Responsibility, Naturalism, and “The Morality System”

Even those who follow the general strategy of P. F. Strawson’s enormously influential “Freedom and Resentment” accept that his strong naturalist program needs to be substantially modified, if not rejected. An important effort to revise the Strawsonian program has been provided by R. Jay Wallace. This chapter argues that Wallace’s narrow construal of reactive attitudes, as they are involved in holding an agent responsible, comes at too high a cost. Related to this point, it is also argued that Wallace’s narrow conception of responsibility is a product of his effort to construct his account within the confines of the morality system and that this way of construing responsibility turns on series of unnecessary and misleading oppositions. A more plausible middle path, it is maintained, can be found between Strawson’s excessively strong naturalist program and Wallace’s narrow and restrictive view of responsibility.