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IN THE JOURNAL OF VALUE INQUIRY

Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Ownership

Matthew Flummer - Florida State University

Compatibilist accounts of free will and moral responsibility seem susceptible to the problem of
manipulation. Powerful manipulators might induce elements into a person's psychology in a way
that deterministically produces action. The manipulators might also ensure that the person meets
some compatibilist sufficient conditions for moral responsibility. The manipulated agent seems
intuitively not morally responsible despite meeting the compatibilist sufficient conditions. Thus
these conditions are deemed to be not sufficient for moral responsibility.
One way to respond is to point out that there is an important sense in which the induced
elements that the agent acts upon are not her own. This response is important for two reasons.
First manipulation cases feature largely in arguments for incompatibilism. By proposing
ownership conditions, compatibilists provide a way of answering the incompatibilists. Second,
manipulation cases have been used to argue that moral responsibility is essentially historical.
Ownership conditions have been used to cash out in just what sense this is so. In this paper I will
consider the relational account of ownership provided by Ishtiyaque Haji and Stephaan Cuypers.
I argue that their proposal is problematic for two reasons. First I provide cases in which it yields
counterintuitive results. Secondly, and more importantly, I argue that part of their account, initial
authenticity, is vacuous. I then consider two ways of repairing their account.

1.

A Relational Account

Ishtiyaque Haji and Stephaan Cuypers provide an account of history-sensitive moral

responsibility that they call mixed historicism. They claim that their proposal does not require
that agents have pasts. But if an agent does have a past, then it must be of a particular kind.
In a standard manipulation case, the manipulated agent is often deemed to be not morally
responsible because she acts on pro-attitudes that are not authentic, or not truly her own.1 Haji
and Cuypers provide an authenticity constraint that is divided into two parts. According to their
proposal, an element of an agent's psychology is authentic if it is either part of her initial
authentic evaluative scheme or it is part of her evolved authentic evaluative scheme. An agents
evaluative scheme is the psychological basis for evaluative reasoning. According to Haji and
Cuypers, when an agent deliberates about what to do, she assesses reasons for or against some
action by appeal to her evaluative scheme. Such a scheme is made up of normative standards,
long-term goals, deliberative principles, and motivation to act on the basis of these other
constituents.2 An initial evaluative scheme is the scheme that agents initially acquire. For
instance, young children possess initial schemes. An initial scheme is authentic insofar as it
contains no elements that will undermine responsibility for later behavior. An authentic evolved
scheme is a scheme that is made by acceptable modifications to an initial authentic evaluative
scheme.
Haji and Cuypers claim that when manipulation undermines responsibility, it does so
because action-producing elements were acquired via deviant causal routes. These deviant causal
routes are deviant relative to baseline causal routes.3 Haji and Cuypers dub their contender for a
baseline causal route to the acquisition of action producing mental states Baseline-2:

Baseline-2: A causal route to the acquisition of a pro-attitude, or more generally, salient

action-producing elements, is baseline (normal) at t if these elements are acquired as a
result of the agents engaging or exercising the pertinent constituents of the agents
authentic evaluative scheme at t. If, for instance, a pro-attitude is not acquired via a
baseline route, the route to its acquisition is deviant.4

The important aspect of Baseline-2 that is supposed to explain an agents lacking responsibility
in a manipulation case is that the agent acquires pro-attitudes in a way that has not engaged her
authentic evaluative scheme. Their characterization of an authentic evaluative scheme is as
follows:

Authenticity-2: If agent Ss evaluative scheme at a time, t, is either Ss initial

responsibility-wise authentic scheme at that time or is an evolved responsibility-wise
authentic scheme of Ss at that time it is a scheme resulting in acceptable modifications
to a scheme possessed by S prior to t that is responsibility-wise authentic then Ss
evaluative scheme is responsibility-wise authentic.5

To be authentic, an agents evaluative scheme must be either her initial authentic scheme or her
evolved authentic scheme. Initial evaluative schemes are the schemes that agents initially
acquire. A child then develops an evolved evaluative scheme by means of making acceptable
modifications to her initial scheme. Acceptable modifications include those that do not involve
bypassing the agents capacities for control over their mental life.

