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Chapter 3 explores desert of moral blame on a different understanding of moral blame, one on which to morally blame an agent for an action is to hold a negative moral reactive attitude (moral indignation or reprobation) towards her on account of what she has done. The chapter takes the form of a reconstruction and defence of P.F. Strawson’s core argument for the compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. It is argued contrary to critics that Strawson’s account of the exemptions is not incomplete. The incapacity that exempts from moral responsibility, placing one outside the moral community, is the incapacity that Strawson stresses: viz., the incapacity for participation in ordinary adult interpersonal relationships as we normally understand them. Also endorsed is Strawson’s claim that the reactive attitudes, where strong, involve certain retributive sentiments. That they involve these sentiments ties desert of the moral reactive attitudes to moral desert of punishment.

P. F. Strawson's theory of moral responsibility is assumed to involve three theses. First, morally responsibility is interpersonal because the nature of being responsible is essentially linked to the practices and norms of holding responsible. Second, holding responsible is to be understood by reference to morally reactive attitudes, which are a collection of emotions that are elicited in response to the perceived quality of will in the behavior of a morally responsible agent. Third, holding responsible is more fundamental or basic than being responsible, and so the latter should be explained in terms of the former. In this chapter, the first two Strawsonian theses are advanced, while the third is rejected. The first two are developed in a manner consistent with there being facts about being responsible and about the propriety of holding responsible. These interpersonal features of the theory are explained by comparison with a ledger theory of responsibility whereby being morally responsible is simply a matter of facts about an agent obtaining independently of considerations of holding morally responsible. The third is rejected in favor of explicating being and holding responsible as mutually dependent such that neither is metaphysically more basic than the other.

This chapter discusses an important class of new compatibilist theories of agency and responsibility, frequently referred to as reactive attitude theories. Such theories have their roots in another seminal essay of modern free will debates, P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (1962). This chapter disentangles three strands of Strawson’s argument—rationalist, naturalist, and pragmatic. It also considers other recent reactive attitude views that have attempted to remedy flaws in Strawson’s view, focusing particularly on the view of R. Jay Wallace. Wallace supplies an account of moral capacity, which is missing in Strawson’s view, in terms of an account of what Wallace calls “reflective self-control.” The chapter concludes with suggestions of how a reactive attitude approach to moral responsibility that builds on the work of Strawson, Wallace, and others might be successfully developed.

Since it has been found in earlier chapters of part V that the concept of desert and of rights, along with agent-oriented emotions like anger, gratitude, remorse and feelings of guilt and comparative emotions like pride, shame, admiration and contempt, all presuppose the notion of an epistemically ultimate cause, this chapter contends that rationalists who seek to be as rational as possible will have to rid themselves of these concepts and emotions for their pursuit of causal inquiries will dissolve this notion. It does not follow that rationalists will have to rid themselves of the concept of justice, for even though differences with respect to desert and rights disappear, justice can survive in the shape of equality. If so, satisfactionalists who subject their goal of maximizing fulfilment to requirements of rationality, will not only aim to maximize fulfilment overall, but will also aim to distribute it as equally as possible. It will however not be rational for these satisfactionalists to join company with rationalists in the striving to rid themselves of all agent-oriented and comparative emotions, for this will interfere with their satisfactionalist goal. So, we face a third dilemma between rationalism and satisfactionalism, a dilemma as regards responsibility. This treatment of our attitudes surrounding responsibility is then compared to the celebrated treatment P. F. Strawson and, following him Jonathan Bennett, has given of ‘reactive attitudes’.

The logical positivists’ critical attitude towards metaphysics is sketched. Strawson’s conception of descriptive and revisionary metaphysics is described. Revisionary metaphysics is argued to be chimerical, and descriptive metaphysics is argued not to be a form of metaphysics at all. Strawson’s failure to account for the status of propositions of descriptive metaphysics is held to be remediable by reference to Wittgenstein’s conception of grammatical propositions that express norms of representation.

This chapter examines various kinds of reasons. It classifies reasons into three kinds: justifying, motivating, and explanatory, on account of the three main roles that reasons can play outlined in the previous chapter. It emphasizes the importance of keeping apart the motivating and explanatory roles of reasons, because conflating them has led to a number of mistakes and confused arguments.

