentations of the problem of present luck often feature stories about deci-
sion making. Some background on deciding helps to set the stage for my
brief presentation of the problem here. Decisions about what to do and about
what not to do—practical decisions—obviously differ from decisions about
what is the case (as in a detective deciding, on the basis of a painstaking
investigation, that White’s killer was Plum). Only practical decisions are at
issue in what follows.
Many philosophers have claimed or argued that to decide to A (or not
to A) is to perform a mental action of a certain kind—an action of forming
an intention to A (or not to A).8 Elsewhere, I have defended the view that
deciding is a momentary mental action of intention formation that resolves
uncertainty or unsettledness about what to do (Mele 2003: ch. 9, 2017: ch.
2). In saying that deciding is momentary, I mean to distinguish it from, for
example, a combination of deliberating and deciding. Deciding to A (or not
to A) on my view, is not a process but a momentary mental action of form-
ing an intention to A (or not to A), “form” being understood as an action
verb.9
I should point out that uncertainty or unsettledness about what to do
is to be distinguished from uncertainty or unsettledness about what one should
do (or about what it would be best, all things considered, to do). Sometimes

7. “Instant agents” is David Zimmerman’s term for agents “who spring full‐blown into
existence. … Mele’s ‘Athena’ and Davidson’s ‘swampman’ are vivid examples” Zimmerman
(1999: 252). For Athena and swampman, see Mele (1995: 172‐73) and Davidson (1987).
8. See, for example, Frankfurt (1988: 174‐76); Kane (1996: 24); Kaufman (1966: 34); McCann
(1986: 254‐55); Mele (1992: 156, 2003: ch. 9). John McGuire has argued that in scenarios involving
side effect actions of a certain kind, one may decide to perform a side effect action but not intend
to perform it (McGuire 2016). For my purposes in this article, it can be left open that an exception
should be made for some side‐effect actions.
9. Not all intentions are formed in this sense, or so I have argued. For example, “When I
intentionally unlocked my office door this morning, I intended to unlock it. But since I am in the
habit of unlocking my door in the morning and conditions … were normal, nothing called for a
decision to unlock it” (Mele 1992: 231). If I had heard a fight in my office, I might have stopped to
consider whether to unlock the door or walk away, and I might have decided to unlock it. But given
the routine nature of my conduct, there is no need to posit an act of intention formation in this case.
My intention to unlock the door may have been acquired without having been actively formed.
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 7

one may be unsettled about what to do because one is uncertain about what
one should do. But sometimes one is certain about what one should do and,
even so, is unsettled about whether to do it. Here is an illustration that I
have offered elsewhere (many times, and most recently in Mele 2017, 10).
On New Year’s Eve, Joe, a smoker, is contemplating kicking the habit. Faced
with the practical question what to do about his smoking, Joe is deliberating
about what it would be best to do about this. It is clear to him that it would
be best to quit smoking at some point, but as yet he is unsure whether it
would be best to quit soon. Joe is under a lot of stress, and he worries that
quitting smoking might drive him over the edge. Eventually, he concludes
that it would be best to quit—permanently, of course—by midnight. Joe’s
conclusion settles an evaluative question, and he is certain about what he
should do. But Joe is not yet settled on quitting. He tells his partner, Jill,
that it is now clear to him that it would be best to stop smoking, beginning
tonight. She asks, “So is that your New Year’s resolution?” Joe sincerely
replies, “Not yet; the next hurdle is to decide to quit. If I can do that, I’ll
have a decent chance of kicking the habit.”
With this background on deciding in place, I invite the reader to con-
sider the following story (from Mele 2006: 73–74) set in an indeterministic
possible world, W1. Bob lives in a town in which people bet on many things,
including whether the opening coin toss for football games will occur on time.
After Bob agrees to toss a coin at noon to start a high school football game,
Carl, a gambler, offers him $50 to wait until 12:02 to toss it. Bob is uncertain
about what to do, and he is still struggling with his dilemma as noon approaches.
Although he is tempted by the $50, he also has moral qualms about helping
Carl cheat people out of their money. Bob judges it best on the whole to
do what he agreed to do. Even so, at noon, he decides to toss the coin at
12:02 and to pretend to be searching for it in his pockets in the meantime.
According to typical libertarian views, Bob directly freely makes his
decision and is directly morally responsible for making it only if there is
another possible world with the same past up to noon and the same laws of
nature in which, at noon, Bob does not decide to toss the coin at 12:02 and
does something else instead. In some such worlds, Bob decides at noon to
toss the coin right then. In others, he is still thinking at noon about what to
do. Other candidates for apparent possibilities are left to the reader’s imagi-
nation. The “candidates for apparent possibilities” are genuine possibilities,
according to the view at issue, if (and only if) Bob’s doing these things at
noon is compatible with W1’s past up to noon and its laws of nature. The
genuine possibilities are, as I put it in Mele (2013), different possible continu-
ations of a (normally very long) world segment.
In Mele (2013), I invite readers to imagine a genuinely indeterministic
number generator. At 5‐minute intervals, consistently with the past up to the
pertinent time and the laws of nature, it can generate any one of several
numbers or no number at all. Its generating the number 17 at t is one pos-
sible continuation of things, and the same is true of several other numbers.
8 Alfred R. Mele