Haji and Cuypers call the authenticity of an agents initial evaluative scheme
Authenticity-1:

Authenticity-1: An agents initial evaluative scheme is responsibility-wise authentic if its

pro-attitudinal elements (i) include all those, if any, that are authenticity-demanding; (ii)
do not include any that are authenticity-destructive; and (iii) have been acquired by
means that are not authenticity-subversive.6

Elements of an evaluative scheme that are authenticity-demanding are those elements that are
required to ensure that an agent is morally responsible for their later behavior. This includes,
inter alia, certain beliefs about morality. Authenticity-destructive elements are those elements
that are incompatible with responsibility for later behavior which issues from them; the having
of them precludes satisfaction of other conditions, epistemic or control ones, required for
responsibility.7 For instance, Haji and Cuypers claim that irresistible desires are authenticitydestructive. Means that are authenticity-subversive are modes of instilling pro-attitudes that
preclude responsibility for the later behavior that issues from them. For instance, if a desire is
beaten into a child in such a way that the child cannot resist it, then it has been acquired in an
authenticity-subversive way. The thrust of Authenticity-1 is that an initial evaluative scheme is
not the childs own if there are any elements in it that will undermine responsibility for
subsequent behavior or the elements have been acquired in a way that will undermine
responsibility for later behavior that issues from these elements. Note that this sense of
authenticity is relational. Haji and Cuypers claim that there is no authenticity per se.8

This account of relational authenticity is supposed to help explain why a manipulated

agent is unfree (or in some cases, why some manipulation fails to undermine responsibility).
When an agent is manipulated at the evolved scheme stage, she is not morally responsible for
acting on induced psychological elements because these elements were acquired in a way that
bypassed her authentic evaluative scheme. When an agent is manipulated at the initial scheme
stage, the induced pro-attitudes that she later acts on are not authentic parts of her initial
authentic evaluative scheme if the induced elements undermine moral responsibility for later
behavior. In the next section, I will argue against initial relational authenticity. I focus on initial
authenticity because evolved authenticity is built upon an initial authentic evaluative scheme.
Their account stands or falls based on the plausibility initial authenticity. Thus if initial
authenticity fails, their entire historical account fails as well.

2. Problems with Relational Authenticity

Consider a possible world in which the Nazis had successfully wiped out all of the Jewish people
in continental Europe. Suppose that Ivan and Hans were born in Germany and had identical
upbringings. Suppose further that both of their respective initial evaluative schemes include all
authenticity-demanding pro-attitudinal elements. Suppose that they both had an irresistible racist
desire to insult a Jewish man to his face beaten into them during the initial scheme stage.9 That
is, suppose, in Haji and Cuypers' terminology, that these desires were instilled in such a way that
neither Hans nor Ivan can thwart'. Ivan died before he had a chance to act on this racist desire.
Hans, on the other hand, was enlisted in the German military and given a job as a guard at a
concentration camp. He subsequently acted on these desires many times. Hans's racist desire is

not authentic. According to Haji and Cuypers's terminology, Hans's desire is both authenticity
destructive and authenticity subversive. Haji and Cuypers state, It is sufficient that the causal
route to the acquisition of a desire be deviant, if, for instance, behaviour that stems from the
desire is behaviour for which the agent is not responsible because the desire is irresistible10.
Ivan never acts on his desire so it never subverts responsibility for later behavior. By hypothesis,
there is no later behavior to which this desire is related. Thus according to mixed historicism, it
seems that Ivan's desire is authentic. But this is implausible. Both of their respective desires and
the way that they are acquired are qualitatively identical.
Haji and Cuypers might respond that it is true that Ivan never acts on an irresistible
desire. But it is also true that were he to have an opportunity, he would have and act on this
irresistible desire. The truth of this conditional shows that Ivans desire to make racist comments
is inauthentic. But if they were to go this route, Haji and Cuypers' account would no longer be
relational in the way that they describe. Recall that according to their account, an initial
evaluative scheme is not the agents own if there are any elements in it that will undermine
responsibility for subsequent behavior that issues from these elements. In their response to a
different objection, Haji and Cuypers state that whether or not some evaluative scheme element
is authentic can only be established at some point in the future. They state,

Whether a causal route to the acquisition of a pro-attitude P at time t is baseline (normal)

or deviant can only be fathomed in the future, at a time t + n future to t, the assessment
turning on whether the having of P subverts moral responsibility for behavior that issues
from P at or subsequent to t + n. Hence, whether a causal route at t is normal or deviant

cannot be established at t itself since the correct verdict awaits what the relevant facts
concerning responsibility for behavior stemming from P will be at n + 1.11

