Compatibilism and contractualism: The possibility of moral responsibility

Ethics

Volumn 117, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 7-31

  Lenman, James ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33846326858     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/508035     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, vii, 10.
2. See R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), chap. 2, esp. sec. 2.1.
3. On the implication here that the free-will problem is in fact a family of problems, cf. T. M. Scanlon, "The Significance of Choice," Tanner Lectures on Human Values 8 (1988): 149-216, lecture 1, sec. 2.
4. Compare Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, 2-3.
5. See John Hospers, "Meaning and Free Will," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 10 (1950): 307-30, esp. 326-27.
6. The modern locus classicus for this line of argument is Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983).
7. See esp. Galen Strawson, "The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility," Philosophical Studies 75 (1994): 5-24.
8. See also Saul Smilansky, Free Will and Illusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), esp. chaps. 3 and 4.
9. Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, 54.
10. T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 276.
11. Ibid., 285.
12. Ibid., 286.
13. Ibid., 280.
14. Ibid., 268.
15. We get a clue to Scanlon's motivation for his approach when he writes: "Failure to distinguish the conditions of substantive responsibility from those of blameworthiness. on the other hand, leads to the view that if people are responsible . . . for their actions then they can properly be left to suffer the consequences of these actions, since these are their fault" (ibid., 293). Taking holding people responsible as involving the bringing to bear of sanctions does not itself entail that it is not also sometimes appropriate to assist them with the problems from which their behavior stems or to address the social conditions that may contribute to it. Certainly these are inferences that are sometimes made, that are "frequently heard in political argument" (293), and that may indeed often be deeply unfortunate, but Scanlon offers no clear reason to accept what he says here if by 'leads to' he means 'warrants'. There is certainly much to be appalled by in the history of sanctioning behavior, but we may consistently defend the central role of such behavior while condemning its uglier and more excessive manifestations. Indeed my remarks about the strains of commitment in Sec. VII below might plausibly be thought to furnish the beginnings of a contractualist rationale for resisting unduly punitive norms of moral sanction.
16. Susan Wolf, Freedom within Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 44.
17. Smilansky, Free Will and Illusion.
18. For a detailed critique of Smilansky, see my "On the Alleged Shallowness of Compatibilism: A Critical Study of Saul Smilansky, Free Will and Illusion" Iyyun 51 (2002): 63-79.
19. Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, 135.
20. This and the preceding quotation are from Erin Kelly, "Doing without Desert," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (2002): 180-205, 188.
21. Ibid., 186-87.
22. Ibid., 190.
23. A key aim in this section has been to argue that we need to deepen the account Wallace gives of how it can be fair to hold others responsible in order to address the concerns aired by Kelly and others. Wallace's book is one of what are perhaps the two most impressive defenses of compatibilism in the recent literature, the other being John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). That I have learned much from this book will be evident to any reader familiar with it. But I think the story they tell calls for further development. Their view is that an agent is responsible for actions that issue from what they call a 'reasons-responsive mechanism', providing that the mechanism in question is the agent's own. The latter condition requires that the agent takes responsibility for what they do in virtue of the operations of this mechanism. And a key ingredient of what it is to do this, according to Fischer and Ravizza, is that the agent should view himself as a fair target for the reactive attitudes where actions that issue from this mechanism are concerned (see esp. 211). But a reader might reasonably be left unsatisfied at not having been told enough about what makes the owner of a reasons-responsive mechanism a fair target for these, and it is this concern I hope the present article will do something to address.
24. On this methodological approach, compare J. David Velleman, Practical Reflection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 6.
25. See Harry Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," in his The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 159-76, esp. 165.
26. "It is a salient characteristic of human beings, one which affects our lives in deep and innumerable ways, that we care about what we are" (Frankfurt, "Identification and Wholeheartedness," 163).
27. See Scanlon, "The Significance of Choice," lecture 2, sec. 1, and What We Owe to Each Other, chap. 6, sec. 2.
28. Kelly, "Doing without Desert," defends something provocatively close to this.
29. See Peter F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," in his Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1974), 1-25, 9.
30. Compare Joel Feinberg, "Action and Responsibility," in his Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 119-51, esp. 124-28.
31. The point of course again echoes Peter Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment." See also Fischer and Ravizza, Responsibility and Control, 219.
32. See Wolf, Freedom within Reason, 39-42.
33. See Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, chap. 6, sec. 4, for a more detailed take on this. My rude/ugly example echoes remarks of his on 272. Compare Scanlon, "The Significance of Choice," 171.
34. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 294 (cf. Scanlon, "The Significance of Choice," 216).
35. The term 'reflective endorsement' is appropriated from Christine Korsgaard. See her The Sources of Narmativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. lecture 2.
36. From Christine Korsgaard, "Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations," in her Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 188-221, 210.
37. Compare Frankfurt's discussion of Aristotle in "Identification and Wholeheartedness," 171-72.
38. See, e.g., J. J. C. Smart, "Freewill, Praise, and Blame," Mind 70 (1961): 291-306.
39. For a judicious gloss on 'personal' see Michael Ridge, "Saving Scanlon: Contractualism and Agent-Relativity," Journal of Political Philosophy 9 (2001): 472-81.
40. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other, 208.
41. In discussion at a seminar at St. Andrews, February 16, 2000.
42. Compare Scanlon, "The Significance of Choice," 212: "There could be a social practice according to which people would be subject to scolding and shunning in cases of actions involving no faulty willing or deliberation, but what was expressed by this behavior would not be moral blame."
43. See Susan Wolf, "The Importance of Free Will," Mind 90 (1981): 386-405.
44. As John Hospers argues in "Meaning and Free Will."
45. See John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
46. See Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reasons," in his Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 101-13.
47. For more thoughts on this problem see my "Michael Smith and the Daleks: Reason, Morality, and Contingency," Utilitas 11 (1999): 164-77, sec. 6,
48. and "Contracting Responsibility," in Moral Responsibility and Ontology, ed. Ton van den Beld (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2000), 171-82, sec. 6.