Abstract
In this contribution I discuss and defend Peter Strawson’s (‘Freedom and Resentment’ 1) argument that our practice of holding agents responsible for their actions is not something that can be given a justification or stands in need of one, since it is not something we could choose to give up. In Part I I outline Strawson’s arguments and reply to some recent criticisms. In Part II I argue that despite our inability entirely to relinquish blaming and holding responsible, there are considerations about wrongful actions that give us reason to question whether these are ever appropriate responses to wrongdoing. In Part III I attempt to identify and diffuse the impulse to seek a justification for holding agents responsible. Finally, in Part 4 I go on to argue that the real force of the problem of moral responsibility lies in a tension in our moral sentiments about whether to blame or to try to understand particular instances of wrongdoing, and that, while there is no general philosophical resolution of this tension, we need not be faced with an irresolvable dilemma about whether to blame or understand whenever we are confronted with wrongdoing.
This contribution is an amended version of parts of Chapter 2 of my Freedom and Experience: Self-Determination Without Illusions (Macmillan (UK) and St Martin’s Press (US), 1997), which are reprinted here by kind permission of Macmillan. My thanks are due to the organisers and participants of the conference on ‘Moral responsibility and ontology’, Utrecht 1998, at which the first draft of the contribution was presented, and especially to Paul Russell and R. Jay Wallace for commenting on my criticisms of their positions and Michael McKenna for his comments on the contribution.
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References
P. F. Strawson, `Freedom and Resentment’, Free Will, G. W. Watson (ed.) ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982 ), 59–80.
Ibid., 70.
See, for example, Robert Kane, `Free Will: the Elusive Ideal’, Philosophical Studies, 75 (1994),25–60.
I have argued elsewhere (`The Idea of a Justification for Punishment’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 1,1 (Spring 1998), 86–101) that we have no real idea of how we might go about abolishing punishment, if it were found to lack a moral justification, and therefore that we have no choice about continuing with it (unless we - humanity at large, that is - ceased to care about laws being obeyed or underwent some other universal transformation in nature or values that would make laws or legal penalties unnecessary). The reasons for our lacking such a choice, however, are unrelated (or not directly related) to our natural commitment or proneness to the reactive attitudes.
Op. cit., 80.
P. Russell, `Strawson’s Way of Naturalising Responsibility’, Ethics, 102 (1992), 287–302.
Strawson, op. cit., 69 (my italics).
Although I disagree with Russell about the possibility of universally withholding the reactive attitudes, as I go on to suggest, there are certain reasons for thinking that the objective attitude is appropriate in particular cases of wrongdoing and these reasons appear to generalise to all cases.
R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments ( Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1994 ), 31.
Although there is certainly more to both Russell’s and Wallace’s critiques of Strawson’s position than I have had space to cover.
Like me, R. Jay Wallace takes the issue of fairness to be central to incompatibilist concerns about moral responsibility and determinism. Wallace argues that Strawson implicitly treats questions about what would justify our practices of holding agents responsible for their actions as demanding an `external’ justification of a sort that would provide reasons for buying into the practice. Strawson’s arguments are less persuasive, according to Wallace, if questions about justification are taken as raising issues about fairness from a position that is internal to our moral practices. From this internal perspective, Wallace thinks, we have `moral terms for deciding whether it would be appropriate to hold people responsible in particular cases’ (Wallace, op cit., 101–2), which, according to incompatibilists, would generalise to all cases if determinism is true. (Cf. Paul Russell’s (op cit.) distinction between questions about the justifiability of our proneness to the reactive attitudes and ones about the justification for particular tokens of expressions of those attitudes).
It seems to me, however, that an `internal’ inquiry into the fairness of holding agents responsible for their actions, which might yield the conclusion that they are never justifled, and therefore that we should `buy out of the practice, is no different in substance or intent from one generated by a supposedly `external’ question about whether one should `buy into’ the practice. Moreover, and although I think that the demand for fairness is motivated by real concerns, I take the view (for reasons that cannot be defended in this contribution) that questions about the fairness of the entire practice of holding agents responsible for their actions are incoherent. If questions about fairness, as I think Wallace is right to say, can only be raised from a position that is internal to our moral practices, they cannot coherently be raised in relation to guiding sentiments about responsibility, blameworthiness and desert. That (some of) the guilty should suffer for what they do, for example, is a sentiment that informs our judgments about what is fair and what is unfair treatment. To put a question about fairness in respect of that sentiment would require that the sentiment first be subtracted from the group of sentiments that guide our judgments about fairness. But if this subtraction were made, what we would be left with would no longer be, authentically and recognisably, our sense of fairness or, indeed, our moral outlook.
I make the case for the position that certain moral sentiments are foundational to our moral outlook and practices, which places them beyond the legitimate scope of questions about fairness, in `Punishment: moral sentiments as an alternative to justification’ (work in progress).
J. Bennett, `Accountability’, Philosophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson, Z. van Straaten (ed.) ( Oxford: Clarendon, 1980 ).
P. F. Strawson, `Reply to Ayer and Bennett’, van Straaten, ibid., 262–4.
Bernard Williams, quoted by J. Bennett, ibid., p. 25.
A. J. Ayer, `Free—will and Rationality’, van Straaten, ibid., 12.
Those who question this should ask themselves whether they could ever bring themselves always to feel that it is right to forswear blame or resentment in response to bad or injurious behaviour.
Cf. Strawson 1982, op cit., 75.
Although the objective attitude can also be informed by sheer intellectual curiosity - an interest in knowing more - in which concern for the well—being of others plays no necessary part.
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Magill, K. (2000). Blaming, Understanding and Justification. In: van den Beld, T. (eds) Moral Responsibility and Ontology. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2361-9_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2361-9_14
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