In Ivans case, by hypothesis, there is no behavior with which the desire is related. Therefore, it
can be established that there is no responsibility undermining behavior with which this desire is
related. Thus if Haji and Cuypers were to go with the proposal mentioned here, then they
would have to explain what this new relation is between the agent, the inauthentic element, and
the behavior caused by the element in some other possible world.
Now consider another pair of agents - Charlie and Dominick. Charlie and Dominick have
identical upbringings with all of the same pro-attitudinal elements within their initial evaluative
scheme. The elements of both of their respective schemes include all of those that are
authenticity-demanding. And both Charlie and Dominick's elements are of normal' strength and
instilled in normal' ways. Suppose one of the elements that they both possess within their initial
evaluative scheme at a time, t1, is a medium strength desire to take things that belong to others.
Now, suppose that both Charlie and Dominick's desire to steal persists until time, t2, when they
are both no longer in the initial scheme stage. At this point their lives diverge. Charlie undergoes
a series of life-experiences that causes his persisting desire to steal to strengthen until it is
irresistible. He then acts on this desire at t3. Dominick undergoes a different set of experiences
and his persisting desire remains much weaker and he is able to resist it. According to the
relational account, Charlie's desire at t1 is unauthentic and Dominick's is authentic even though at
t1 both of their respective desires and the way in which they were acquired were qualitatively
identical.12

The counterintuitive results of these two cases are not the most problematic feature of
Haji and Cuypers's relational account of authenticity. What these cases show is that it is not the
nature of the element during the initial scheme stage that determines whether or not it is
authentic. Rather, what matters for relational authenticity is whether or not the element (or the
way the element was acquired) undermines responsibility for later behavior. But then what seems
to be doing the work are the epistemic and control conditions that are violated during the later
behavior. What lack of authenticity is supposed to explain is why an agent is not morally
responsible for acting on induced desires acquired via manipulation. But lack of authenticity
doesn't explain why induced desires undermine responsibility; the explanation comes from the
agent not meeting the other conditions for moral responsibility (perhaps control or epistemic
conditions).
Here's another way of putting it: whether or not some element of an initial evaluative
scheme is inauthentic depends on whether or not it subverts responsibility for some later action.
If the element does not subvert responsibility for some later action, then it seems to be authentic.
But whether or not the agent's responsibility is subverted solely depends on facts about the agent
at the time the action is performed, that is, whether or not the agent meets epistemic and control
conditions at the time of action. And the nature of the initial scheme element is irrelevant to
whether or not they meet these conditions. If this is the case, then initial authenticity is vacuous.
What ends up mattering for moral responsibility is whether or not the agent meets the conditions
for moral responsibility at the time of action, not whether their initial scheme elements are
authentic.13
If their account of initial scheme authenticity is rejected, then this poses problems for
their overall relational account. Recall that according Haji and Cuypers, an agent's evaluative

scheme is authentic if it is either this person's authentic initial evaluative scheme or it is their
authentic evolved evaluative scheme.14 The considerations presented here give us reason to reject
the first disjunct. The problem for the overall account is that the authenticity of an evolved
evaluative scheme is built upon the authenticity of an initial scheme. An authentic evolved
evaluative scheme at a time, Haji and Cuypers claim, is a scheme resulting from acceptable
modifications to an authentic scheme that the agent had before that time (ibid.). Thus unless
there is another way for an agent to have an authentic scheme besides initial authenticity, their
account of evolved authenticity will never be able to get off the ground.
In reply to a similar worry Haji states,

A kernel of responsibility is that we be the ultimate originators of our actions; to be

morally responsible we need to be in the drivers seat. To ensure that one is in this seat,
having acquired an initial schemehaving become the sort of agent to which
responsibility ascriptions can be duly attributedchanges to this scheme cannot be of the
sort that completely bypass ones capacities of deliberative control.15

Though I have argued that their conditions for initial authenticity are vacuous, it seems that there
is a non-vacuous part of mixed historicisman agent must lack a history that includes changes
to her evaluative scheme that were brought about in a way that bypasses her capacities for
control. From the above quotation, it seems that Haji is allowing for some other way of
characterizing initial evaluative schemes rather than the relational account. In the next section, I
explore what other ways one might do this.

