scholarly journals Taking the Straight Path. P.F. Strawson's Later Work on Freedom and Responsibility

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin De Mesel
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Straight Path ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Knowledge Condition ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility ◽  
Ability To Do Otherwise

I highlight three features of P.F. Strawson’s later, neglected work on freedom and responsibility. First, in response to a criticism by Rajendra Prasad, Strawson explicitly rejects an argument put forward in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ against the relevance of determinism to moral responsibility. Second, his remarkable acceptance of Prasad’s criticism motivates him to take the ‘straight path’, that is, to be straightforward about the relation between determinism, freedom, the ability to do otherwise and the conditions of responsibility. He claims that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition of responsibility and provides a list of additional conditions, including a knowledge condition. Third, he clarifies the relation between responsibility, quality of will and the reactive attitudes. The latter do not figure essentially in his answer to the question, ‘What are the conditions of responsibility?’, but they do play an essential role in his answer to the question, ‘Why do we have the concept of responsibility?’ We have it, Strawson suggests, because of our natural concern about the quality of will with which people act, a concern expressed in our reactive attitudes. I argue that, although Strawson’s later work definitely involves a shift of emphasis when compared to ‘Freedom and Resentment’, his overall account of freedom and responsibility is coherent. The later work helps to better understand the nature and significance of Strawson’s contribution, and to identify problems with common interpretations of and objections to ‘Freedom and Resentment’. 

QUALITIES OF WILL

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Alzheimer’S Dementia ◽  
Clinical Depression ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Distinct Subset ◽  
Gary Watson ◽  
Pluralistic Approach ◽  
In Virtue Of

AbstractOne of P. F. Strawson's suggestions in “Freedom and Resentment” was that there might be an elegant theory of moral responsibility that accounted for all of our responsibility responses (our “reactive attitudes,” in his words) in a way that also explained why we get off the hook from those responses. Such a theory would appeal exclusively toquality of will: when we react with any of a variety of responsibility responses to someone, we are responding to the quality of her will with respect to us, and when we let her off the hook (either for her action or with respect to her qua agent), we are doing so in virtue of her lacking the capacity for the relevant quality of will. Strawson's own attempt to put forward such a view fails, for reasons Gary Watson has given, but several other theorists have advanced their own, more developed,Pure Quality of Willtheories in recent years (including Scanlon, Arpaly, and McKenna). Specifically, there have been three distinct interpretations of “will” defended in the literature, yielding three different possible targets of our responsibility responses: quality ofcharacter, quality ofjudgment, or quality ofregard.My first task in this essay will be to show that none of these theories individually can captureallof our responsibility responses, given our deeply ambivalent responses to several marginal cases (e.g., psychopathy, clinical depression, Alzheimer's dementia). One reaction to this fact might be to abandon the quality of will approach altogether. Another, more plausible, reaction is to develop a pluralistic account of responsibility, one that admits three noncompeting conceptions of responsibility, each of which emphasizes one of the three different qualities of will as the target of a distinct subset of our responsibility responses. On this pluralistic approach, marginal agents might be responsible on some conceptions, but not responsible on others. In the bulk of the paper, I discuss each of the relevant subsets of responsibility responses, the different qualities of will they target, what the capacities for the three qualities of will are, and how the pluralistic qualities of will approach could account for our ambivalence in the marginal cases.

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 6

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. The papers were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of resentment and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; the role and conditions of shame in theories of attributability; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; how to build a theory of attributabiity that captures all the relevant cases; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

Second Thoughts

2019 ◽  
pp. 214-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Watson
Keyword(s):  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Weakness Of Will ◽  
Moral Criticism ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
The Way

This chapter addresses critical questions about Watson’s distinction between two “faces” of responsibility—responsibility as attributability and responsibility as accountability—addressing the nature of each and what each has to do with responsibility. Along the way, a distinction is elaborated between first-personal and second-personal forms of answerability, the first of which is implicit in attributability and the second of which is a form of accountability. The chapter bemoans the emphasis in much recent writing on reactive attitudes, narrowly construed; this ignores many of the responses that constitute holding others responsible. It also rejects the prevalent idea that moral criticism is basically a response to agents’ quality of will. This leaves out culpable and other forms of objectionable inadvertence. Finally, the chapter explains the motivation behind Watson’s earlier position on weakness of will, and why he now regards that position as misguided.

