Compatibilists about moral responsibility disagree with one another about how agents’ histories bear on a proper analysis of moral responsibility for actions. The following passages from work by Harry G. Frankfurt express what has been called an internalist, structuralist, or anti-historicist view of the matter:

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 responsible for performing them. (Frankfurt 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 unequivocally attributable to him… it makes no difference – so far as evaluating his moral responsibility is concerned – how he came to have them. (Frankfurt 2002: 27)

To test the quoted claims, one can try to generate a pair of cases with the following features: each case highlights an agent who satisfies all the conditions stated above for being morally responsible for an action he performs, but, because of a difference in the two agents’ histories, only in one case is the agent morally responsible for the action at issue. Regarding any proposed internalist sufficient conditions for an agent’s moral responsibility, this testing strategy may be employed. (Obviously, saying that a strategy may be employed leaves it open whether it will meet with success or failure.)

I have conducted such tests in arguing that compatibilists ought to reject views like Frankfurt’s in favor of a history-sensitive or externalist view (Mele 1995, 2006, 2008, 2009a, b, 2013a, b), and I will return to some of these tests in Sect. 1. However, my concern in this article is not to criticize Frankfurt’s anti-historicist or internalist view—or any such view. Instead, it is to identify and assess a way of thinking that may lie behind the pull some compatibilists feel toward internalism. I write “way of thinking” rather than “argument” because the latter term may suggest greater precision on this matter than I have seen.

What Might Internalist Compatibilists Be Thinking?

A way of thinking of the sort I intend to examine shows up in the following claim by Frankfurt:

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. We are inevitably fashioned and sustained, after all, by circumstances over which we have no control. The causes to which we are subject may also change us radically, without thereby bringing it about that we are not morally responsible agents. It is irrelevant whether those causes are operating by virtue of the natural forces that shape our environment or whether they operate through the deliberately manipulative designs of other human agents. (Frankfurt 2002: 28, emphasis added)

Richard Double may be thinking along Frankfurt’s lines when he contends that “the internalistic view is implicit in compatibilism” and that “compatibilism has not a chance of plausibility without [internalism], since otherwise the incompatibilist abhorrence of determinism will destroy it.” (Double 1991: 56–57)

In a similar vein, we have the following from Gary Watson:

For the compatibilist, the constitutive conditions of free agency do not conceptually depend on their origins. In this sense, free and responsible agency is not an historical notion. Consequently, compatibilism is committed to the conceptual possibility that free and responsible agents, and free and responsible exercises of their agency, are products of super-powerful designers. For consider any compatibilist account of the conditions of free agency, C. It is possible for C to obtain in a causally deterministic world. If that is possible, then it is possible that a super-powerful being intentionally creates a C-world, by bringing about the relevant antecedent conditions in accordance with the relevant laws. This possibility follows from the general point that the conditions of responsibility do not necessarily depend upon their causal origins. (Watson 1999: 360–361)

Watson adds: “If we define a robot as a creature whose existence and detailed ‘program’ were brought about by design, then the foregoing reasoning commits compatibilists to the possibility that free agents are robots.” (Watson 1999: 361)

I return to the quoted passages later. They serve as background now. Another bit of background is the point that thought experiments of some different kinds pose apparent threats of different kinds to anti-historicist compatibilism. To illustrate this point, I rehearse some thought experiments of mine. The first is an original-design story. (Mele 2006: 188)

ERNIE Diana creates a zygote Z in Mary. She combines Z’s atoms as she does because she wants a certain event E to occur 30 years later. From her knowledge of the state of the universe just prior to her creating Z and the laws of nature of her deterministic universe, she deduces that a zygote with precisely Z’s constitution located in Mary will develop into an ideally self-controlled agent who, in 30 years, will judge, on the basis of rational deliberation, that it is best to A and will A on the basis of that judgment, thereby bringing about E. If this agent, Ernie, has any unsheddable values at the time, they play no role in motivating his A-ing. Thirty years later, Ernie is a mentally healthy, ideally self-controlled person who regularly exercises his powers of self-control and has no relevant compelled or coercively produced attitudes. Furthermore, his beliefs are conducive to informed deliberation about all matters that concern him, and he is a reliable deliberator.Footnote 1