3. Two Other Options for Initial Authenticity in the Ownership Sense

Haji and Cuypers might attempt to salvage their view by appealing to a different notion of initial
authenticity. In this section, I consider two other options for initial ownership. The first is Fischer
and Ravizzas ownership condition (Fischer and Ravizza 1998). According to this condition, an
agent must go through a process of taking ownership. The second, I call the minimal ownership
condition. According to this condition, an agent owns all of her initial psychological elements
regardless of how she came to have them.
3.1 Fischer and Ravizzas Ownership condition
According to Fischer and Ravizzas account, to be morally responsible, an agent must have
guidance control.16 For an agent to have guidance control, the action in question must come from
an agents own moderately reasons-responsive mechanism.17
To satisfy the ownership requirement, an agent must meet the following three criteria:
(A) The individual must see himself as the source of his behavior; (B) he must accept that he is a
fair target of reactive attitudes; and (C) the agents view of himself on (A) and (B) must be based
on evidence.18 Fischer and Ravizza contend that the ownership condition is globally historical in
nature.
The ownership condition is about one making a mechanism ones own. It requires that an
agents past includes the agent taking responsibility for the mechanism.19 According to part (A),
to satisfy the ownership requirement a person must see herself, minimally, as an agent. The
person must believe that she is the source of her actions, that they are caused by her and are not
the results of mere coincidence, accidents or other agents.20 A childs upbringing and moral
education are important to this process. Parents of young children encourage their children to see

10

themselves in this way by treating them as if they were responsible even though they may not be
morally responsible quite yet. In a way, the parents treat the child as if he were provisionally
responsible for his behavior.21 Thus to meet this condition of ownership, a person must see
himself as an agent. That is, a person must see that his choices and decisions are causally
efficacious.
Part (B) requires that the agent must accept that he is a fair target of reactive attitudes.
This condition deals with an agent accepting something about our social practices. It is for an
agent to see that in certain circumstances it is fair that other individuals experience or express
reactive attitudes, such as resentment and indignation, towards him for his morally relevant
behavior.22
Finally, according to part (C) the agents view of himself on (A) and (B) must be based
on evidence. Fischer and Ravizza state,

It suffices here simply to say that it is plausible to require that the agents view of himself
as an agent and sometimes appropriately subject to the reactive attitudes be grounded in
his evidence for these beliefs. For example, the childs view of himself as an agent needs
to be based (in an appropriate way) on his experience with the effects of his choices and
actions on the world. And his view of himself as an apt target for the reactive attitudes in
certain contexts needs to be based on what his parents have taught him and his broader
experiences with the social practices of (say) praise and blame.23

For Fischer and Ravizzas account, when a person takes responsibility, she must form a
disposition to view herself as a morally responsible agent that is based on evidence, or facts

11

about her past. That is, she forms a disposition to view herself in a certain way based on her
interactions with others. The process of taking responsibility need not take place deliberately or
within an agents conscious control.24
Fischer and Ravizza's conception of ownership implies that none of an agent's initial
mechanisms are the agent's own. An agent must go through a process in which she takes
ownership of them. Haji and Cuypers' way of delineating ownership requires that if initial
elements undermine responsibility for later behavior, then they are not the agent's own. They are
their own if otherwise. Consider these two ways of characterizing ownership:

FR: None of the initial mechanisms are owned by a young agent. One must go through a
process by which one takes responsibility for the mechanisms that lead to action.

HC: All and only the initial scheme elements that do not undermine moral responsibility
for later behavior are the agent's own. Furthermore, changes to these initial elements must
not bypass the agent's capacities for control.

