Abstract
Manuel Vargas advocates a revised understanding of the terms “free will” and “moral responsibility” that eliminates the problematic libertarian commitments inherent to the commonsense understanding of these terms. I argue that in order to make a plausible case for why philosophers ought to adopt his recommendations, Vargas must explain why we ought to retain the retributivist elements that figure prominently in both commonsense views about morality and philosophical discussions concerning free will and moral responsibility. Furthermore, I argue that his revisionist account lacks the resources necessary to accommodate retributivist attitudes and practices.
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Notes
For his arguments against libertarianism, see Vargas (2007, p. 140–145).
For Pereboom’s discussion of this see 2007a, pp. 199–200.
To see Vargas’s discussion of the consequentialist elements of his view, see Vargas (2007) pp. 157–160.
In his 2009 paper Vargas hedges a bit more as he refers to the capacity to perceive and act on moral reasons as being a “perhaps intrinsically valuable form of agency” [my emphasis] (p. 55).
Of course Vargas could hold that moral responsiveness is valuable for both its intrinsic worth and the good consequences it brings about.
Were it the case that commonsense notions of right and wrong did not consist of such retributive elements, it would be difficult to understand why the folk tend to deem the performance of right and wrong actions as justifying, if not demanding, retributivist remuneration.
An alternative approach that Vargas could take would be to argue that retributivist attitudes and practices have a value that derives from a source other than the moral attentiveness it produces. How such an argument might proceed, and whether such an argument could succeed, is unknown.
References
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I am thankful to an anonymous referee for providing excellent feedback on a previous version of this essay.
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Morris, S.G. Vargas-Style Revisionism and the Problem of Retributivism. Acta Anal 30, 305–316 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-014-0247-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-014-0247-3