Diana assembles Z as she does in Mary so that E will happen. Of course, in doing this, thereby ensuring that Ernie will bring about E by A-ing 30 years later, Diana ensures much more. A complete description of the state of the universe just after Diana creates Z—including Z’s constitution—together with a complete statement of the laws of nature entails a true statement of everything Ernie will ever do. In a version of this story, Diana does what she does in order to ensure everything that Ernie does. (Mele 2006: 189–190) Also, to block the claim that Ernie is not morally responsible for what he does only because another agent—Diana—is morally responsible for all of Ernie’s actions, it may be supposed that Diana is not morally responsible for anything because she is stark raving mad and has no grasp of morality. (Mele 2006: 198, note 6) These additional details should be regarded as official parts of Ernie’s story.

Consider the following argument (Mele 2013a: 176; see also Mele 2006: 189)

  1. 1.

    Ernie is not morally responsible for anything he does.

  2. 2.

    Concerning moral responsibility of the beings into whom the zygotes develop, there is no significant difference between the way Ernie’s zygote comes to exist and the way any normal human zygote comes to exist in a deterministic universe.

  3. 3.

    So in no possible deterministic world in which a human being develops from a normal human zygote is that human being morally responsible for anything he or she does.

We should not be surprised to find seasoned compatibilists rejecting premise 1. They might tell us that they knew all along, for reasons of the kind Watson describes, that they were committed to holding that an agent with Ernie’s properties is morally responsible for his actions, and they might offer to explain why what they are committed to is true. In my own view (Mele 2006: 192–193), this is the line compatibilists should take; a powerful argument for the falsity of premise 1 would be especially welcome. Some philosophers have argued that premise 2 should be rejected. (Barnes 2015; Waller 2014) I will not pursue that interesting idea here.

Some other thought experiments of mine feature manipulation-induced radical reversals in agents’ hard-won values. Consider the following two stories about unmanipulated agents.

SWEET BETH. Beth is one of the kindest, gentlest people on Earth. She was not always that way, however. When she was a teenager, she came to view herself, with some justification, as self-centered, petty, and somewhat cruel. She worked hard to improve her character, and she succeeded. Beth is an extremely kind and generous person who for many years has devoted a great deal of time and energy to helping needy people in her community and the local Girl Scouts. She is, moreover, a person who is so gentle that even the thought of killing a pesky fly disturbs her. Her system of values plays a major role in generating her admirable behavior, of course. Her values are “well integrated into [her] general psychic condition.” (Frankfurt 2002: 27) When she performs a kind or gentle action, she does so “because [she] wants to do it” (Frankfurt 2002: 27), and she “identifies [herself] with the springs of [her] action.” (Frankfurt 1988: 54)Footnote 2

THOROUGHLY BAD CHUCK. Chuck enjoys killing people, and he “is wholeheartedly behind” his murderous desires, which are “well integrated into his general psychic condition.” (Frankfurt 2002: 27) When he kills, he does so “because he wants to do it” (Frankfurt 2002: 27), and “he identifies himself with the springs of his action.” (Frankfurt 1988: 54) When he was much younger, Chuck enjoyed torturing animals, but he was not wholeheartedly behind this. These activities sometimes caused him to feel guilty, he experienced bouts of squeamishness, 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. (Mele 1995: 162–163, 2006: 171)

According to the internalist view expressed in the passages quoted from Frankfurt in my introduction, both Beth and Chuck are morally responsible for what they do when they perform actions of the sorts at issue. That view has the same result in the following two cases of heavy-duty manipulation.Footnote 3

