J Ethics DOI 10.1007/s10892-017-9255-z
Strawson or Straw Man? More on Moral Responsibility and the Moral Community Michael J. Zimmerman1
Received: 29 May 2017 / Accepted: 27 June 2017 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017
Abstract In a recent article in this journal, I argued against the popular twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. Benjamin De Mesel has offered a number of objections to my argument, including in particular the objection that I mischaracterized Strawson’s view. In this article, I respond to De Mesel’s criticisms. Keywords Benjamin De Mesel Blameworthiness Holding responsible Interpersonal Moral community Moral responsibility P. F. Strawson Reactive attitudes
Introduction In my article, Zimmerman 2016, I addressed the following thesis: Slogan: There can be no moral responsibility without a moral community. I focused my attention on that interpretation of the Slogan according to which (a) ‘‘can’’ expresses conceptual possibility, (b) the kind of responsibility in question is retrospective, consisting primarily in either culpability or laudability for some past event, and (c) the kind of community in question consists, roughly, in a group of persons who owe each other duties and who hold each other responsible in the event that these duties are not fulfilled. I noted that, so understood, the Slogan implies that there is a significant sense in which the kind of responsibility at issue is essentially interpersonal. & Michael J. Zimmerman
[email protected] 1
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA
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There are two popular views about moral responsibility that imply that the Slogan is true. One view is this (where P and Q are distinct persons and x is whatever sort of thing P might be responsible for): Answerability: P is retrospectively morally responsible to Q for x = df. it is appropriate for Q to call on P to answer for (i.e., to defend or justify) x. This view (or something close to it) is endorsed by Scanlon (1998: 272; 2008: 130, 193), Gary Watson (2004: part III), Angela Smith (2005), and Stephen Darwall (2006: 82–83), among others. The other view is this: Responsibility-1: P is retrospectively morally responsible for x = df. there is some person Q distinct from P for whom it is appropriate to adopt some reactive attitude toward P in respect of x. The term ‘‘reactive attitude’’ stems from Strawson (1974) and encompasses such attitudes as gratitude, resentment, indignation, and guilt. As I interpret him, Strawson himself endorses Responsibility-1, and it is a view that seems to have been endorsed, even if only implicitly, by many ‘‘Strawsonians’’ since. In my article I argued against both Answerability and Responsibility-1. In a recent article (De Mesel 2017), Benjamin De Mesel agrees with me that both Answerability and Responsibility-1 should be rejected, but he argues that moral responsibility is nonetheless essentially interpersonal in a significant way. In my article I had acknowledged that disposing of Answerability and Responsibility-1 was not by itself sufficient to show that moral responsibility is not essentially interpersonal in some significant way, but I observed that, in light of my argument, the most that could be said along Strawsonian lines was this: Responsibility-2: P is retrospectively morally responsible for x = df. if there were a person Q distinct from P such that Q satisfied certain conditions C, it would be appropriate for Q to adopt some reactive attitude toward P in respect of x. (I did not venture to specify just what C might consist in.) I went on to note that there was reason to doubt this thesis in turn, in which case we might have to retreat to the following: Responsibility-3: Necessarily, P is retrospectively morally responsible for x if and only if it is the case that, if there were a person Q distinct from P such that Q satisfied certain conditions C, it would be appropriate for Q to adopt some reactive attitude toward P in respect of x. I claimed that, in whatever sense it might be said that, on either Responsibility-2 or Responsibility-3, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal, that sense is not significant.
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My discussion of Responsibility-2 and Responsibility-3 was contained in less than two pages, right at the end of the article. In his reply, De Mesel examines what I said there at great length. His commentary is extremely thorough and thoughtful. He criticizes my discussion on three counts. In this article I will summarize his objections, in order of what I take to be their ascending importance, and then respond to each of them in turn.
