Chapter 7 - Natural Compatibilists Should Be Theological Compatibilists

Summary

Many philosophers are compatibilists about moral responsibility and (natural) determinism, which is to say that they think there can be morally responsible agents in worlds with deterministic laws. According to some of these philosophers, however, if God (rather than natural events/laws) determines everything that happens, then no human being is morally responsible for anything. On this combination of views, God’s setting everything up would undermine our moral responsibility, whereas being “set up” by chance would not undermine our moral responsibility. In this chapter, I argue that this combination of views is untenable, and my argument draws from recent work on the manipulation argument against (natural) compatibilism, especially from criticisms of the so-called “soft-line” reply to the manipulation argument.