At noon today, the machine generated the number 31. After you verify that,
you might find yourself with the following belief: the machine’s generating
the number 31 was a possible continuation of the past up to noon, and that
continuation actually happened at noon.
If you were somehow to verify that, at noon, Bob decided to toss the
coin at 12:02 and to pretend to be searching for it in his pockets in the mean-
time (decided to cheat, for short), you might find yourself with a parallel belief:
Bob’s deciding to cheat was a possible continuation of the past up to noon,
and that continuation actually happened at noon. As I mentioned, typical lib-
ertarians contend that Bob’s being directly morally responsible for deciding to
cheat and his directly freely deciding to cheat require that at least one other
continuation was possible at noon, a continuation in which Bob does something
else at noon. Suppose that another possible continuation was Bob’s deciding
at noon to toss the coin straightaway; in another possible world with the same
past as W1 up to t and the same laws of nature, that is what happens.
As I have pointed out elsewhere (Mele 2014: 547, 2017: 113‐14), this
supposition may be viewed by some readers as a double‐edged sword. A
philosopher may believe that having control over whether one A‐s or does
something else instead is required for directly freely A‐ing and for being
directly morally responsible for A‐ing and believe that having such control
requires that A‐ing at t and doing something else instead at t are possible
continuations of the past up to t for the agent. And the very same philoso-
pher may worry that these possible continuations are similar enough to pos-
sible continuations for the indeterministic number generator that whatever
control the agent may have over whether he A‐s or does something else
instead falls short of what is required for directly free A‐ing and for direct
moral responsibility for A‐ing.
Consider an augmented version of Bob’s story in which although, in W1,
Bob does his best to persuade himself to do the right thing and to bring it
about that he does not succumb to temptation, he decides at noon to cheat.
Imagine as well that in another possible world, W2, with the same past up to
noon and the same laws of nature, Bob’s best was good enough: he decides
at noon to toss the coin straightaway. That things can turn out so differently
at t (morally or evaluatively speaking) despite the fact that the worlds share
the same past up to t and the same laws of nature will suggest to some read-
ers that Bob lacks sufficient control over whether he makes the bad decision
or does something else instead to make that decision freely and to be morally
responsible for the decision he actually makes. After all, in doing his best, Bob
did the best he could do to maximize the probability (before t) that he would
decide to do the right thing, and, even so, he decided to cheat. One may worry
that what Bob decides is not sufficiently up to him for Bob to be morally
responsible for making the decision he makes and for him to make it freely.
Given the details of Bob’s story, how can Bob have enough control
over whether he decides to cheat or does something else instead at noon for
his decision to be free and for him to be morally responsible for deciding
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 9