It further argues that, since this classification is role‐dependent, and since one and the same reason can play all of these roles in relation to a particular action, the classification of reasons into those three kinds does not correspond to any ontological difference between them: all reasons are facts (understood as true propositions—in the manner suggested by Strawson). The final sections examine and reject two routes that seem to lead to the conclusion that different reasons belong to different ontological categories.

This chapter explores the relation between beliefs and motivating reasons. In it, an unusual interpretation of the claim that motivating reasons are beliefs is defended. On this interpretation, motivating reasons are true beliefs, that is, they are things that we believe that are true—that is to say, they are facts. In short, motivating reasons are facts. The chapter also disarms several objections associated with this view: that it cannot apply in cases where we are motivated to act by a false belief; that beliefs cannot motivate; etc. In particular, it is argued that although false beliefs can motivate, they are not motivating reasons: false beliefs, that is, apparent facts, are only apparent reasons.

An important corollary of the claims about motivating reasons defended in this and the preceding two chapters is that, contrary to what the orthodoxy holds, motivating reasons are not mental states, for they are neither ‘believings’ nor ‘desirings’.

This chapter pursues Strawson’s project in “Freedom and Resentment” by exploring the connection between forgiveness and free will. It is argued that Strawson’s notion of reactive attitudes is helpful for understanding forgiveness and that thinking about forgiveness has implications for how to understand the kind of free will reactive attitudes see agents as having. In particular, it is argued that it is hard to make sense of the content of the reactive attitudes involved in forgiveness without something like an agent-causal view of freedom. Finally, it is suggested that Strawson’s strategy can better be defended if seen in the light of a Kantian compatibilism, rather than a Humean naturalist compatibilism.

This chapter revisits the arguments of “Freedom and Resentment” in order to challenge the dominant non-consequentialist reading of Strawson’s account of responsibility. On the interpretation offered here, there are three mutually reinforcing prongs to Strawson’s argument: his naturalism (i.e. his resistance to a metaphysical picture of human freedom); his pragmatism (i.e. his emphasis on everyday attitudes and practices of “holding responsible”); and his consequentialism (i.e. his normative concern with what ultimately justifies our adherence to these attitudes and practices). The first two prongs of Strawson’s view have been widely recognized and discussed; the third has been overlooked. This chapter's aim is to show why the consequentialist elements in Strawson’s view not only strengthen his overall position against persistent critical challenges; they also point us towards an under-appreciated and independently attractive account of responsibility.

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.

This chapter focuses on the crucial objection, in which P. F. Strawson's question on whether people should use their resource at all times remains unanswered and left untouched. It points out Strawson's refusal to address the crucial objection and instead turns to make explicit another further point. It describes how Strawson moved from the claim that people are not always capable of suspending the reactive attitudes to the claim that people actually do in the case of the outliers because ordinary relating is impossible. However, the chapter argues that since ordinary relating is actual and determinism is already true, then being determined in whatever sense it specifies does not render ordinary relating impossible. It also mentions Strawson's conclusion that determinism and ordinary relating is not among the reasons for which people exempt outliers.

This chapter brings to light more of P. F. Strawson's underlying metaethical picture of the remaining objections. It addresses the pessimists' continued dissatisfactions from the firm conviction that there are conditions not just on the possibility or workability, but on the moral legitimacy of relating to others in the ordinary way or circumstances. It analyzes the pessimist's belief that it is unfair to hold someone responsible when their action was out of their control, when they lacked alternative possibilities, or when their behavior was forced or fated. The chapter also discusses the belief that if determinism is true, then every person is always in the condition to lack control or possibilities. It also explains how ordinary relating can be morally illegitimate if determinismis true.

This chapter focuses on Strawson's attitude towards the work of Kant. He describes how Kant's first Critique has a distinctive place in his own intellectual history. He also recalls a novel attempt to elucidate and defend a central Kantian thesis: the thesis, namely, that we are and must remain ignorant of the nature of things as they are in themselves. He refers to a book published in 1997 by Rae Langton, called Kantian Humility, which is certainly a most interesting, impressive, and scholarly exercise in Kantian interpretation. Strawson concludes with some remarks about one mildly ironical feature of philosophy in the early 21st century. If anyone is entitled to be called the founder of philosophy, it is generally acknowledged to be Plato; and if anyone could be called the father of its modern development, most of us would nominate Descartes. The irony is that to accuse a philosopher of Platonism or Cartesianism is currently felt to be a seriously damaging charge.