ONE BAD DAY. When Beth (from SWEET BETH) crawled into bed last night she was an exceptionally sweet person, as she always had been. Beth’s character was such that intentionally doing anyone serious bodily harm definitely was not an option for her: her character—or collection of values—left no place for a desire to do such a thing to take root. Moreover, she was morally responsible, at least to a significant extent, for having the character she had. But Beth awakes with a desire to stalk and kill a neighbor, George. Although she had always found George unpleasant, she is very surprised by this desire. What happened is that, while Beth slept, a team of psychologists that had discovered the system of values that make Chuck tick implanted those values in Beth after erasing hers. They did this while leaving her memory intact, which helps account for her surprise. Beth reflects on her new desire. Among other things, she judges, rightly, that it is utterly in line with her system of values. She also judges that she finally sees the light about morality—that it is a system designed for and by weaklings. Upon reflection, Beth “has no reservations about” her desire to kill George and “is wholeheartedly behind it.” (Frankfurt 2002: 27) Furthermore, the desire is “well integrated into [her] general psychic condition.” (Frankfurt 2002: 27) Seeing absolutely no reason not to stalk and kill George, provided that she can get away with it, Beth devises a plan for killing him, and she executes it—and him—that afternoon. That she sees no reason not to do this is utterly predictable, given the content of the values that ultimately ground her reflection. Beth “identifies [herself] with the springs of her action” (Frankfurt 1988: 54), and she kills George “because [she] wants to do it.” (Frankfurt 2002: 27) If Beth was able to do otherwise in the circumstances than attempt to kill George only if she was able to show mercy, then, because her new system of values left no room for mercy, she was not able to do otherwise than attempt to kill George. When Beth falls asleep at the end of her bad day, the manipulators undo everything they had done to her. When she awakes the next day, she is just as sweet as ever. (Mele 2006: 171–172)

ONE GOOD DAY. In hardening his heart as he did, Chuck (from THOROUGHLY BAD CHUCK) ensured that he had no values at all that could motivate a charitable deed. (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.) Overnight, without Chuck’s consent, extremely talented manipulators erase Chuck’s bad values and replace them with good ones that match pre-manipulation Beth’s. Shortly after he awakes, he starts working 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 scout he sees—about fifty boxes in all. Then he delivers the cookies to a local homeless shelter. His motives are pure, as Beth’s are when she does her charitable deeds. When Chuck falls asleep at the end of his good day, the manipulators undo everything they had done to him. When he awakes the next day, he is just as nasty as ever. (Mele 2009b: 471; for a similar story, see Mele 1995: 164–165.)

Compare Beth’s killing of George with an arbitrarily selected premeditated killing by Chuck after he completes his heart-hardening project—his killing of Don.Footnote 4 Each of these two killings satisfies conditions that Frankfurt deems sufficient for its agent’s being morally responsible for it. If it is assumed that moral responsibility for actions is common in Chuck’s and Beth’s world, then in the absence of further details of the story that would get Chuck off the hook, I see Chuck as morally responsible for killing Don. However, as I have reported elsewhere (Mele 2006: 172), I cannot help but see Beth as not being morally responsible for killing George.Footnote 5

Not all internalist compatibilists endorse Frankfurt’s proposed set of sufficient conditions for morally responsible action. An alternative proposal may include the agent’s having been able at the time to do otherwise then or the agent’s being able at the time to apprehend and act on moral reasons (or both). These abilities can be added to the two stories under consideration now—that is, the stories featuring killing.Footnote 6

Consider a variant of the story about Chuck in which he has not quite completed his heart-hardening project. (Mele 2009a: 168) He is considering killing Don just for the fun of it, but his internal condition, including his collection of values, is such that he is able to do otherwise in the circumstances than decide—and attempt—to kill him (at least in a respectable compatibilist sense of “able”) because he is able (in the same sense) to show mercy at the time, partly in response to an apprehension of some relevant moral reasons that have very little traction with him. Even so, Chuck decides to kill Don, and he succeeds. Call this story BAD CHUCK.

In a companion story about Beth (Mele 2009a: 168–169), manipulators turn her overnight into a value twin of the present version of Chuck. She is considering killing George just for the fun of it. Her internal condition, including her collection of values, is such that she is able to do otherwise in the circumstances than decide—and attempt—to kill him (at least in a respectable compatibilist sense of “able”) because she is able (in the same sense) to show mercy at the time, partly in response to an apprehension of some relevant moral reasons that have very little traction with her. These abilities are not rooted in any preexisting values that survive the change in her. Instead, they are rooted in an implanted collection of values that matches the values in which Chuck’s parallel abilities are rooted. Beth decides to kill George, and she succeeds. Call this story BAD DAY MODIFIED.