to cheat? This is an instance of the central question posed by what I called

“the problem of present luck” (Mele 2006: 66).
The difference at issue at noon between worlds W1 and W2 seems to
be just a matter of a difference in luck—in which case, each decision seems
to be partly a matter of luck. I do not claim that the luck involved is incom-
patible with Bob’s deciding directly freely and with his being directly morally
responsible for his decision. Instead, I ask for an explanation of their com-
patibility. And I offer one (Mele 2006: 113–34).
As I observe elsewhere (Mele 2013: 241–42), I regard my central ques-
tion about stories like Bob’s as an analog of a request for a theodicy in
response to the problem of evilan explanation of why a perfect God would
allow all the pain and suffering that exists in the world. If I had wanted to
prompt an analog of a rebuttal of an argument from evil for the nonexistence
of God, I would have offered an argument from luck for the falsity of lib-
ertarianism and encouraged rebuttals. Rebuttals of such an argument might
not have included answers to my question.
I sometimes hear that what I have presented as a problem for typical
libertarians cannot possibly be a problem for them because their view entails
that cross‐world differences of the sort at issue are required for directly free
action. An obvious problem with this objection is that something that someone
asserts to be a necessary condition for X can be incompatible with X. The idea
that free will requires determinism has had some advocates. If incompatibilists
are right, that alleged necessary condition for free will is incompatible with free
will. The question how or why (directly) free action is possible in a story like
Bob’s is a fair question. And the answer that it has to be possible because its
possibility is required by typical libertarian views is an unacceptable answer.

3. DEALING WITH THE PROBLEM OF PRESENT LUCK

A common idea in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is that
all that is needed for directly free action and for direct moral responsibility
for an action is present in what I earlier called an agent’s internal condition
at the time of action. Call this the presentist idea, or PI, for short. Philosophers
who are (knowingly or unknowingly) in the grip of PI will assume that if
there is a solution to the problem of present luck, it is to be found solely in
agents’ internal conditions. And some philosophers have offered solutions that
are compatible with that assumption. For example, Timothy O’Connor contends
that injecting the exercise of agent‐causal powers into an agent’s internal con-
dition solves the problem (for references and a critique, see Mele 2006: 53–56).
And Robert Kane eschews agent causation in a proposed event‐causal libertar-
ian solution to the problem of present luck that packs into the agent’s internal
condition a simultaneous pair of competing efforts to choose (for references
and critical discussion, see Mele 2006: 51–53, 75–76, 2017: ch. 10).
I suggest that the problem of present luck is made to seem more dif-
ficult than it actually is by the assumption that PI is true. If this suggestion
10 Alfred R. Mele