The Reactive Attitudes and Responsibility

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-50
Author(s):  
David O. Brink
Keyword(s):  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Quality Of Will

The chapter introduces Strawson’s link between the reactive attitudes and responsibility. It defends a realist understanding of that link, in which it is responsibility that grounds the reactive attitudes. It explains how responsibility and excuse are inversely related and how our practices of excuse vindicate a compatibilist conception of responsibility. It concludes by exploring quality of will and distinguishing accountability from attributability and answerability.

scholarly journals Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
High Time ◽  
Epistemic Condition ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Independent Condition ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Full Volume

Philosophers have long agreed that moral responsibility might not only have a freedom condition, but also an epistemic condition. Moral responsibility and knowledge interact, but the question is exactly how. Ignorance might constitute an excuse, but the question is exactly when. Surprisingly enough, the epistemic condition has only recently attracted the attention of scholars, and it is high time for a full volume on the topic. The chapters in this volume address the following central questions. Does the epistemic condition require akrasia? Why does blameless ignorance excuse? Does moral ignorance sustained by one’s culture excuse? Does the epistemic condition involve knowledge of the wrongness or wrongmaking features of one’s action? Is the epistemic condition an independent condition, or is it derivative from one’s quality of will or intentions? Is the epistemic condition sensitive to degrees of difficulty? Are there different kinds of moral responsibility and thus multiple epistemic conditions? Is the epistemic condition revisionary? What is the basic structure of the epistemic condition?

Introduction to OSAR 6

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
David Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This introduction to the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility briefly discusses each of the new essays being published. They were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of moral emotions like shame, resentment, and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

scholarly journals Moral Responsibility and Quality of Will

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Mental Characteristics

It is frequently claimed that moral responsibility is a function of quality of will. This chapter investigates whether and, if so, how this is the case. First, it is noted that the term “quality of will” may be too narrow to fully capture the kinds of mental characteristics, both epistemic and non-epistemic, that are relevant to a person’s being morally responsible for something. Then the questions are raised just which kinds of mental characteristics are relevant and how they should be said to be relevant. In response to these questions, an account is given of the concepts of praise and blame and of the worthiness of praise and blame, on the basis of which it is suggested that (a) there are different kinds of praise and blame, (b) there are correspondingly different kinds of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, and (c) there are accordingly different kinds of moral responsibility.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Bratman
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Planning Agency ◽  
Planning Framework ◽  
Peter Strawson ◽  
Over Time

This introduction explains the background for present concerns with a deeper understanding and defense of basic norms of plan rationality, both synchronic and diachronic. It gives an overview of the defense adumbrated in these essays: one that involves but goes beyond appeal to pragmatic benefits of general forms of practical thinking involved in our planning agency. A central idea is that these planning norms track conditions of a planning agent’s self-governance, both synchronic and diachronic. The reflective significance of this tracking thesis depends on an end of one’s self-governance over time. While this end is not essential to agency, it is a rationally self-sustaining keystone of a stable reflective equilibrium involving basic planning norms. It is thereby in a position to play a role in our planning framework that is analogous to the role of concern with quality of will in the framework of reactive attitudes, as understood by Peter Strawson.

scholarly journals Defending the Epistemic Condition on Moral Responsibility

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Montminy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Epistemic Condition ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
The Third ◽  
Wrong Action

I consider three challenges to the traditional view according to which moral responsibility involves an epistemic condition in addition to a freedom condition. The first challenge holds that if a person performs an action A freely, then she thereby knows that she is doing A. The epistemic condition is thus built into the freedom condition. The second challenge contends that no epistemic condition is required for moral responsibility, since a person may be blameworthy for an action that she did not know was wrong. The third challenge invokes the quality of will view. On this view, a person is blameworthy for a wrong action just in case the action manifests a bad quality of will. The blameworthy person need not satisfy an additional epistemic condition. I will argue that contrary to appearances, none of these challenges succeeds. Hence, moral responsibility does require a non-superfluous epistemic condition.

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