The Facts and Practices of Moral Responsibility

Abstract

Strawsonians about moral responsibility often claim that our practices of holding morally responsible fix the facts of moral responsibility, rather than the other way round. Many have argued that such ‘reversal’ claims have an unwelcome consequence: If our practices of holding morally responsible fix the facts of moral responsibility, does this not imply, absurdly, that if we held severely mentally ill people responsible, they would be responsible? We provide a new Strawsonian answer to this question, and we explore the relation between reversal claims and (in)compatibilism.

Excuses, Exemptions, and the Challenges to Social Naturalism

“…convincingly argued that many commentators failed to clarify adequately the 'reversal move'. Recently published works strive to rectify this omission(Shoemaker 2017, Beglin 2018, McGeer 2019, De Mesel & Heyndels 2019, De Mesel 2021.…”

P. F. Strawson was neither an externalist nor an internalist about moral responsibility

“…22For other examples of how the rest of Strawson's oeuvre helps to understand ‘Freedom and Resentment’, see Campbell (2017), Coates (2017), Heyndels (2019), and some of my own work (De Mesel, 2017, 2018a, 2018b; De Mesel & Heyndels, 2019). …”