is on target, then the main moral of section 1 offers a ray of hope to liber-
tarians in search of a solution to the problem of present luck. For, if I am
right, One Good Day, the manipulation story presented there, falsifies PI.
Perhaps is will be replied that although compatibilists must reject PI,
libertarians should happily endorse it. This reply is implausible. Notice that
One Good Day (like Sweet Sara and Pre‐Manipulation Chuck) is silent on
whether the world in which it is set is deterministic or indeterministic. Suppose
that it is set in an indeterministic world and that all the way up to t, when
Chuck decided on his plan for the day (a plan that featured helping homeless
people and Girl Scouts), it was open to him (holding the past and the laws
fixed, of course) to make an alternative decision at the time. Sara has other
altruistic interests, and the associated values were also implanted in Chuck.
Instead of deciding as he did, Chuck could have decided to spend the day
helping Boy Scouts and cancer patients, for example. Given historical facts
about Chuck, I do not see how he can deserve credit, from a moral point
of view, for his decision and good deeds. And I draw the conclusions I drew
in section 1 in the spheres of free action and moral responsibility.
I return to my suggestion that PI makes the problem of present luck
appear to be more difficult than it actually is. In sketching the problem of
present luck, I used an analogy with a genuinely random number generator.
Of course, there are differences between mindless number generators and
indeterministic human decision makers. Here is one difference: whereas what
random number a genuinely random number generator generates next is caus-
ally independent of its earlier productions of random numbers, our decisions
often seem to be causally influenced by earlier decisions we have made (and
such influence seems not to depend conceptually on our being deterministic
decision makers). For example, it seems that reflection on a bad decision one
has made sometimes greatly decreases the likelihood that one will make similar
decisions in the future. Unlike random number generators, many people appar-
ently have the power to learn from their mistakes (which is not to say that
random number generators make mistakes), and people sometimes do, in fact,
learn from their mistakes. This is one fact about us that I have put to use
in developing a response to the problem of present luck (Mele 2006:
113–34).
The facts I just reported about actual decision making are certainly
about more than agents’ internal conditions; they are partly about the past.
So PI places them outside the sphere in which a solution to the problem of
present luck is to be found.
When some people reflect on stories like that of Bob and the coin—
perhaps especially people who assume that PI is true—they may ignore the
sources of the antecedent probabilities of Bob’s deciding to cheat and his
deciding to do the right thing. If they imagine that these probabilities come
out of the blue, Bob may seem to be adrift in a wave of probabilities that
were imposed on him, and, accordingly, he may seem not to have sufficient
control over what he decides to be morally responsible for his decisions. But,
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 11

as I explained in Mele (2006), it is a mistake to assume that “indeterministic

agents’ probabilities of action are externally imposed” or that such agents
“are related to their present probabilities of action roughly as dice are related
to present probabilities about how they will land if tossed” (124–25). If it is
known that Bob’s pertinent probabilities shortly before noon are shaped by
past intentional, uncompelled behavior of his, one may take a less dim view
of Bob’s prospects for being morally responsible for the decision he makes
and his prospects for making it freely.
This is the beginning of a lengthy story that takes us all the way back
to candidates for young agents’ earliest free actions (see Mele 2006: 113–34).
If the suggestion is, in effect, that viewing Bob as having some moral respon-
sibility for the pertinent practical probabilities in place shortly before noon
sheds light on how he can be morally responsible for the decision he makes
at noon and how he can make it freely, what about the earlier actions of
Bob’s that played a role in generating these probabilities? How can he have
been morally responsible for them? How can he have performed them freely?
Are we going to face an infinite regress? Here I keep things brief.
In Mele (2006: 129–32), I described some agential shortcomings of normal
4‐year olds (as compared to normal 8‐year‐olds, for example), and I suggested
that a certain kind of indeterministic agency might not be a greater obstacle
to their having some moral responsibility for what they do than these short-
comings are. The shortcomings highlighted there were in impulse control and
in capacities for anticipating and understanding the effects of their actions.
Part of my aim in my discussion of little agents in Mele (2006) was to move
believers in moral responsibility to see the sense in the common idea that
moral responsibility comes in degrees and, especially, to see that standards
for moral responsibility in young children are plausibly regarded as very mod-
est by comparison with standards for normal adults. I suggested that the
standards for young children are sufficiently modest that the presence of luck
at the time of decision in a child who has never been morally responsible
for anything does not preclude his having some moral responsibility for the
decision he makes then, and I suggested that the combination of present luck
with the normal shortcomings I mentioned also leaves such moral responsibil-
ity open.
By the time typical children reach adulthood, shortcomings have had
an important effect on their inclinations, the kinds of decisions they are likely
to make, the likelihood that they will resist various temptations, and so on.
Even if indeterministic processes in their adult brains still affect their deci-
sions, those processes themselves have been strongly influenced by their past
behavior.
In Mele (2006), my strategy in responding to the problem of present
luck was to find a way to make it plausible that a young indeterministic
agent might have some very modest moral responsibility for some of his
actions and then to explain both how moral responsibility can be amplified
over time and why, in light of this, the problem of present luck is less
12 Alfred R. Mele

threatening to ordinary adult moral responsibility than it may initially seem

to be. For those who maintain that moral responsibility depends on free will,
the connection to free will is made.10 I return to this line of thought in sec-
tion 4 after an additional bit of stage setting.