So far either none of an agents initial mechanisms are owned and one has to take ownership for
them or all and only the initial states that do not undermine later responsibility are owned. If Haji
and Cuypers were to appropriate FR as an ownership requirement for initial evaluative schemes,
they could replace initial mechanisms with initial scheme elements. Another possibility is
that Haji and Cuypers characterize initial authenticity in terms of a mesh or hierarchical theory
similar to Frankfurts.25 According to such a suggestion, a desire might be authentic if it is
smoothly integrated with other pro-attitudes or if it is endorsed by the childs higher order

12

desires. Haji and Cuypers explicitly reject this way of thinking about initial authenticity. One
reason for this is that a child may be the victim of indoctrination from an early age. Because of
the indoctrination, there is a sense in which none of the childs pro-attitudes that are acquired as
a result of indoctrination are authentic.26 A second reason is that this suggestion implies that all
of the childs pro-attitudes are not authentic because at the earliest stages of the childs
acquisition of scheme elements, the child lacks capacities of reflexive identification.27 But
neither of these objections considers FR. It does not seem to be problematic, on the face of it,
assuming that all of the childs initial scheme elements are not authentic, if it is a necessary
requirement that the child goes through a process by which takes ownership of these
psychological elements.
3.2 Minimal Ownership Condition
FR and HC are not the only options. Consider the following, which I call the minimal
ownership condition (MOC):

MOC: An agent owns all of her initial scheme elements regardless of how she came to
have them.28

A consideration in favor of MOC is how we talk about young children. We say things like, her
personality is so precocious, or her shyness so cute. Consider identical twins Abby and Elise.
From an early age there were many differences in their personalities as they developed from
infants to toddlers. Abby is more dramatic and Elise is more reserved. Abby is less sneaky and
Elise is more sneaky. When we talk about each girls respective personalities, we speak in such a
way that certain psychological elements of their respective initial sets are already owned. That is,

13

we might say that Abbys disposition to be dramatic is hers; she already has ownership of it. Or
that Elises disposition to be sneaky is hers; she owns it.
This way of thinking about ownership reflects the fact that nothing of who an agent is at
the beginning of her life is under her control. Agents begin their lives with a physical nature and
in circumstances that set for them what will be many of their initial psychological states. But this
fact does not make it the case that the members of this initial set are not the agent's own. In a
way we are initially programmed with certain psychological elements as a part of who we are
from the time that we acquire our initial scheme elements. Suppose Billy is born and raised in a
racist family. The racist attitudes and character traits that he initially acquires will be part of his
initial set, and Billy will therefore have ownership of them (according to MOC). This is true no
matter how they are acquired at the initial stage. Billy's parents might lie to him about how
people of other races are lazy, good for nothing, or evil. His parents might also beat him for
being nice to people of other races and reward him for behaving badly toward people of other
races. This is one of the unfortunate aspects of life - but it doesn't imply that Billy's acquired
racism is not his own.
One might object to this characterization that it leaves no room for taking responsibility,
or taking ownership. But this is not so. It will simply be taking responsibility in a different way.
When Fischer and Ravizza talk about taking responsibility it involves taking ownership of things
that were not previously owned. But if MOC is true, then these things are already owned. In what
sense can one take responsibility? One can do so as follows. Suppose that an agent comes to not
identify with one element of their initial set so that, in Frankfurt's terminology, they do not
endorse it or they are not wholehearted. Does this imply that this element is not the agent's own?
Not in the least. The sense of taking responsibility for something that is already owned is this:

14

Once an agent comes to identify or not identify with some element of her endowment, she then
has a choiceshe can either act in a way that strengthens and/or develops this element or she
can act in a way that weakens and/or eradicates this element.29
Suppose that Elise comes to not endorse the reserved and shy aspects of her personality.
She can admit that this is part of who she is (she owns this element) and at the same time not
wholeheartedly endorse this element. She might say things like, I realize this is part of who I
am, but I don't like it and I want to change. She then has a choice about whether to actually
change it. Suppose she then begins a project of trying to come out of her shell. There are many
ways that she can do this. Perhaps she takes public speaking classes at the local college and
attempts to overcome her shyness by speaking in front of other people. Suppose after many years
of these attempts, she has significantly attenuated her shyness.
Consider another example. Suppose that Abby comes to endorse her disposition to be
dramatic. She admits that this is part of who she is and she likes it. She might then act in a way
that strengthens and develops this aspect of her personality. Perhaps she becomes an acting
major in college and attempts to begin a career in theater. In both cases, whether the element was
endorsed or not, the respective agents took responsibility for elements of their initial scheme
elements.
If an agent had some psychological element that this agent did not endorse, this doesn't
imply that they are not morally responsible for acting on it. If an agent acts on an owned element
and the agent meets other relevant conditions for moral responsibility (like control and epistemic
conditions), then they are morally responsible for that action (assuming that there are no
excusing conditions). Part of taking responsibility is admitting that one has bad aspects of
character and admitting that one is morally responsible for acting on those bad aspects even if

