Ethics 127 (1):208-240 (2016)
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Abstract |
P.F. Strawson’s (1962) “Freedom and Resentment” has provoked a wide range of responses, both positive and negative, and an equally wide range of interpretations. In particular, beginning with Gary Watson, some have seen Strawson as suggesting a point about the “order of explanation” concerning moral responsibility: it is not that it is appropriate to hold agents responsible because they are morally responsible, rather, it is ... well, something else. Such claims are often developed in different ways, but one thing remains constant: they meant to be incompatible with libertarian theories of moral responsibility. The overarching theme of this paper is that extant developments of “the reversal” face a dilemma: in order to make the proposals plausibly anti-libertarian, they must be made to be implausible on other grounds. I canvas different attempts to articulate a “Strawsonian reversal”, and argue that none is fit for the purposes for which it is intended. I conclude by suggesting a way of clarifying the intended thesis: an analogy with the concept of funniness. The result: proponents of the “reversal” need to accept the difficult result that if we blamed small children, they would be blameworthy, or instead explain how their view escapes this result, while still being a view on which our blaming practices “fix the facts” of moral responsibility.
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Keywords | moral responsibility P.F. Strawson compatibilism moral realism libertarianism |
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Reprint years | 2016 |
DOI | 10.1086/687336 |
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References found in this work BETA
Freedom and Resentment.Peter Strawson - 1962 - In Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 48: 1962. pp. 1-25.
Dispositional Theories of Value.Michael Smith, David Lewis & Mark Johnston - 1989 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 63 (1):89-174.
View all 31 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Responsibility: The State of the Question Fault Lines in the Foundations.David Shoemaker - 2020 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 58 (2):205-237.
Responsibility, Libertarians, and the “Facts as We Know Them”: A Concern-Based Construal of Strawson’s Reversal.David Beglin - 2018 - Ethics 128 (3):612-625.
Two Strawsonian Strategies for Accounting for Morally Responsible Agency.David Beglin - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (8):2341-2364.
Is Moral Responsibility Essentially Interpersonal? A Reply to Zimmerman.Benjamin7 De Mesel - 2017 - The Journal of Ethics 21 (3):309-333.
On Shoemaker's Response‐Dependent Theory of Responsibility.Sybren Heyndels & Benjamin De Mesel - 2018 - Dialectica 72 (3):445-451.
View all 14 citations / Add more citations
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