4. LOCATING THE CONTROL HUMP

I mentioned that I have replied to attempted solutions to the problem of

present luck by O’Connor and Kane. In this section I take up a related
matter.
In a recent book (Franklin 2018), Christopher Franklin defends an event‐
causal libertarian view that is very similar in some significant respects to an
event‐causal libertarian view that I floated in Mele (2006). (I say “floated,”
because I am not an incompatibilist. I am agnostic about compatibilism. But
if I were an incompatibilist and were bold enough to be a libertarian, I would
embrace the libertarian view I floated—view V, for short.)11 First, Franklin
argues that one “can develop a powerful event‐causal libertarian model …
by taking the best compatibilist theory of free will and moral responsibility
and simply adding the requirement of indeterminism (suitably located)” (4).
And this is my explicit strategy in developing V in Mele (2006; for just one
example, see 200–02). Second, in the case of directly free decisions or choices,
both Franklin’s view and V call for indeterminism at the time the decision
or choice is made (see, e.g., Franklin 2018: 106‐07, and Mele 2006: 113‐14).
Third, both Franklin’s view and V are presented as simpler than, and superior
to, Kane’s event‐causal libertarian view (see, e.g., Franklin 2018: ch. 4, and
Mele 2006: 113, 118–19, 133–34, 202–04; see Mele 2017: ch. 10 for more on
the superiority of V to Kane’s view).12

10. To say that moral responsibility depends on free will is not to say that one is morally
responsible only for actions one performs freely. Recall the example of the drunk driver in section
1. He does not freely kill the pedestrian, but he is morally responsible for killing him. (At least,
that is how I see things.) If moral responsibility depends on free will, then if this driver never had
free will (the ability to act freely), he would never be morally responsible for anything.
11. The details of view V, “daring libertarianism,” appear in my presentation of what I call
“daring soft libertarianism” (see Mele 2006: ch. 5). A soft libertarian is open to compatibilism in a
certain connection, asserting that “free action and moral responsibility [may be] compatible with
determinism but … the falsity of determinism is required for … more desirable species of” these
things (95). A daring libertarian maintains that there are free actions of such a kind that it is at no
time determined that the action will occur. A daring soft libertarian endorses both of these theses.
Eventually, I make the obvious point that the softness—that is, the openness to compatibilism—
can simply be subtracted from daring soft libertarianism (that is, without modifying anything else),
yielding what I call “daring libertarianism” (202–03).
12. In a footnote in which he discusses similarities and differences between his minimal
libertarianism and my V and cites chapter 5 of Mele (2006), where I present my solution to the
problem of present luck (113‐34), Franklin asserts that I do not explain how a proponent of view
V “might solve” the problem of present luck (2018: 109 n. 28). Later, he asserts that I argue that a
worry about present luck can be answered, citing the same chapter (141 n. 29). This is puzzling.
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 13