De Mesel’s First Objection (2017, Sect. 2) One concern I raised regarding Responsibility-1 had to do with self-reactive attitudes (such as remorse) as opposed to other-reactive attitudes (such as resentment). I suggested that Strawson’s acknowledging the appropriateness of the former fits uneasily with the idea that responsibility is essentially interpersonal. De Mesel notes, quite correctly, that responsibility’s being essentially interpersonal does not preclude its also being essentially intrapersonal. He also noted that I had conceded this very point when I suggested that a proponent of Responsibility-1 might hold that, if ever some self-reactive attitude is appropriate, then so too, in principle, is some other-reactive attitude. Since it is open to a proponent of Responsibility-2 to say the same, De Mesel suggests that a fuller rendition of that view would be this: Responsibility-2 (extended): P is retrospectively morally responsible for x = df. if there were a person Q distinct from P such that Q satisfied certain conditions C, it would be appropriate for Q to adopt some reactive attitude toward P in respect of x, and it would be appropriate for P, if (s)he satisfied conditions C, to adopt some self-reactive attitude toward him-/herself in respect of x.
De Mesel’s Second Objection (2017, Sect. 4) As I noted above, in my article I said that there may be reason to embrace Responsibility-3 rather than Responsibility-2. The reason is this. It seems plausible to say that, if it is ever appropriate for someone Q to adopt some reactive attitude toward someone P in respect of something x, that will be because P is responsible for x. If so, this suggests that it is a mistake to analyze being responsible in terms of being the appropriate target of reactive attitudes. De Mesel replies that my objection holds only if Responsibility-2 is interpreted as an analysis of the type that purports to deconstruct a complex concept into simpler concepts, rather than as an analysis of the type that purports merely to elucidate a concept through revealing certain connections it has with other concepts, whether simpler or not. He gives two reasons for denying that Responsibility-2 should be interpreted as an analysis of the first type. First, such an interpretation requires attributing to Strawson (and Strawsonians) the ‘‘reversal thesis’’ that maintains that holding responsible is ‘‘prior’’ to being responsible, an attribution that
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is questionable. Second, such an interpretation is belied by remarks that Strawson makes in Strawson (1992), where he champions the ‘‘connective’’ model of analysis over the ‘‘decompositional’’ model. This being the case, I am faced with a dilemma. If I insist on interpreting Responsibility-2 as a decompositional analysis, I may have provided some reason for thinking that it, on that interpretation, is false, but that interpretation does not capture Strawson’s view of the matter, and so I have done nothing to undermine his view. I have taken on a straw man rather than Strawson himself. If, however, I insist that it is Strawson’s view that I am challenging, then again I have done nothing to undermine that view, since, in focusing on decompositional analysis rather than connective analysis, my criticism has missed its target. In either case, Strawson’s view remains untouched.
De Mesel’s Third Objection (2017, Sect. 3) De Mesel’s main aim in his article is to argue that, given Responsibility-2, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal in a significant way. In my article, I compared Responsibility-2 with the following popular thesis about value: Value-1: x is good [neutral, bad] = df. if there were a person P such that P satisfied certain conditions C, it would be appropriate for P to favor [be indifferent toward, disfavor] x. I asked: If Value-1 were true, would that give us any reason to say that value is, in a significant way, essentially personal? I suggested that it would not, since the view is compatible with something’s having value even if no person ever existed. Since Responsibility-2 is, I claimed, similarly compatible with someone’s being responsible for something even if no other person ever existed, I concluded that it gives us no reason to say that responsibility is, in a significant way, essentially interpersonal. De Mesel’s first complaint is that I paid insufficient attention to the true meaning of ‘‘interpersonal.’’ Whether responsibility is essentially interpersonal cannot be established simply by determining whether it essentially involves more than one person. Rather, we must inquire into the question whether Responsibility-2 ‘‘provides an essential link between moral responsibility and relationships or communication between people (rather than the question whether multiple persons are necessarily involved).’’ De Mesel thinks that the answer is that it clearly does provide such a link. De Mesel’s second complaint is that it is questionable whether it is possible for one person to exist without another. He states that, if one’s conception of personhood is such that only human beings and, possibly, certain other kinds of animal could be persons, then the answer seems to be that this is not possible, since it seems essential to animals that they are born of other animals.
