Abstract
This paper is a response to Christopher Bennett’s and Tamler Sommers’ critical discussion of my book Responsibility from the Margins.
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Notes
I’m not so sure this caveat is sustainable. Suppose you don’t know I’m in your bathroom and you place a vase on the floor next to the door. I then open the door and smash the vase. This is clearly an accident. But I did open the door intentionally and voluntarily. Have I nevertheless transgressed in a way that this view would have me be responsible for breaking your vase? If so, then it quite implausibly includes accidents as things for which we can be responsible. If not, then why not, given the presence of intentional and voluntary behavior?
In interpreting some lines by Gary Watson, Sommers writes, “Our responsibility practices do not rest on theories, but rather on aspects of our natures that are basic to our conception of being human.”
After quoting Strawson, Sommers writes, “It’s clear from this passage that Strawson’s goal is emphatically not to lay out a theory with necessary and sufficient conditions, immune from all possible counterexamples.”
Immediately after the above quote, Sommers writes, “Strawson believes that systematic theories will inevitably detach us from the natural facts about human relationships.”
I’m grateful here to conversations with Derk Pereboom.
Why stop at the surrounding community? Why not include the community of philosophers as those who are allowed to form such judgments?
Seriously, I’m very grateful to Christopher and Tamler for their insightful and challenging comments. They offered versions of these remarks originally at an author-meets-critics session arranged for my book by Paul Russell at the Gothenburg Responsibility Conference in August 2016. Thanks to Paul for that. Thanks, finally, to Massimo Renzo for arranging this forum.
References
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Shoemaker, D. Response to Bennett and Sommers. Criminal Law, Philosophy 13, 585–598 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-019-09489-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-019-09489-6