Elsewhere, I reported that although I regard Chuck in BAD CHUCK as morally responsible for his bad deed, I am not at all inclined to judge that Beth in BAD DAY MODIFIED is morally responsible for killing George. (Mele 2009a: 169) If it were part of the story that in virtue of her continued possession of some of her earlier values, Beth was able to conquer her desire to kill George, my assessment of her case would be different. But, as I stated, the pertinent abilities are not rooted in any surviving pre-transformation values of hers.Footnote 7 I will not argue for my assessments of Chuck and Beth here (but see Mele 2009a) It is time to begin exploring the bearing of the “way of thinking” I said I would examine on the question of their moral responsibility for the deeds at issue.

Recall Double’s claims that “the internalistic view is implicit in compatibilism” and that “compatibilism has not a chance of plausibility without [internalism], since otherwise the incompatibilist abhorrence of determinism will destroy it.” (Double 1991: 56–57) The apparent problem is that once agents’ histories are allowed to have a relevance of the sort I claim to find in Beth’s story, their having deterministic histories is relevant, as well, and in a way that undermines compatibilism. This formulation of the alleged problem is vague. But, as I observed elsewhere (Mele 1995: 158, 2013a: 171), there are ways of making the worry more precise. For example, it may be thought that if the brainwashing involved in Beth’s stories gets her off the hook for killing George, it does so only if it deterministically causes crucial psychological events or states and that determinism consequently is in danger of being identified as the real culprit.

As I explained in Mele (2013a: 171), this more precise worry is misguided. Suppose that THOROUGHLY BAD CHUCK and ONE BAD DAY are set in a deterministic world. And consider the assertion that if Beth is off the hook, what gets her off the hook is the fact that the brainwashing deterministically caused various effects. To test the claim, I introduce indeterminism into ONE BAD DAY. In the new version of the story, there was a tiny chance that the brainwashing would produce new values that fell short of the full strength of Chuck’s values, and there was a tiny chance that even if the brainwashing did not fall short in value production, Beth would not act on her new values. In both connections, the only open alternative was Beth’s suffering a breakdown that would prevent her from acting. As it happens, full-strength Chuck-like values were indeterministically produced in Beth, and those values were involved in the indeterministic causation of Beth’s intentionally killing George. I submit that most readers who judge that Beth is not responsible for the killing in the original case will make the same judgment in the modified case.Footnote 8 If these judgments are correct, it is false that the brainwashing’s getting Beth off the hook depends on its deterministically causing crucial psychological states or events.

Differences: Original Designs and Radical Reversals

Recall premise 2 of the argument I formulated in connection with ERNIE: Concerning moral responsibility of the beings into whom the zygotes develop, there is no significant difference between the way Ernie’s zygote comes to exist and the way any normal human zygote comes to exist in a deterministic universe. An analogous but more specific claim about Beth is the following: (B2) Concerning moral responsibility for the actions at issue, there is no significant difference between the way Beth comes to have the values on which she acts in ONE BAD DAY and any of the ways in which unmanipulated human beings come to have such values in a deterministic universe.

As I observed in Mele (2006: 190), a defense of premise 2 might begin with the question how it can matter for the purposes of moral responsibility whether, in a deterministic world, a zygote with Z’s exact constitution was produced by a supremely intelligent agent with Diana’s effective intentions or instead in the way zygotes are normally produced. Imagine a deterministic world W* that is a lot like Ernie’s, W, but in which Z comes into being in Mary in the normal way and at the same time. It is conceivable that, in W*, throughout his life, Mary’s child, Bernie, does exactly what Ernie does in W, down to the smallest detail. Suppose that this is so. Then, one might contend that, given the additional facts that, in both worlds, the featured agent (Ernie in W and Bernie in W*) has no say about what causes Z, no say about the rest of the universe at that time, and no say about what the laws of nature are, the cross-world difference in what caused Z does not support any cross-world difference in moral responsibility.