15

one does not endorse them. One might say things like, I have a tendency to be jealous of others.
I know that this is not right and I know that I'm responsible for acting out of my jealousy
(assuming that other conditions of moral responsibility are met). So I should begin the process of
attempting to shed this jealous aspect and encouraging the more virtuous parts of my character.
This sense of taking responsibility is importantly different from Fischer and Ravizza's.
One doesnt make the initial elements ones own because they are already ones own. But one
can take responsibility for them, realizing that they arent anyone elses, that they are stuck
with them for the time being, and deciding to take steps to shed the ones they do not endorse or
cultivate the ones they do endorse.
Another difference between the Fischer/Ravizza brand of ownership and my proposal is
that for Fischer and Ravizza, being morally responsible is all or nothingit is a threshold
concept. So either an agent meets their conditions for moral responsibility or she does not. When
it comes to children who have not yet met all of the conditions for moral responsibility, Fischer
and Ravizza say that we treat children as if they were provisionally responsible.30 Because their
version of moral responsibility is all or nothing, there will be cases of children who almost meet
the conditions and will therefore not be morally responsible at all. Then once they reach the
threshold, they will be morally responsible (but maybe only blameworthy to a minimal degree (if
at all)).31
MOC allows for the possibility of a scalar concept of moral responsibility. Suppose a
child, Danny, meets Fischer and Ravizzas conditions for moderate reasons-responsiveness and
maybe it is not clear whether he meets the ownership conditions (perhaps he doesn't have enough
evidence to meet condition C). According to Fischer and Ravizza, Danny is not morally
responsible because he does not own the mechanisms that lead to his actions. But according to

16

MOC, Danny already owns his initial set of psychological states. So when he acts in such a way
as described (he meets all of the Fischer/Ravizza conditions except C), he can be at least
minimally morally responsible. Rather than treating children as provisionally morally
responsible until they meet some further conditions, we could treat children (who meet many of
the responsibility relevant conditions) as minimally morally responsible. As they meet the other
conditions for moral responsibility to a greater degree, they become more morally responsible
and they will deserve more praise or blame.32
Suppose that ownership is a necessary requirement for moral responsibility and that
someone acts on a desire that was not part of their initial set. For instance, suppose Mick
acquired a desire to smoke. Before he acquired this desire, there were no elements of his initial
set in favor of smoking. But Mick did have elements in his set in favor of gaining the approval of
others. As a teenager (and after he had fully acquired his initial set), Mick was interested in
gaining the approval of a group of young people who smoked. So he forced himself to smoke
when they were together to gain their approval. Eventually, Mick started to like smoking. This
desire was not part of his initial set. There is an intuitive sense in which Mick is morally
responsible for smoking even though he is acting on a desire that was not part of his initial set
(assuming that Mick wasn't coerced, manipulated, etc.). Now compare Mick to Otto. Otto also
acquired a desire to smoke as a teenager. But Ottos desire to smoke was acquired in a much
different way. Some CEOs from a big tobacco company hired a team of manipulators to
brainwash unsuspecting teenagers into desiring smoking in order to increase profits. It just so
happened that Otto was one of those unsuspecting teens. Suppose that the manipulators
brainwashed Otto into acquiring this desire without his knowledge and in such a way that there
was nothing he could do to avoid acquiring it.

17

It seems like Mick is morally responsible for acquiring the desire to smoke, but Otto is
not. If Mick is morally responsible for smoking, then we would need something in addition to
MOC to account for his moral responsibility for acting on this acquired desire to smoke. An
intuitive sense in which Micks desire to smoke is his own, is that he acquired this desire under
his own steam.33 Not all attitudes are actively acquired the way that Mick acquired his desire to
smoke. Agents are often passive with respect to the acquisition of attitudes. But there is an
intuitive sense in which an agent is responsible for acquiring these attitudes so long as the agents
capacities for control over her mental life were not bypassed in the process.1 Otto, on the other
hand, did not acquire his desire under his own steam. Rather, his capacities for control over his
mental life were bypassed by the manipulation. So in addition to proposal MOC, we could
require that any pro-attitude that is acquired after an agent already possesses an initial set and has
developed into a morally responsible agent must be acquired under an agents own steam.34

4. Handling the Problem Cases

In Section 2, I presented two cases that I claimed were problematic for the relational
account of Haji and Cuypers. FR and MOC are better suited to handle these cases. First consider
the cases with respect to MOC. Recall that according to the relational account, Hanss desire was
inauthentic while it seemed that Ivans was not. I claimed that this was implausible because both
Hans and Ivan had qualitatively identical desires acquired in qualitatively identical ways. MOC
does not have this result. Both Hans and Ivans initial set included irresistible racist desires.
Because these desires are part of their respective initial sets, they will be their own. But a

For more on this see Section 5.3.2.