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De Mesel’s chief complaint, however, is that I have misunderstood Strawson. Strawson, he states, is not concerned with the ‘‘bare conceptual possibility’’ of there being moral responsibility in the absence of a moral community. On the contrary, his concern is with whether it is ‘‘practically conceivable’’ that the former should exist without the latter. Practical conceivability has to do with what is possible ‘‘for us as we are.’’ A Strawsonian reading of the Slogan, therefore, is that there can be no moral responsibility ‘‘in life as we know it’’ without a moral community. My article provides no reason for thinking that the Slogan, so understood, is false. As a consequence, I am once again faced with a dilemma. If I insist on sticking with my interpretation of the Slogan, I may have provided some reason for thinking that the Slogan is, on that interpretation, false, but that interpretation does not capture Strawson’s view, and so I have done nothing to undermine his view. I have, once again, taken on a straw man rather than Strawson himself. If, however, I insist that it is Strawson (and Strawsonians) whose view I am challenging, then again I have done nothing to undermine that view, since, in focusing on bare conceivability rather than practical conceivability, my criticisms have missed their target. In either case, Strawson’s view once more remains untouched.
My Response to De Mesel’s First Objection As I noted above, I agree that responsibility’s being essentially interpersonal does not preclude its also being essentially intrapersonal. And, as I also noted, I had conceded this point in my article. Nonetheless, I think further argument is needed before we endorse the extension of Responsibility-2 recommended by De Mesel. My misgivings are minor (I did not explain them in my article; I apologize for the omission), but they are genuine. What bothers me is the assumption that, no matter what that thing, x, is for which P is morally responsible, there could always be some distinct person, Q, for whom it would be appropriate to adopt some reactive attitude toward P in respect of x. This assumption may seem safe, if we also assume that P is a member of some moral community, but of course the latter assumption is one that I am not prepared to make. Moreover, even if P is a member of some moral community, the assumption seems to me questionable. Suppose that what P is responsible for is something that directly concerns no other member of any moral community of which he is a member. (I grant that the phrase ‘‘directly concerns’’ is somewhat opaque.) Suppose, for example, that P is responsible for the mistreatment of a wild dog or the wanton destruction of some wild plants. In such a case, it seems clear that it would not be appropriate for any other person, Q, to resent what P has done, given that resentment is appropriate only when one has oneself been mistreated in some way. It seems almost as clear that it would not be appropriate for anyone else to feel indignant about what P has done, given that indignation consists in a kind of vicarious resentment. (Perhaps the notion of a moral community can be stretched so that certain animals are included, in which case indignation might be appropriate in the case of the dog, but the notion is surely not so expansive as to include vegetation.) Is there some attitude in the repertoire of the reactive attitudes that might nonetheless be appropriate as a response to P’s behavior? There certainly
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is: guilt. But this is not an other-reactive attitude. Anger? That might be an appropriate response on the part of some observer of P’s behavior, but I’m not sure that it counts as a reactive attitude of the sort presently at issue, since it need not be morally tinged. Umbrage? Pique? Their appropriateness seems dubious to me. Something else? I’m not sure what that might be. If there is no good candidate forthcoming, then the ‘‘and’’ in Responsibility-2 (extended) should be replaced by an ‘‘or’’—but this, of course, far from serving De Mesel’s purpose, would undermine it. (I should note, however, that my misgivings might be allayed entirely, if the ‘‘certain conditions C’’ that Q satisfied were specified in some particular way, but I leave it to those who endorse Responsibility-2 (extended) to provide the needed specification.)