Turn now to ONE BAD DAY and the variants of that story sketched here. There are differences between how Beth acquired the values that her killing of George expressed and the way Chuck acquired his matching values, just as there are differences (of another kind) in how Ernie and Bernie acquired their values. Might compatibilists, consistently with their compatibilism, maintain that these differences between Beth and Chuck are morally significant and, more specifically, that, in light of them, although Chuck is morally responsible for his killing of Don, Beth is not morally responsible for her killing of George? It is true that both designed Ernie and undesigned Bernie have no say about the factors mentioned in the preceding paragraph. And Beth had no say about her coming to have the nasty values she acquires in ONE BAD DAY and in the modified stories about her. But on the values front, unmanipulated Chuck did have a say. Is it legitimate for a compatibilist to appeal to that difference between Chuck and Beth in defending the asymmetrical claims at issue about the two killings?

In Mele (2009a: 169), I motivated what I dubbed the radical reversal suggestion about cases like ONE BAD DAY, the modified deterministic version in which Beth was able to show mercy, and ONE GOOD DAY. Regarding Beth, the idea is that her pre-transformation character was sufficiently good that killing George was not even an option for her; and the combination of this fact with the fact that Beth was morally responsible (to a significant extent) for that character, facts about her history that account for her moral responsibility for that character, and the facts that account for her killing George suffices for her not being morally responsible for killing him. The suggestion applies as follows to Chuck in ONE GOOD DAY. His pre-transformation character was sufficiently bad that kind deeds were not even an option for him; and the combination of this fact with the fact that Chuck was morally responsible (to a significant extent) for that character, facts about his history that account for his moral responsibility for that character, and the facts that account for his good deeds suffices for his not being morally responsible for those deeds. If he were morally responsible for them, he would deserve some credit for them, from a moral point of view. But, as I see it, he deserves no moral credit at all for those deeds.

I invited my readers to substitute the sweetest person they know for Beth in ONE BAD DAY. (Mele 2009a: 169–170) If you knew that owing to sudden, radical manipulation of the kind Beth underwent, this person awoke to stalk and kill a neighbor, would you judge that she or he was morally blameworthy for the killing? I doubt it. Replace the manipulators with a bizarre brain tumor that has the same effect on this person.Footnote 9 My bet back then was that this would not change your judgment; I would make the same bet now.

One point to be made now is that even if premise 2 in the argument about ERNIE is true, and even if symmetrical judgments about whether Ernie and Bernie are morally responsible for their actions are correct, we should not infer from this that symmetrical judgments about whether Chuck and Beth are morally responsible for their killings—and for their good actions when SWEET BETH and ONE GOOD DAY are at issue—are also correct. Original-design stories are very different from my radical reversal stories—too different to move easily from symmetrical judgments in the former connection to the conclusion that symmetrical judgments also are correct in the latter connection. This is not to say that the move cannot be made. But making it convincingly would require a convincing argument.

Assessing an Internalist Compatibilist Way of Thinking

It is time to return to the remarks by Watson and Frankfurt quoted at the beginning of Sect. 1 (conveniently placed so that readers can find them with little effort). I have already commented on the remark by Double quoted there. My concern is a certain internalist compatibilist way of thinking that applies to the stories told in Sect. 1.

The opening two sentences of the passage from Watson seem dismissive of history-sensitive compatibilism. Here they are again: “For the compatibilist, the constitutive conditions of free agency do not conceptually depend on their origins. In this sense, free and responsible agency is not an historical notion.” Consider compatibilists who hold that Chuck—unlike Beth—does not freely help the Girl Scouts and is not morally responsible for helping them, owing to how he acquired the motives at work in his actions. Such compatibilists seemingly employ notions of free action and moral responsibility with an externalist or historical component. An argument that compatibilism commits them to rejecting this component might lead them to believe that they are confused. The pair of sentences I quoted obviously is not an argument for this. But there is more to the passage under consideration.

The third through sixth sentences of the quoted passage do the real work, and they highlight original design. Obviously, the design Watson contemplates is much more ambitious than the design at work in my story about Ernie. I have no quarrel with the main thrust of these sentences.