18

desires being ones own is not sufficient for moral responsibility. One must also meet other
conditions (such as control and epistemic conditions) in order to be morally responsible for
acting on an owned pro-attitude. Because each of the desires is irresistible, if either of them were
to act on it, then it is plausible that they would not be morally responsible for doing so.
Now consider the Charlie/Dominick case. What I have to say here mirrors what I said
about the Hans/Ivan case. Recall that according to the relational account of Haji and Cuypers, at
t1, Charlies desire is inauthentic and Dominick's is authentic. I claimed that this was implausible
because their respective desires were qualitatively identical and they were acquired in
qualitatively identical ways. According to MOC, both of their respective desires are authentic.
This does not entail that Charlie is morally responsible for acting on the irresistible desire to
steal. Again, authenticity is a necessary condition for moral responsibility, not a sufficient one.
There is nothing within MOC that would explain why Charlie is not morally responsible. But the
account could be supplemented easily to do so. It is plausible that if Charlie is not morally
responsible, then this is the case because he does not satisfy the control condition for moral
responsibility. Note that this is exactly how Haji and Cuypers will explain why Charlie is not
morally responsible for acting on an irresistible desire. It is plausible that they will claim that
Charlie is not morally responsible because he doesnt satisfy the control condition for
responsibility not because he acts from inauthentic psychological elements.
Now consider these examples with respect to FR. If Hans and Ivan were to ever act from
an irresistible desire, then the mechanism leading to their respective actions would fail to be
moderately reasons-responsive. Fischer and Ravizza's moderate reasons-responsiveness
requirement for moral responsibility requires that there be some possible world in which there is
a sufficient reason to do otherwise, the actual mechanism operates and the agent does otherwise

19

for that reason. It seems that Hans would not refrain from acting on his irresistible desire no
matter what reasons to do otherwise were present.35 Whether or not the agent has gone through a
process of taking ownership is not relevant if the action in question is caused by an irresistible
desire. This is also true in the case of Charlie and Dominick. If Charlie's desire is irresistible,
then he is not morally responsible for acting on it (unless, perhaps, Charlie willingly and
knowingly caused himself to acquire the irresistible desire). So if Haji and Cuypers were to
appropriate FR to replace their relational account of initial authenticity, they would need to also
appropriate some of the machinery of Fischer and Ravizza's account of moderate reasonsresponsiveness in order to explain why an agent is not morally responsible for acting on an
irresistible desire.
One might argue that MOC is vacuous or trivial. But MOC was not defined by whether or
not an agent meets control and epistemic conditions the way relational authenticity was. Rather,
if ownership is a necessary requirement for moral responsibility, then in addition to control and
epistemic conditions, one must act on their own evaluative scheme elements. Recall the problem
for initial scheme authenticity was that the authenticity of an initial scheme element solely
depended upon whether or not that element caused behavior for which the agent was not
responsible because the agent did not meet the control and/or epistemic conditions. So initial
scheme authenticity wasnt doing any work in explaining an agents non-responsibility. Rather,
what was doing all the work was whether or not the agent met the conditions for responsibility at
the time of action.
One might claim a similar objection to MOC. That is, it is not doing any work in
explaining an agents non-responsibility because all of an agents initial states are owned.
Perhaps it is trivial in some sense. But perhaps that is just a problem with ownership conditions

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in general and not something specific to MOC. If we are to get responsibility off the ground and
explain how a child, who is not responsible for anything, goes from this state to being at least
responsible for some of her behavior, then we must appeal to something that will allow us to
explain how she becomes responsible. My proposal helps do just this.

