Introduction

In this brief introduction, the editors summarize the motivation for the coming together of these chapters—which is to celebrate the work and philosophical legacy of Gary Watson—as well as the content of each contribution. Michael McKenna builds on and systematizes several key elements of Watson’s views on agency and responsibility. Susan Wolf extends elements of Watson’s oeuvre, notably the relationship between the way agents are responsible for their actions and the kind of response licensed by those actions. Pamela Hieronymi goes on from Watson’s work to offer her own account of what blame’s about. R. Jay Wallace is also concerned with Watson’s overall conception of moral responsibility, understanding blame to be an incipient form of moral address. Michael Smith continues the theme, offering a possible theory of moral responsibility similarly grounded in the reactive emotions. T. M. Scanlon continues a debate that Scanlon and Watson have been having over the moral status of psychopaths. Jeanette Kennett argues that psychopaths are not accountable for their actions in the sense required for moral blameworthiness; and that psychopaths’ actions are not attributable to them so as to make them plausibly criminal. Antony Duff extends Watson’s work on moral responsibility to the domain of criminal responsibility. Gideon Yaffe seeks to better understand the prospects of Watson’s account of addiction. Gary Watson himself offers his current account of the distinction between the two faces of responsibility and thoughts on weakness of will and negligence. Finally, a 2016 interview of Watson by Sarah Buss is a wide-ranging and significant discussion of Gary’s personal history and philosophical development.

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 5

No one has written more insightfully on the promises and perils of human agency than Gary Watson, who has spent a career thinking about issues such as moral responsibility, blame, free will, weakness of will, addiction, and psychopathy. The chapters of this volume pay tribute to Watson’s work by taking up and extending themes from his pioneering essays. Themes covered include:: compatibilist views of freedom and moral responsibility, the distinction between attributability and accountability, the responsibility of psychopaths, the nature of blame and its relationship to morality, the relevance of addiction to responsibility, the continuing influence of P. F. Strawson’s work, the connection between criminal and moral responsibility, the philosophical development of Gary Watson and the ways Watson’s views have changed over time. Contributors include: Michael McKenna, Susan Wolf, Pamela Hieronymi, R. Jay Wallace, Michael Smith, T. M. Scanlon, Jeanette Kennett, Antony Duff, Gideon Yaffe, Gary Watson, Sarah Buss, Neal Tognazzini, and D. Justin Coates.

The Motivating Power of the A Priori Obvious

How does moral reasoning motivate? Michael Smith argues that it does so by rationally constraining us to have desires that motivate, but the plausibility of his argument rests on a false assumption about the relation between wide-scope and narrow-scope constraints of rationality. Michael Huemer argues that it does so by generating motivating appearances, but the plausibility of his argument rests on a false assumption about the skeptical costs of a thoroughgoing empiricism. The chapter defends an alternative view, according to which moral facts can be a priori obvious, and our a priori knowledge of them can motivate us to act.

Against the Being For Account of Normative Certitude

Just as we can be more or less certain about empirical matters, we can be more or less certain about normative matters. Recently, it has been argued that this is a challenge for noncognitivism about normativity. Michael Smith presented the challenge in a 2002 paper and James Lenman (2003) and Michael Ridge (2003, 2007) responded independently. Andrew Sepielli (forthcoming) has now joined the rescue operation. His basic idea is that noncognitivists should employ the notion of being for (Schroeder 2008) to account for normative certitude. We shall argue that the being for account of normative certitude is vulnerable to many problems shared by other noncognitivist theories. Furthermore, we shall argue that Sepielli’s account has its own problems: His favored normalization procedure for degrees of being for has highly problematic implications.