This brings us to the seventh and final sentence of the passage: “This possibility follows from the general point that the conditions of responsibility do not necessarily depend upon their causal origins.”Footnote 10 The possibility at issue is that “a super-powerful being intentionally creates a C-world”—that is, a world in which proposed compatibilist sufficient conditions for free agency are satisfied—“by bringing about the relevant antecedent conditions in accordance with the relevant laws.” Even if this possibility follows from the alleged “general point”—that is, from internalismFootnote 11—one may consistently accept the possibility and reject the general point. That the only human being in my office now is an adult male follows from the general claim that all human beings are adult males. Even so, and without contradiction, I accept the claim about the human being in this office and reject the general claim. Similarly, a compatibilist apparently may consistently accept the possibility Watson identifies while rejecting the alleged “general point”—internalism. For example, for all that Watson has argued here, a compatibilist may—without contradiction—reject internalism on grounds having to do with radical reversal cases while agreeing with Watson about some cases of original design.

Assume that Beth, in SWEET BETH, is morally responsible for some of her kind actions even if her world is deterministic. With this assumption in place, if my radical reversal suggestion is true, there are pairs of cases in which agents satisfy the same alleged nonhistorical compatibilist sufficient conditions for moral responsibility for an action and, even so, asymmetrical moral responsibility judgments are correct. What makes the difference is a difference in history.

Here is a proposed history-involving claim about an agent’s being morally responsible for A-ing:

RR. Take an agent who, owing significantly to a lengthy series of actions he performed, was morally responsible for being thoroughly vicious and for being such that performing kind actions was not even an option for him. If, without his consent, his nasty values were erased and replaced overnight with the values of a moral saint in a way that bypassed his capacities for control over his mental life and he retains no preexisting value that is expressed in his performing a kind action, A, that he performs immediately after the value-engineering procedure, an action that expresses new, implanted values, he is not morally responsible for A-ing.

Nothing in the line of reasoning in the passage from Watson justifies rejecting this history-sensitive claim. The reasoning in that passage is about original design and its bearing on compatibilism. Radical reversal cases are a distinct matter. The third sentence of the passage asserts that a commitment to “the conceptual possibility that free and responsible agents, and free and responsible exercises of their agency, are products of super-powerful designers” is a consequence of a compatibilist assertion (NH) that “free and responsible agency is not an historical notion.” But no argument is offered for the claim that compatibilism includes a commitment to NH—a commitment to an assertion that does contradict RR. NH is a statement of internalism or anti-historicism (about “free and responsible agency”), and true symmetrical judgments about agents who are products of original design and undesigned counterparts do not themselves get us all the way to NH.

The passage I quoted from Frankfurt at the beginning of Sect. 1 tackles character implantation head on. I reproduce the sentence from it that I italicized there: (SI) “We are inevitably fashioned and sustained, after all, by circumstances over which we have no control.” SI is supposed to help us see why, when a manipulator installs “a new character” in a person, “that person is then morally responsible for the choices and the conduct to which having that character leads” (provided, presumably, that the character does not preclude the person’s meeting conditions Frankfurt deems necessary for moral responsibility). But SI does not entail that we “have no control” at all regarding any of our “circumstances” (Frankfurt writes “by,” not “by and only by”). For example, it does not entail that no recovering alcoholic has any control at all over whether, in a few minutes, his circumstances will include being within arm’s reach of a glass of whiskey. And when we focus on control in the present context, it is salient that whereas Chuck in ONE GOOD DAY exercised no control in the process that gave rise to his saintly, Beth-like system of values and identifications, Beth, by hypothesis, exercised significant control in fashioning her system of values and identifications. Frankfurt is committed to holding that that difference between Chuck and Beth is “irrelevant to the questions of whether [they perform their good deeds] freely or [are] morally responsible for performing them” (Frankfurt 1988: 54); and he may contend that even if many people do have some control over some of their “circumstances,” Beth is simply morally responsible for an extra item that Chuck is not—having saintly values. The contention is that both people are morally responsible for their kind deeds, and that Beth, but not Chuck, is morally responsible for having become a moral saint.

