Who's Afraid of Basic Desert

Bibliographic Data

ID21379273
AuthorsTaylor Madigan (0000-0002-1642-097X, Department of Philosophy Stanford University Stanford California USA, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume38
Issue2
Pages129-137
Publication date2025-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRatio (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-0006 • E-ISSN: 1467-9329
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/rati.12437
OpenAlexW4406882123
LanguageEN
References cited23

Skeptics about moral responsibility are skeptical about “basic desert moral responsibility.” They claim that “we” are committed to basic desert moral responsibility in a wide range of ordinary practices; accordingly, if skeptics are right, “our” practices rest on a widespread mistake. In turn, the (purported) fact that “we” are systematically in error motivates the skeptic's revisionary proposals for alternative social practices. I aim to head off this line of thought at the first step: we do not have sufficient reason to think that we are committed to basic desert moral responsibility as pervasively as the skeptic contends. The significance of skepticism is proportional to how widespread commitment to basic desert moral responsibility is; accordingly, the less confident we should be that such a commitment is widespread, the less confident we should be that skepticism poses a significant challenge

Desert (philosophy) · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Free Will and Agency · Philosophy

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