My Response to De Mesel’s Second Objection As De Mesel surmises, I had indeed intended Responsibility-2 to be understood as a decompositional analysis, but his apparent recommendation that it be understood as a connective analysis misses the point that I was trying to make. That point is this. First, if (a) it is correct to say that, if it is ever appropriate for someone Q to adopt some reactive attitude toward someone P in respect of x, that will be because P is responsible for x, and (b) this statement is correctly interpreted as saying that the appropriateness of Q’s attitude supervenes on (i.e., is grounded by) P’s responsibility, then (c) Responsibility-2 must be rejected. (I take (c) to follow from (a) and (b) because a decompositional analysis presupposes that analysans and analysandum are identical, whereas supervenience is asymmetrical.1) Second, if Responsibility-2 is to be rejected for this reason, then, even if one cannot grasp what it is to be the appropriate target of a reactive attitude without grasping what it is to be involved in an interpersonal relation (something which strikes me as doubtful anyway, given the possibility of self-reactive attitudes), this provides no reason for thinking that one cannot grasp the concept of moral responsibility without grasping what it is to be involved in an interpersonal relation. I made this point because I am inclined to accept both (a) and (b) and because it seems pretty clear to me that, in endorsing the Slogan, both Strawson and many Strawsonians (e.g., McKenna 2012, ch. 2) implicitly deny that one can grasp the concept of moral responsibility without grasping what it is to be involved in an interpersonal relation. I acknowledge, however, that the conjunction of (a) and (b) is open to challenge, which is why I couched the point only in conditional terms. For present purposes, though, what it is perhaps more important to note, in response to De Mesel’s second objection, is simply this: the claim that, if (a) and (b) are both true, then Responsibility-2 is to be rejected does not presuppose that Strawson is committed to accepting Responsibility-2, let alone that he is committed to accepting it when it is interpreted as a decompositional analysis. Thus, even if it is true that Strawson 1
There is of course a famous puzzle—the ‘‘paradox’’ of analysis—regarding how it can nonetheless be the case that the analysans is conceptually prior to the analysandum, but I will not investigate that puzzle here.
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rejects Responsibility-2 when so interpreted, that fact is irrelevant to the point that I was making. This response may seem too quick. Did I not ascribe Responsibility-1 to Strawson, and did I not, when criticizing that thesis, claim that the most that we could hope to say instead was Responsibility-2? Since I have admitted that I intended Responsibility-2 to be understood as a decompositional analysis, does that not imply that I intended Responsibility-1 also to be understood as such an analysis? And if Strawson favors connective over decompositional analysis, does that not show that I have indeed misrepresented his view? I confess both that I intended Responsibility-1 to be understood as a decompositional analysis and that I (implicitly) ascribed it to Strawson as such. If that is a mistake, so be it. (Whether it is a mistake is an issue that I will address in the next section.) The fact remains that my tentative objection to Responsibility-2 is independent of whatever view it is that Strawson or Strawsonians may hold. De Mesel claims that attributing Responsibility-2, interpreted as a decompositional analysis, to Strawson or Strawsonians requires also attributing to them the reversal thesis that holding responsible is prior to being responsible, an attribution that is questionable. He writes: ‘‘[Zimmerman’s] suggestion that being responsible is prior to holding responsible only constitutes an objection to Responsibility-2 if Responsibility-2 is understood as implying the converse priority relation.’’ This is mistaken. Interpreted as a decompositional analysis, Responsibility-2 implies that being the appropriate target of a reactive attitude is conceptually prior to being morally responsible, but it does not imply that the former grounds the latter. On the contrary, given that analysans and analysandum are identical whereas supervenience is asymmetrical, it implies that the former does not ground the latter. (If, then, Strawson does subscribe to the reversal thesis, when this thesis is understood in terms of grounding, it follows that he does not also subscribe to Responsibility-1 or Responsibility-2, interpreted as decompositional analyses. Again, more on this in the next section.) It is perhaps worth noting that Responsibility-2 explicitly concerns the relation between being morally responsible and being the appropriate target of some reactive attitude. As I formulated it, it does not explicitly concern the relation between being morally responsible and being appropriately held responsible. Is the latter nonetheless implicit in Responsibility-2? Only if being the target of some reactive attitude implies being held responsible. Does it? On the surface, it would seem that the answer is clearly that it does not, since the concept of being held responsible would seem to involve the concept of being responsible, whereas the concept of being the target of some reactive attitude does not involve the concept of being responsible. And that is surely all to the good. Any analysis, whether decompositional or merely connective, is surely defective if one and the same concept is involved on both sides of the analysis. No concept can be elucidated in terms of itself. I want to emphasize that I have no objection to merely connective analyses. Here are two that seem to me perfectly acceptable:
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ð1Þ}p ¼ df: h p: ð2Þhp ¼ df: } p: I would reject either of these as a decompositional analysis, since there would seem to be no good reason to declare either possibility or necessity conceptually prior to the other. But surely these analyses are acceptable in part only because the same concept is not featured on both sides. It is of course open to Strawsonians to claim that Responsibility-2, whether understood as a decompositional or as a connective analysis, could just as well be couched in terms of being held responsible as in terms of being the target of some reactive attitude, precisely because (what they understand as) the concept of being held responsible does not involve the concept of being responsible. If so, I have no objection on that score, but I wonder whether this is what (such) Strawsonians typically have in mind. Consider, for example, what Michael McKenna has to say regarding the following thesis proposed by Jay Wallace (Wallace 1994: 91), a thesis that McKenna endorses: (N)
S is morally responsible (for action x) if and only if it would be appropriate to hold S morally responsible (for action x).
McKenna says that (N) is not to be understood as follows (McKenna 2012: 36): (N*)
S is morally responsible (for action x) if and only if it would be appropriate to judge (assert/believe) that S is morally responsible (for action x).
The reason, he states, is that such a thesis is either clearly false (when ‘‘appropriate’’ is understood in terms of justification; for we are sometimes justified in holding false beliefs) or trivially true (when ‘‘appropriate’’ is understood in terms of truth). (McKenna 2012: 35) This might suggest that McKenna does not take the concept of holding responsible to involve the concept of being responsible, but what he immediately goes on to say belies this interpretation. For he states that ‘‘holding a person morally responsible for an action comes to more than merely judging…[that] the person is morally responsible for that action.’’ (McKenna 2012: 36; emphasis provided) This suggests that holding responsible includes judging responsible, which itself involves being responsible. If so, it seem clear to me that (N) cannot be accepted as an analysis, whether decompositional or connective. Well, then, perhaps McKenna does not take (N) (or any of the refinements of (N) that he goes on to consider) as an analysis? But I think he does. He characterizes his approach not only as Strawsonian but also as one that has explanatory or elucidatory power, and he recommends, emphatically and enthusiastically, that we ‘‘think of the relation between responsible agency and the conditions for holding responsible as mutually supporting and interdependent.’’ (McKenna 2012: 54) I confess that I do not understand the recommendation. Consider the connective analyses mentioned above. Should we say that, in either (1) or (2), either side supports or depends on the other? I think not. Mutual elucidation is one thing, interdependence is another.
