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Work in Progress Seminar Series | Fall 2022

鈥淩eflections on a New Role for Strawson鈥檚 Thesis鈥�

Alex Carty
Friday, October 14, 2022
3:30-5:30 PM
Leacock Building, Room 927

Abstract:
Over the last quarter-century it has become routine to understand the concept of moral responsibility in terms of what P.F. Strawson called 鈥渢he reactive attitudes,鈥� but this manner of speaking is rarely accompanied by a commitment to all the claims which gave his 1962 essay 鈥淔reedom and Resentment鈥� its striking originality. Of all the recent commentators who draw from Strawson鈥檚 argument for compatibilism in their accounts of moral responsibility, many who are sympathetic to his insights would at least accept something like what David Brink and Dana Nelkin call Strawson鈥檚 Thesis: reactive attitudes involving praise and blame are appropriate just in case the targets of these reactive attitudes are responsible. Recent controversy about which side of this biconditional has metaphysical and explanatory priority has led to an opposition between so-called response-dependent and response-independent interpretations of Strawson鈥檚 Thesis. This taxonomy of interpretations is helpful, so far as it goes, but I worry that it risks neglecting one very important and delicate aspect of Strawson鈥檚 compatibilism鈥搘hat he calls the 鈥渉alf-suspension鈥� of reactive attitudes. Drawing on collaborative work with Neil Campbell, I use our account of the half-suspension of reactive attitudes to argue for replacing Strawson鈥檚 Thesis with what I鈥檒l call Strawson鈥檚 Degree Thesis: the degree to which an agent is an appropriate target of our practices blaming or praising attitudes is a function of the degree to which that agent is morally responsible. In my estimation, abandoning Strawson鈥檚 Thesis for Strawson鈥檚 Degree Thesis puts us in a position to make better sense of the richness and context-sensitive nature of our attitudes and practices of holding others morally responsible.