Return to premise 2 of the argument about ERNIE: Concerning moral responsibility of the beings into whom the zygotes develop, there is no significant difference between the way Ernie’s zygote comes to exist and the way any normal human zygote comes to exist in a deterministic universe. An analogous claim about Chuck that emphatically takes into account the idea that Beth may be morally responsible for something in addition to her good deeds is the following: (C2) Concerning their moral responsibility specifically for their good deeds and nothing else, there is no significant difference between the way Chuck comes to have the values on which he acts in ONE GOOD DAY and any of the ways in which unmanipulated human beings come to have such values in a deterministic universe. Obviously, the radical reversal suggestion is at odds with C2. Does the line of reasoning in the passage under consideration from Frankfurt (2002) show that C2 is on firmer ground than this suggestion?

The remainder of the passage reads as follows:

[F1] The causes to which we are subject may also change us radically, without thereby bringing it about that we are not morally responsible agents. [F2] It is irrelevant whether those causes are operating by virtue of the natural forces that shape our environment or whether they operate through the deliberately manipulative designs of other human agents.

I have labeled the sentences here for ease of reference.

F1 mentions radical change. A sudden change from atheism to theism or vice versa seems radical; and I agree that such a change may be caused without the causes bringing it about that the person who underwent the change is not a morally responsible agent.Footnote 12 But this point is utterly consistent with the truth of the radical reversal suggestion. What would undermine that suggestion is a convincing argument that changes of the kind featured in my radical reversal stories may be caused in the way they are caused in those stories without it being the case that, as a consequence, the agent is not morally responsible for the featured deeds.

“Those causes” in F2 may refer to causes that “change us radically.” I am on record as agreeing that, in some cases, it is irrelevant to moral responsibility whether such causes “operate” in one or the other of the two ways mentioned in F2. In Mele (1995: 168), commenting on a story like ONE BAD DAY, I contend that if the radical reversal at issue were to result from Beth’s “passing through a strange, randomly occurring electromagnetic field at the center of the Bermuda Triangle,” rather than from the efforts of manipulators, the upshot regarding “psychological autonomy in certain spheres of her life” would be just the same; and I would say the same about moral responsibility for particular actions. But this point of mine certainly does not secure the conclusion that the radical reversal suggestion is false. Instead, it identifies a nonintentional way in which what is claimed to be a responsibility-undermining radical reversal of values may, in principle, come about.

I cannot claim anything approaching confidence about exactly what Frankfurt had in mind in the passage I have been discussing. He certainly seems to think that compatibilism commits one to internalism about moral responsibility for actions. What I am far from sure about is exactly what it is about compatibilism that he thinks generates this result. I have the same uncertainty about Watson and Double, as readers will have noticed.

Conclusion

Elsewhere I have argued that compatibilists should reject internalism. (Mele 1995, 2006, 2008, 2009a, b, 2013a, b) Here I have examined a way of thinking that is alleged to support the thesis that compatibilists are committed to internalism, and I have argued that it is unpersuasive.

The way of thinking I examined branched in two different directions. On one branch, there is the idea that if manipulation of the sort involved in my radical reversal stories were to get an agent off the hook, it would do so only if it includes deterministic causation of crucial psychological events or states, in which case determinism would be the real culprit. This idea was found wanting.

On the other branch are some no-difference claims. I compared premise 2 of the argument about Ernie—its no-difference premise—with analogous claims about agents in radical reversal scenarios. The claims were these:

B2 Concerning moral responsibility for the actions at issue, there is no significant difference between the way Beth comes to have the values on which she acts in ONE BAD DAY and any of the ways in which unmanipulated human beings come to have such values in a deterministic universe.

C2 Concerning their moral responsibility specifically for their good deeds and nothing else, there is no significant difference between the way Chuck comes to have the values on which he acts in ONE GOOD DAY and any of the ways in which unmanipulated human beings come to have such values in a deterministic universe.

An adequate defense of these claims—or of parallel claims about the modified versions of ONE BAD DAY discussed here—would support internalism.Footnote 13 But I have not found such a defense of them in the way of thinking examined here. Of course, I have not shown that no convincing defense of them is forthcoming; and I look forward to seeing arguments from compatibilists designed to show that they are true.Footnote 14