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My Response to De Mesel’s Third Objection Does Strawson endorse Responsibility-1 as a decompositional analysis? Who knows? I have stated that I have interpreted him as doing so, but I readily agree that the textual evidence is meager. At one point he appears to take being ‘‘a morally responsible agent’’ as the same as being ‘‘a term of moral relationships,’’ which in turn is the same as being ‘‘a member of the moral community’’ (Strawson 1974: 17), but that obviously does not commit him to Responsibility-1, let alone Responsibility-1 understood as a decompositional analysis. (If anything, it comes closer to committing him to Responsibility-1, shorn of any reference to appropriateness—that is, to the following thesis: P is retrospectively morally responsible for x = df. there is some person Q distinct from P who does adopt some reactive attitude toward P in respect of x. But this thesis is manifestly absurd—and so I do not attribute it to Strawson. First, it easy to think of cases in which someone is responsible for something although, since no one is aware of this fact, no one adopts any reactive attitude toward him. Second, it is easy to think of cases in which someone is the target of some reactive attitude although, since the attitude is misguided, he is not responsible for anything.) I think that, in attributing Responsibility-1 to Strawson, I was influenced by Gary Watson and others who read Strawson as claiming that the reactive attitudes are ‘‘constitutive of’’ moral responsibility. (Watson 2004: 220) This is something that Strawson himself never explicitly states, but I agree that it seems to be strongly suggested by what he states. Moreover, ‘‘constitutive of’’ is plausibly construed as the inverse of ‘‘composed of’’—whence, I suppose, my understanding Strawson as offering a decompositional analysis. But I agree that this might well be a misinterpretation of Strawson. Perhaps he means to offer only a connective analysis, at best. Moreover, as I have noted, if in fact he holds to the reversal thesis mentioned above, then he cannot also subscribe to Responsibility-1 as a decompositional analysis. Does any of this really matter? I cannot see that it does. My objections to Responsibility-1 in the article were not predicated on its being a decompositional analysis but merely on the fact that it implies that it is impossible for P to be morally responsible for x in the absence of some other person Q. If this implication is false, then so too is Responsibility-1 and so too, more importantly, is the Slogan, when this is understood as maintaining that it is impossible for P to be morally responsible for x if P is not a member of an actual moral community. I think it is safe to state that Strawson understood the Slogan in this way, as have many Strawsonians since. [Consider, for example, this remark of McKenna’s: ‘‘What I take to be essential to moral responsibility is that it is deeply interpersonal. It relates those who are morally responsible agents to those who hold morally responsible. This relation is essential to the nature of being morally responsible.’’ (McKenna 2013: 129; first italics his, second italics mine).] But De Mesel is no fan of Responsibility-1 anyway. He agrees that some of the objections I gave in the article against that thesis may prove ‘‘fatal’’ to it. It is Responsibility-2, understood as a connective analysis, that he seeks to defend as
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expressing Strawson’s (or ‘‘the Strawsonian’’) view, along with its implication of the Slogan, understood in terms of practical conceivability. Moreover, he claims, this view implies that moral responsibility is indeed essentially interpersonal in a significant way. By way of response, let me address in turn the three complaints contained in his third objection. First, De Mesel accuses me of ignoring the fact that the difference between ‘‘personal’’ and ‘‘interpersonal’’ is not just the difference between ‘‘one person involved’’ and ‘‘multiple persons involved.’’ It is of course true that ‘‘interpersonal’’ does not mean the same as ‘‘multipersonal,’’ and I acknowledge that, in a moment of rhetorical excess at the end of the article (of which I am, perhaps perversely, still rather fond), I ignored this point, but the fact is that it makes no difference to my argument. All that my argument rests on is the fact that ‘‘interpersonal’’ entails ‘‘multipersonal.’’ If, as I contend, moral responsibility is not essentially multipersonal—in the sense that it is possible for P to be responsible for x even if no other person Q has ever existed—then of course it is not essentially interpersonal either. I take this to be an important point, since it contradicts what so many moral philosophers appear recently to have asserted and since it is easy to think of any number of phenomena that are essentially interpersonal in the sense in question— think of marriage, citizenship, community service, the playing (rather than practicing) of team sports, the playing of many non-team sports (such as ‘‘singles’’ tennis) and other games (such as chess), etc., including, of course, cooperation and collaboration in general. Secondly, though, De Mesel questions whether it is possible for P to be responsible for x even if no other person Q has ever existed. Might it not be the case that it is essential to persons that they are born of other persons? I know of no reason to think so. I grant that it may be essential to animals, of the sort with which we are acquainted, that they are born of other animals, but I see no reason to insist that only such animals can be persons. There is a strong philosophical tradition to the contrary [consider Kant 1964: 96 (B 65)], and it would surely beg the question to insist that only such animals can be morally responsible for what they do. More to the point, perhaps, and rather ironically, De Mesel’s first complaint comes back to bite him here, for, even if it were conceded that it is essential to persons that they are born of other persons, this implies only that moral responsibility, being personal, is also multipersonal; it does not imply that such responsibility is interpersonal, in the sense that it requires a moral community. But here De Mesel might wish to press his third and final complaint, namely, that I am concerned only with bare conceivability, and not the practical conceivability with which Strawson and Strawsonians are concerned. I plead guilty—sort of. I have to say I do not feel guilty. My question—call it The Question, in deference to what I take to be its fundamental importance—is not only whether it is possible to be morally responsible in the absence of a moral community (my answer is ‘‘Yes’’), but also with whether it is possible to understand the concept of moral responsibility without recourse to the concept of a moral community (again my tentative answer is ‘‘Yes’’). As I understand Strawson and many Strawsonians, their answer to both parts of this question is ‘‘No.’’