5. Conclusion

In this paper I have argued that part of the relational account of Haji and Cuypers, initial
authenticity, is problematic. I then offered two ways of thinking about initial scheme authenticity
that Haji and Cuypers might use to repair their account: Fischer and Ravizza's ownership
conditions in which an agent must take ownership of the initial mechanisms leading to action and
what I called principle MOC, in which all of an agent's initial psychological elements are owned.
I contend that Haji and Cuypers' relational characterization of initial authenticity should be
rejected in favor of either FR or MOC.36

Notes
1. Haji, Ishtiyaque, and Stefaan E. Cuypers, Moral Responsibility and the Problem of
Manipulation Reconsidered, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 12 no. 4,
(2004) pp. 439-464. Haji and Cuypers claim that in cases of responsibility undermining
manipulation, the manipulated agent is unfree because she acts on springs of action not truly
her own, or, in our terminology, not authentic. Our concern is to give a partial account of this
sense of authenticity, p. 449.
2. Haji and Cuypers 2004, 446-447.
3. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 440.
4. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 455.
5. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 454.
6. Haji and Cuypers 2004, 452.
7. Ibid.
8. Haji, Ishtiyaque. 2013. Historicism, Non-historicism, or a Mix? The Journal of Ethics, 17(3),
185-204. Haji states, one of our central contentions is that initial schemes, if authentic, are

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merely relationally authentic: they are authentic only insofar as they do not subvert
responsibility for later behavior, p. 193.
9. Perhaps part of the desire was to see the look on the mans face after the insult.
10. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p, 453.
11. Haji, Ishtiyaque, and Stefaan E. Cuypers, Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Education
(New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 32.
12. According to Haji and Cuypers account of relational authenticity, Charlies normal proattitude is inauthentic. For more see, Magical agents, global induction, and the
internalism/externalism debate. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85(3), 343-371. They state,
A pro-attitude or its mode of acquisition is inauthentic if that pro-attitude or the way in which it
is acquired will subvert moral responsibility for behavior, which owes its proximal causal
genesis to the pro-attitude, or the normative agent into whom the child will develop (Haji and
Cuypers 2007, p. 352).
13. For a similar worry, see McKenna, Michael, Defending Nonhistorical Compatibilism: A
Reply to Haji and Cuypers. Philosophical Issues, Vol 22, no. 1, n. 13 (2012) 264-280.
14. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 454
15. Haji 2013, p. 196
16. Fischer, John Martin, and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral
Responsibility. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
17. According to Fischer and Ravizza, a mechanism is a way in which an action comes about.
This includes, but is not limited to, ordinary practical deliberation, unreflective habit, hypnosis,
direct stimulation of the brain, etc. (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 38-39.).
18. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 210-211
19. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 207
20. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 208
21. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 209
22. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 211
23. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 213
24. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 214
25. Frankfurt, Harry, The Importance of What We Care About (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
26. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 448-449.
27. Haji and Cuypers 2008, p. 352
28
For a similar proposal see Noggle, Robert Autonomy and the Paradox of Self-Creation, in J.
S. Taylor (ed), Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in
Contemporary Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 87-108. For a
discussion of Noggles proposal, see Cuypers, Stephaan, Educating for Authenticity: The
Paradox of Moral Education Revisited, in H. Siegel (ed), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of
Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 122-144.
29. This is similar to the ability of an agent to shed one of her values in Meles terminology.
See Mele, Alfred, Free Will and Luck (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 167. The
choice to shed an attitude need not be a conscious choice.
30. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 209
31. Fischer, John Martin, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas Four Views on Free
Will. (New York: Blackwell 2007) p. 186-187.

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32. See Mele 2006 for another discussion of a scalar notion of moral responsibility in the context
of children. Fischer rejects the scalar notion of responsibility. For him, moral responsibility is
all-or-nothing. He does, however, allow for degrees of blameworthiness (Fischer 2007).
33. This is one consideration that might lead one to believe that a manipulated agent is unfree.
See Mele, Alfred, Autonomous Agents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 155.
34. Or perhaps they must be acquired in a way that does not bypass the agents capacities for
control over her mental life.
35. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 232
36. For helpful comments on various drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Alfred Mele,
Stephen Kearns, Gabriel de Marco, Taylor Cyr, the graduate student writing group at Florida
State University, the audience at the Florida Philosophical Associations conference in 2014 and
an anonymous referee.

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