Franklin rebuts four different arguments from luck against libertarianism

(2018: ch. 5). He also argues (ch. 5) that his minimal event‐causal libertarian
view secures “more control than compatibilism” (154)—that it secures so‐called
“enhanced control” as compared to anything compatibilists can offer (154).
Now, to hark back to my theological analogy in section 2, just as rebuttals
of arguments from evil for the nonexistence of God may include no theodicy,
rebuttals of arguments from luck for the falsity of libertarianism may include
no answer to, for example, the question why indeterminism at the moment
of decision is compatible with a decision’s being free and one for which the
agent is morally responsible.
Is the latter question answered by Franklin’s effort to show that “inde-
terminism is relevant to enhancing control because it furnishes agents with
the opportunity to exercise their abilities in more than one way,” that “it is
the opportunity to do otherwise, not indeterminism per se, that enhances
control,” and that “by simply adding indeterminism (in the right way) to the
best compatibilist account, minimal event‐causal libertarians also add the oppor-
tunity to do otherwise” (2018: 157)? Suppose that this effort is successful.
Do we now have a satisfactory answer to the question I asked earlier about
Bob? Here it is again: Given the details of Bob’s story, how can Bob have
enough control over whether he decides to cheat or does something else
instead at noon for his decision to be free and for him to be morally respon-
sible for deciding to cheat?
I return to this issue after taking a step back. In the course of compar-
ing an agent whose decision is indeterministically caused by events alone with
a counterpart agent whose decision is “brought about as characterized by an
integrated agent‐causal account” Clarke (2003: 159), Randolph Clarke contends
that the latter agent
exercised greater active control; he exercised a further power to causally
influence which of the open alternatives would come about. In so doing,
he was literally an originator of his decision, and neither the decision
nor his initiating the decision was causally determined by events. This
is why [he] is responsible for his decision, and why it was performed
with sufficient active control to have been directly free. If this explana-
tion is correct, then… the concept of agent causation is crucially relevant
to the problem of free will. (160)
In Mele (2006), I replied, in effect, that this leaves my question about Bob
on the table (68–69). Does adding the “further power” Clarke mentions, even
if it is a genuine addition, get us to freedom‐level control? I wrote,
I may try to lift a weight using the power of my right arm alone and
fail. I may try again, this time using in addition the further power of
my left arm; and I may fail again, the combined powers not being up
to the task. If the weight is a ton, the combined powers are not enough
to give me even a ghost of a chance of lifting it. For all I have been
14 Alfred R. Mele

able to ascertain, the combination of agent causation with indeterministic

event causation is similarly inadequate. (69)
Readers see where this is heading. Clarke needs a convincing argument that the
boost in control that he has in mind gets us over the hump—that is, that it takes
us to freedom‐level control.13 The same goes for Franklin. A philosopher may
worry that even if mixing indeterminism into a compatibilist view in a suitable
place enhances control, it might do so without boosting control over the hump.
Franklin offers an alleged set of individually necessary and jointly suf-
ficient conditions for an action’s being directly free and for an agent’s being
directly morally responsible for it. Might it eliminate this worry? Here it is:
[ML] An agent S’s action A at time t was directly free and one he was
directly morally responsible for iff (i) S was normatively competent with
respect to A at t, (ii) A was a basic action, (iii) S’s reasons [R] that
favored A nondeviantly brought about A at t, and (iv) it was possible,
given the past and laws of nature up until t, that R not have caused
A. (Franklin 2018, 108)14
If I an of One Good Day, then ML is false. In that story, Chuck is norma-
tively competent with respect to his decision to spend the day helping home-
less people and Girl Scouts, and that decision—D for short—is a basic action.
It can also be made explicit in the story that Chuck’s reasons that favored
D nondeviantly brought about D at t (that is, that there was no deviance in
the causal path from those reasons to his making decision D at t). Finally,
it was possible, given the past and laws of nature up until t, that those rea-
sons not have caused D. Even so, if I am right, it is false that Chuck is
morally responsible for his decision and false that he decided freely.
Some readers who agree with my verdicts about Chuck in this story
may have an interest in thinking about how to modify ML to accommodate
these verdicts. Something outside of the agent’s “internal condition” (as char-
acterized above) at the time of decision—and, in particular, something with
historical content—would seem to be needed to do the work. And once that
is noticed, one may wonder whether something historical might also help one
manage the issue about the control hump. Even if historical facts about an
agent’s internal condition cannot increase or decrease the amount of control
an agent exercises at a time, attention to them may suggest that mistakes
have been made about the control hump’s location.15