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But am I not misrepresenting Strawson and Strawsonians in attributing this answer to them? Are they not concerned, as De Mesel claims, with practical rather than bare conceivability? I do not think that they are. It is certainly true that Strawson talks of what is practically conceivable but, when he does so (Strawson 1974: 11, 13), it is in the context of whether it is conceivable that we should ever repudiate the reactive attitudes, if we were to become persuaded of the truth of determinism. His answer is that such an eventuality is practically inconceivable, given ‘‘the fact of our natural human commitment to ordinary inter-personal attitudes.’’ (Strawson 1974: 13) I suspect that he is quite right about this, though the matter is controversial. (see e.g. Pereboom 2014) If so, then I suppose it follows that it is practically inconceivable—inconceivable ‘‘for us as we are’’—that we should ever be without a moral community, let alone that we should ever be morally responsible without such a community. But it hardly follows that it is practically inconceivable that there should ever be someone who is morally responsible in the absence of such a community. Indeed, I am not sure what this could mean, unless we already assume that the someone in question is ‘‘one of us’’—but that is precisely not what we should be assuming. In the end, though, I have to say that I am not too worried about whether I have correctly interpreted Strawson or Strawsonians. My ultimate concern has been to answer The Question, a question that I take to be something that others have been concerned to answer as well. If, as I have argued, the correct answer to the first part of The Question is ‘‘Yes,’’ then, I submit, it cannot be the case that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal in any very significant way. Having said that, I am in fact prepared to grant that, if Responsibility-2 is true, there may still remain some attenuated significance to be accorded to this claim, inasmuch as it implies that the correct answer to the second part of The Question is ‘‘No.’’ I am even prepared to grant (now retreating from the rhetorical excess at the end of my article) that Responsibility-3 also affords this claim some, still further attenuated significance, even in the absence of Responsibility-2. Just how significant the claim is in either case, given that the correct answer to the first part of The Question is ‘‘Yes,’’ is something that I am content to leave to you to judge. Acknowledgements Many thanks to Ish Haji and, especially, Benjamin De Mesel for comments on a previous draft.
References Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The second-person standpoint: Morality, respect, and accountability. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. De Mesel, Benjamin. 2017. Is moral responsibility essentially interpersonal? A reply to Zimmerman. Journal of Ethics. doi:10.1007/s10892-017-9251-3. Kant, Immanuel. 1964. Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals, tr. H. J. Paton. New York: Harper and Row. McKenna, Michael. 2012. Conversation and responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKenna, Michael. 2013. Directed blame and conversation. In Blame: Its nature and norms, ed. D. Justin Coates and Neal A. Tognazzini, 119–140. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pereboom, Derk. 2014. Free will, agency, and meaning in life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scanlon, T.M. 1998. What we owe to each other. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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