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Strawson, Shoemaker, and the Hubris of Theories

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Abstract

David Shoemaker’s Responsibility from the Margins is chock full of valuable insights on the nature of our responsibility, and it has more in common with P.F. Strawson’s approach in “Freedom and Resentment” than the accounts of most philosophers who call themselves Strawsonians. On one central issue of interpretation, however, Shoemaker gets Strawson wrong. Like many interpreters, Shoemaker sees Strawson as defending a “quality of will” theory of responsibility. This idea fundamentally misunderstands Strawson’s aims in “Freedom and Resentment.” Strawson does not defend a theory of any kind in that essay. On the contrary, Strawson tries to caution his fellow philosophers away from the theorizing impulse. The urge to develop comprehensive theories, he argued, inevitably leads philosophers away from the natural facts about responsibility and the related emotions. So, Strawson offers an alternative way of understanding responsibility, one that takes the facts into account “in all their bearings.” This interpretive disagreement is instructive, I’ll argue, because it illuminates several weaknesses in Shoemaker’s own “tripartite” theory of responsibility. Where his account goes astray can be remedied in large part by embracing the spirit of Strawson’s approach in full.

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Notes

  1. Strawson (2003, p. 72). Pereboom (2001) coined the term “hard incompatibilist.”

  2. Strawson (2003, p. 92).

  3. Bennett (1980, p. 28).

  4. Watson (1987, p. 257).

  5. Watson (1987, p. 257).

  6. Strawson (2003, p. 91).

  7. Strawson (2003, p. 91).

  8. Shoemaker (2015, p. 7).

  9. Myself included, I’m ashamed to say.

  10. In this, Shoemaker sides with John Deigh (and the angels). Resentment, says Shoemaker quoting Deigh (2011, p. 212), “is a natural response to the manifestion, in an action that harms one, of the actor’s ill will or indifference.” But Shoemaker (I’m not sure about Deigh) is mistaken that Strawson argues for a necessary connection between resentment and quality of will.

  11. Strawson (2003, p. 80).

  12. Strawson (2003, p. 75).

  13. Shoemaker (2015, p. 215).

  14. Strawson (2003, p. 88).

  15. Strawson (2003, p. 91).

  16. Strawson (2003, p. 93).

  17. Shoemaker (2015, p. 70 n. 7).

  18. Shoemaker (2015, p. 24).

  19. Shoemaker (2015, p. 229).

  20. I briefly raise this case in Sommers (2018) for a different purpose in my commentary on John Doris’ Talking to Our Selves.

  21. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2016/11/22/manchester-by-the-sea-director-kenneth-lonergan-was-inspired-by-the-marx-brothers/?utm_term=.6ec636203529.

  22. See Shoemaker (2015, p. 144 n. 20), for this scandalous insult to my honor.

References

  • Bennett, J., 1980, “Accountability.” in Z. Van Straaten, ed. Philosophical Subjects, Oxford University Press, pp. 14–47.

  • Deigh, J., 2011, “Reactive Attitudes Revisted,” in Carla Bagnoli, ed. Morality and the Emotions, Oxford University Press, pp. 197–216.

  • Pereboom, D., 2001, Living without Free Will. Cambridge University Press.

  • Shoemaker, D., 2015, Responsibility from the Margins. Oxford University Press.

  • Sommers, T., 2012, Relative Justice. Princeton University Press.

  • Sommers, T., 2018, “Negotiating Responsibility.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41: 44–45. (Commentary on John Doris’ Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency.)

  • Strawson, P.F., 2003, “Freedom and Resentment,” in Gary Watson, ed., Free Will, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, pp. 72–93.

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  • Watson, G., 1987, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil,” in Ferdinand Shoeman, ed. Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions, Cambridge University Press, pp. 256–287.

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Correspondence to Tamler Sommers.

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Sommers, T. Strawson, Shoemaker, and the Hubris of Theories. Criminal Law, Philosophy 13, 561–572 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-018-9486-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-018-9486-5

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