Alfred Mele's Manipulated Agents is devoted solely to understanding what can be learned about moral responsibility by attending to cases of manipulated agents who, by various means, are manipulated into acquiring beliefs, desires, intentions, values, or principles. This brief, carefully-argued book is a joy to read. It will be easily accessible to those not steeped in the literature on free will and moral responsibility, but it will also pay off handsomely
for those who have been working on these topics for years. While carefully examining a range of positions one might take, Mele himself defends a version of a historical theory according to which a person is a morally responsible agent only if her history does not include certain objectionable forms of
manipulation.
Alfred R. Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of ten previous OUP books and over 200 articles and an editor of six OUP books. He is past director of two multi-million dollar, interdisciplinary projects: the Big Questions in Free Will project (2010-13) and the Philosophy and Science of Self-Control project (2014-17).