Questions: Moral Responsibility and Control

Question 1

A person is forced at gunpoint to hand over money from a cash register. Are they morally responsible for the theft?

• A. Yes — they physically performed the action and could have refused
• B. Yes — their deliberative agency was operative, so they bear full responsibility
• C. No — external coercion so severely constrained their choice that responsibility is mitigated or eliminated
• D. No — determinism shows that all actions are equally unfree, so no one is ever responsible

Answer: (C)

External coercion that structures a choice so severely — threaten harm unless you comply — removes or greatly mitigates moral responsibility. The person's deliberation is present, but the options are so constrained by external force that we do not hold them responsible in the normal way. This illustrates the control condition: what matters is not just that deliberation occurred, but that the deliberation was operating in a context genuinely open to the agent. Option A conflates physical action with moral responsibility. Option D conflates the compatibilist response to determinism with the coercion case — compatibilists distinguish between causal determination by prior events and coercive constraint by external forces.

Question 2

Two drivers behave identically recklessly on the same night. Driver A encounters no one; Driver B strikes a pedestrian. We tend to hold Driver B more responsible. What does this example illustrate?

• A. That moral responsibility tracks actual harm, not just intentions or actions
• B. That Driver A is equally blameworthy because their actions were identical
• C. That Driver B had worse guidance control than Driver A
• D. That regulative control is sufficient for moral responsibility

Answer: (A)

This is the classic moral luck case (Williams and Nagel). We hold Driver B far more responsible even though both agents had identical intentions, actions, and control over their behavior up to the moment of the accident. The different outcomes were partly matters of luck — who happened to be on the road. This reveals that our actual responsibility practices track outcomes partly beyond the agent's control, which sits in tension with the control condition. The correct answer names the phenomenon without endorsing it; option B is the theoretically defensible position but not how we typically respond.

Question 3

According to compatibilism, a person can be morally responsible for an action even if that action was causally determined by prior events beyond their control.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Compatibilism holds that moral responsibility and causal determinism can coexist. What matters for responsibility is not whether the causal chain leading to your action had no prior links, but whether your own reasons-responsive deliberation was the operative mechanism — that you acted from your own values and reasoning rather than from external coercion or compulsion. A determined action that flows through your intact deliberative agency counts as yours and grounds responsibility, even if determinism is true.

Question 4

Guidance control requires that the agent could have done otherwise in exactly the same circumstances.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

That is the definition of regulative control, not guidance control. Guidance control asks only whether the mechanism that produced the action was the agent's own reasons-responsive deliberation — not whether some prior causal chain was involved, and not whether they could have done otherwise in identically the same circumstances. Compatibilists favor guidance control precisely because it does not require the ability to do otherwise (which determinism would deny), while still distinguishing genuinely agential action from compulsion, manipulation, or accident.

Question 5

What is the difference between guidance control and regulative control, and why do compatibilists prefer guidance control as the basis for moral responsibility?

Model answer: Guidance control asks whether the action flowed from the agent's own reasons-responsive deliberative mechanism — i.e., whether their values and reasoning drove the action rather than external coercion or manipulation. Regulative control asks whether the agent could have done otherwise in exactly the same circumstances. Compatibilists prefer guidance control because it distinguishes responsible agents from billiard balls and coerced persons without requiring causal openness — a requirement determinism would make impossible to meet.

The practical significance: under guidance control, a person who would respond to moral reasons differently if presented with them has the relevant control, even if in the actual circumstances they acted as they did. This preserves moral responsibility under determinism. Under regulative control, if prior causes made the action inevitable, responsibility would vanish — an implication compatibilists argue is too revisionary of ordinary moral practice.