How emphasizing responsibility practices favors compatibilism

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21335011
AutoresBenjamin De Mesel (0000-0001-8355-6888, KU Leuven, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Páginas1-21
Data de publicação2025-04-28
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2025.2497340
OpenAlexW4409888235
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas37

P.F. Strawson’s emphasis on our responsibility practices in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ has been thought to favor compatibilism, but this idea has come under attack. ‘Strawsonian incompatibilists’ agree with Strawson that holding responsible may be unavoidable and a good thing overall, while claiming that this does not entail that we are responsible if determinism is true. My aim is to explain how a Strawsonian emphasis on responsibility practices favors compatibilism. I rely on two key ideas. First, compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree about the meaning of responsibility. Second, we can shed light upon the meaning of responsibility in an indirect way, by starting from the idea that our practices and concept of responsibility have a point. Combining these key ideas, we can ask whether compatibilist or incompatibilist analyses of the meaning of responsibility come out best in the light of Strawson’s hypothesis about the point of having the concept and practices of responsibility, which is roughly that they manifest a basic human demand for good will. Strawsonian incompatibilists are challenged to make sense of the connection between (1) the meaning of responsibility and (2) the point of having the concept of responsibility and the practices structured by it

Compatibilism · Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Moral responsibility · Free Will and Agency · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy