Strawson’s attempt to re-adjust the discussion on freedom and responsibility can also be read as an attempt to bring moral philosophy back closer to reality, away from “armchair” metaphysics.77 Concluding his call for
improved emphasis on emotions as crucial to responsibility, he presents a succinct evaluation of the philosophical practice of his time:
The object of these commonplaces is to try to keep before our minds something it is easy to forget when we are engaged in philosophy, especially in our cool, contemporary style, viz. what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary inter-personal relationships, ranging from the most intimate to the most casual.78 (FR, 7.)
Adoption of reactive attitudes as the effective mediator of responsibility relations compels a change in the way the relations themselves are perceived. Suddenly, instead of visualizing abstract projections about some transcendent qualities, the sentimentalist inclinations of Strawson’s thought suggest another course of action. The evaluations of people about each other carry more weight than, say, thinking about which moral obligations are at work at any particular moment. Instead of asking whether the agent has some property that would positively indicate his or her responsibility, Strawson’s way of thinking looks at whether that agent is “a member of the moral community” (see FR, 18). Concluding his elaboration of the ways that reactive attitudes constitute the connections which are relevant to the social appearances of responsibility, Strawson insists that even if we try to ignore our natural reactive attitudes or their import, we would not be able to. (See FR, 19-20.)
Contrasting the objecting attitudes that the traditional compatibilist would have used, Strawson asks us to consider “the web of attitudes and feelings” (FR, 24). The attitudes that we adopt toward each other determines our assessment of their moral status: participant, if the evaluated person is a member of the moral community, objective if not (FR, 9-13). Being a participant in the moral community implies the capability for moral responsibility, for blameworthiness in Strawson’s context.
77
Strawson seems to be a realist, at least if Ted Honderich is to be believed: “Strawson's common- sense realism, is taken by him to be a real realism, something of which scientific realism is a distortion.”(http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/THRIPStrawsonIntro.html, 20.8.2014)
78 It is of course another matter whether Strawson is considered to have succeeded in this. What is
thought here is that Strawson was on the right track in terms of refocusing the debate toward more naturalistic terms, but now that the naturalistic turn in ethics he inspire has taken place, he himself appears a little too “cool” and detached for today’s standards, but this of course is entirely dependent on one’s metaphilosophical inclinations.
Gary Watson has been known since “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil” for coining the term moral address, which defined Strawsonian reactive attitudes as a concept that points out an address for blame. He advances similar ideas in his contribution to Coates & Tognazzini (2013) “Standing in Judgment”, but this time from a society’s point of view. His sketch of the idea of “judgmental nonacceptance” describes the social functions of blame and its consequent punishment. He writes about how blaming precedes punishment in a legal context and how it signifies “turning one’s back” on a person who as a result of that punishment is in some way being ostracized from the lives of the others (Watson 2013, 295). Watson’s examples go into very specific details illustrating the trend in how the traditional theories of responsibility (including Strawson’s) have been perhaps too limited in their scope to satisfy philosophers. Thus such details are interesting and more likely than not they will influence the further developments of our theories of responsibility. Whether Strawson was reaching out toward similar points as Watson was is difficult to say. The debates on these contexts have received increasing attention, and they are interesting to follow.
An intriguing subject in the article is the discussion about the role of society as it relates to Strawsonian conception of responsibility. There are differing opinions about whether Strawson’s theory is really embedded in actual social interactions, or whether the theory is insufficiently designed to address these settings. According to Gary Watson, the sociality of Strawson’s theory is embedded in his conception of the “participant attitudes”, in that the participant perspective is “inescapable”, since “we […] could not be led to abandon that framework, whether or not it is correct” (Watson 2014, 21, 25). Strawson rekindled the sentimentalist perspective in moral philosophy, emphasizing judgments based on conduct, and even states that responsibility qualifies as moral on the basis of its being a signifier of “membership of a moral community”,79 yet the theory leaves the feeling that the agent is
observed somewhat in a vacuum. It is argued here that this unconnected feeling comes from the brevity of the paper. According to Watson, who is advancing a similar point: “Strawson misconstrues the space that the [the reactive attitudes] occupy” (ibid. 27).
The sentiment brought forward by McKenna and Russell is also seconded here (see introduction to 3.1). The considerations concerning the social context also lead to a sustained unease about the conception of moral responsibility based solely on FR. A way to explain these trepidations is through Strawson’s attempt to bring back responsibility to the social context and away from the theoretical, metaphysical contentions. This creates the sense that he embeds the responsibility evaluations within the “web of human attitudes and feelings” as constitutive of responsibility instead of, say, there being a giant, external, metaphysical red light, rapidly blinking whenever an action committed amounts to wrong-doing. In this sense he
succeeds, but as noted the context is limited. For example, the mechanisms of determining who gets to be considered as part of the “web” (as a node in the web?) is left out of the account. Granted, Strawson briefly acknowledges the difficult cases requiring excuses, children and the mentally ill, and he leaves an opening for criticism in terms of different cultures having an effect the stubborn grip on the perspective of a single subject (or object in case of the excuses) is also notable in his theory. This aspect leads to questions of what emotions affect the agent? What responses face him or her?80 And from
where do these responses originate?81 These questions prevent the full
picture from forming about the complex society around the agent. Not minding the wild speculation of these concerns, the Strawsonian conception is further bolstered below by the more extensive (but, according to Russell (2013) in some ways narrower82) theory by R. Jay Wallace as well as of some
critics.
80 If looked at in terms of Bernard Williams’s elements, as is done in more detail in chapter 4.3.4
and in the analysis of chapter 7, all four of his elements of responsibility are firmly anchored to the agent in Strawson’s theory, in which the agent’s causal action is considered (wrong-doing), as well as her intentionality and state of mind (whether she qualifies to be excused), as well as the response (resentment, indignation or guilt, but also blame). The last of these is the crucial part: whether the agent is praised or blamed is considered only from the perspective of the agent in Strawson.
81 A good summary of the currently popular topic of standing to blame is provided in Macalester
Bell’s article “Standing to Blame: A Critique”, in which he writes that “a would-be blamer must have standing to blame” (Bell 2013, 263.) This adds a distinctively social dimension to the requirements for responsibility as well. For example, Bell uses the term “contemporary condition”, which requires that the blamer be a part of the same moral community as the agent doing wrong (Bell 2013, 271). Bell highlights a feature that at least Sher and Scanlon, (discussed in more detail in 4.2) have neglected: the standing to blame, that blame is positional and even hostile. As a result, it might be difficult to blame others where one’s own standing is inappropriate for the task. What the origin of the response is is much less discussed. For more information on the recent “standing to blame” discussion, see articles by Cohen (2006), Macalester Bell (2013), Watson (2013) as well as G. Williams (2013). An incompatibilist example on the subject has recently been published by Patrick Todd (2012), in which the topic is approached from the perspective of an omnipotent being.
Additionally Garrath Williams connects “Freedom and Responsibility” to the current discussion about the standing to responsibility or reproach, by writing that the questions of responsibility brought about by personal relationships was “a crucial plank of Peter Strawson’s seminal paper, ‘Freedom and Resentment.’ However, while Strawson distinguishes the resentment that an injured party might feel from the indignation that another might feel on the injured party’s behalf,[n4] he does not explore further questions of standing to respond or reproach. For the most part, the literature on responsibility also sets aside this question. Perhaps the most sustained discussion to raise questions of standing is T. M. Scanlon’s.” (G. Williams 2013, 352.) Scanlon’s more socially connected take on blame is discussed briefly in chapter 4.2. “Contemporary debate on blame”.
82
Paul Russell’s article “Responsibility, Naturalism and “The Morality System”” in Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Vol. 1 (2013) focuses on criticism of the Kantian-influenced “Morality system” aspect found in Wallace’s influential Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments. G. E. M.