13. In the quoted passage, Clarke does say why the boost is supposed to get us over the hump.
But event‐causal libertarians also can reasonably claim that agents of the kind featured in their
discussions of freedom‐level control are originators of some of their decisions, and, of course,
these agents are supposed to make some decisions that are not causally determined by events. So
we come back to the boost allegedly provided by agent causation.
14. For ease of typing, I replaced a Greek letter with A.
15. I am not attributing this mistake to Franklin. Indeed, for normal adults, at least, he and I
may locate the control hump in the same place. For guidance on interpreting the control hump,
see the last few paragraphs of this section.
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 15

I will explain. Elsewhere, after considerable pushing and shoving, I wrote

the following:
As some people conceive of directly free action, it may require some-
thing impossible—an agent’s having a kind of control over what he does
that is indeterministic and leaves nothing to chance. It may be claimed
that when and only when an agent exercises this kind of control is it
truly up to him what he does and that agents act directly freely only
when it is truly up to them what they do. Why is the kind of control
at issue impossible? Because indeterministic control in the absence of
chance is impossible. If, for example, an agent exercises direct indeter-
ministic control in deciding to A, and he makes his decision at t, then
(setting aside Frankfurt‐style cases) in another possible world with the
same past up to t and the same laws of nature, he does not decide at
t to A: there was, right up to the moment of decision, a chance that
he would not decide at t to A. This is something that any libertarian
who holds that directly free actions have proximal causes and cannot
be deterministically caused by their proximal causes needs to learn to
live with. A libertarian who does learn to live with this may (eventu-
ally) feel no need to endorse a requirement for directly free action that
no one can possibly satisfy. And such a libertarian may consistently
continue to believe that free will is incompatible with determinism. (Mele
2017: 189–90)
Obviously, libertarians want to avoid setting the bar for freedom‐level control
at an impossible location. How should they go about seeking an attractive
location for the bar? One strand in a reasonable strategy involves starting
small—that is, considering how ordinary human beings, who, as neonates, do
nothing freely, get from there to a stage of development at which they per-
form their earliest free actions. Libertarians who believe that beings without
free will are not morally responsible for anything, may find it easier to get
a handle on early free actions indirectly, by thinking about how ordinary
human beings get from being neonates, who, of course, are morally responsible
for nothing, to a developmental stage at which they perform the earliest
actions for which they are morally responsible. Proceeding in this way will
tend to lead one away from bars for free and morally responsible action that
are set at dizzying heights.
Suppose a plausible case can be made for the claim that the standards
for the earliest actions for which we are morally responsible are sufficiently
modest that the presence of luck at the time of action in a child who has
never been morally responsible for anything does not preclude his having
some moral responsibility for the action he performs then. Such a case would
give the control hump for moral responsibility for children a relatively modest
location. With this control hump in place, one can try to work one’s way up
to standards for the full‐blown moral responsibility possessed by normal adults
on some occasions, perhaps along the lines sketched in section 3. Acceptable
16 Alfred R. Mele

standards would include a specification of a control hump. Some readers may

find it plausible that full‐blown moral responsibility for an action depends
partly on the agent’s having contributed to the antecedent probabilities of
actions he performs by performing earlier actions for which he was morally
responsible (to some degree). If this is how it turns out, full‐blown moral
responsibility depends on historical facts. And if that is right, then not eve-
rything that is needed for full‐blown moral responsibility can be found in an
agent’s internal condition. The same goes for the combination of the agent’s
internal condition and his opportunities to do otherwise at the time of action.
After all, Chuck, in One Good Day, like Sara on a normal day for her, has
opportunities to decide to do other good things than the ones he decides on;
and, even so, if I am right, he is not morally responsible for his decision
(nor for the good actions he performs in executing it).
The present line of thought deals with the control hump issue for normal
adults, not by adding more to the agent’s internal condition than Franklin
and I (in V, that is) place there, but by giving the hump a certain location.
Agents who can get over the hump at this location include real human beings,
if enough of our morally significant actions are indeterministically caused by
their proximal causes. And, of course, the present line of thought has a
significant historical dimension. If I am right about One Good Day, there is
a historical constraint on directly free action and directly morally responsible
action. I have suggested that historical considerations may also be useful in
managing the control hump issue. (This is a different use of historical con-
siderations, of course.) Managing it in the way I sketched yields a solution
to the problem of present luck. Once again, that solution is developed in
some detail elsewhere (Mele 2006: 113–34).
I close this section with some remarks on a claim I made earlier—that
even if historical facts about an agent’s internal condition cannot increase or
decrease the amount of control an agent exercises at a time, attention to
some such facts may suggest that mistakes have been made about the control
hump’s location. I have been using the expressions “control hump” and “free-
dom‐level control” without offering much guidance. It is time to correct that.
Suppose control is conceived of in such a way that the control an agent
exercises at a time is housed exclusively in what I have called the agent’s
internal condition at the time. Then historical facts about an agent’s internal
condition cannot increase or decrease the amount of control an agent exercises
at a time. In that case, we should say that Chuck, in the indeterministic ver-
sion of One Good Day, and indeterministic Sara, on a normal day, exercise
the same amount of control in deciding how to spend the day. And if we
believe both that Chuck’s decision was unfree and that Sara’s decision was
free, we should say that this is so even though they exercised the same
amount of control. On the conception of control presently at work, there is
more to acting freely than exercising a certain amount of control in acting.
With this background in place, I can identify some options for inter-
preting “control hump” and “freedom‐level control.” In fact, I will let my
 Manipulation, Luck, and Agents' Histories 17

friends Ann and Bob present a pair of options for me. Both Ann and Bob
identify getting over the control hump with reaching freedom‐level control,
as I did.
As Ann uses the expression “freedom‐level control,” exercising such
control in A‐ing is sufficient for A‐ing freely. Because she believes that Chuck
makes the decision at issue unfreely whereas Sara decides freely even though
they exercise the same amount of control over what they decide at the time,
she maintains that freedom‐level control is not to be identified with an amount
of control. Ann says that historical facts about an agent’s internal condition
contribute to the presence or absence of freedom‐level control, but not by
boosting or lowering amounts of control.
Bob uses the expression “freedom‐level control” differently. He uses it
as a label for an amount of control. He defines it as any amount of control
such that, as long as all constraints on free action that are not control‐based
are satisfied, an agent who exercises that amount of control in A‐ing A‐s
freely. As Bob uses the expression, an agent can exercise freedom‐level control
in A‐ing without A‐ing freely. When asked whether this strikes him as an
odd use of language, Bob replies that there is more to A‐ing freely than
exercising a certain amount of control in A‐ing. He mentions One Good Day
in this connection and compares Chuck’s decision about how to spend his
day with Sara’s decision about her day.
My own view is that one can safely use the expression “freedom‐level
control” in either of the ways described, as long as one makes one’s meaning
clear. Both Ann and Bob contend that freely A‐ing is not just a matter of
how much control one exercises in A‐ing. They simply use the expression
“freedom‐level control” (and therefore “control hump”) differently. Elsewhere,
I have urged caution in talk of amounts of control (Mele 2017: 143–47). In
the present context, such talk is difficult to avoid.

5. CONCLUSION

If common intuitions about One Good Day and a variety of related cases
can be trusted, the following thesis is false: (PI) Everything needed for directly
free action and direct moral responsibility for action is to be found in the
agent’s internal condition (as I have characterized it) at the time of action.16
In addition to being false, PI might have another disadvantage: it might have
blinded some philosophers to a potential route to a solution to the problem
of present luck. Philosophers have spent millennia focusing on agents’ internal
conditions at the time of action. Perhaps that close scrutiny has produced
myopia and a need for corrective lenses that enable us to see the bearing
of historical facts about agents’ internal conditions on free will and moral
responsibility.17

16. On nonspecialists reactions to a variety of cases of manipulation, see Mele (2019:

Appendix).
17. I am grateful to Randy Clarke for comments on a draft.
18 Alfred R. Mele

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