Strawson, Freedom, and Resentment

First and foremost, Peter Strawson wishes to point out that he does not know, and does not particularly care, exactly what the “thesis of determinism” is. He is only concerned with the fact that such a thesis does exist and that it involves actions being more or less determined in some sense or another. He also is not exceedingly concerned (for his own conclusion at any rate) about the truth or falsity of determinism. He then goes on to describe the viewpoints and disagreements of the “optimists and pessimists” of determinism, to which I will refer, more directly, as compatible determinists and incompatible libertarians. At the end of the article, Strawson concludes with a further distillation of the two viewpoints as they relate to his own personal thesis. I will present the two stances in due time, but will first go on to explain Strawson’s description of resentment, gratitude, indifference, offence, and other “reactive attitudes”.

There are many variations of ways to feel about another person, Strawson says. They are varied by our relationship to the person, the circumstances in which we interact, and not least by how and why they act toward us, or at least how and why we perceive they act toward us. Specifically, how we feel toward someone may vary quite a bit due directly to how we perceive their intentions.

If someone cuts you off on the interstate, how angry you feel about it will depend to some degree on what you know or think you know about the situation. Perhaps they have kids in the car and were distracted and didn’t see me, you might suppose, and then be persuaded to consider them in a somewhat kinder light. However, if you are quite sure that this wasn’t the case, you might think, some jerks have no regard for other people and think they can get away with anything. If this is how you perceive the situation, you might fume and flash gestures at them instead of just brushing it off.

Likewise, your feelings can be affected by how much choice you think the individual had in his actions. Being mentally unstable, under extreme duress or emotionally immature, as examples, may very well affect how you treat a person, perhaps differently than if someone else not under those condition(s) acted in the same way toward you.

So then, Strawson thinks that two of the greatest influences of variety in our treatment of people are their perceived intentions and their ability to choose their actions. But if determinism (whatever that means) is true, wouldn’t that limit our justification for varying our treatment of people? After all, when we think a person is limited in their choice of action in some way or another, we tend to give them a little leeway when meting out our resentment.

Regardless of the truth or falsity of determinism, Strawson says, the average person would not change their feelings about moral responsibility. When using “just punishment” (implying moral responsibility) as a means for coercing people to behave in socially desirable ways, it would negate the usefulness of that particular method if moral responsibility were wholly abandoned. Also, when teaching children to behave in socially desirable ways, it would do no one any good in the long term to dismiss their disagreeable actions as results of determinism.

Going back to Strawson’s optimists and pessimists, his characterization of a compatible determinist’s (hereafter shortened to ‘determinist’) view is someone who feels that the facts – so far as we have them – do not show determinism to be false nor do they disprove the validity of moral responsibility and punishment. These things are effective in producing, as before stated, socially desirable actions and it is only because they are effective that we have punishments at all. Strawson’s incompatible libertarian (shortened to libertarian) is someone who thinks that if determinism is true, then moral responsibility and consequential punishment have no place in any society. A libertarian will retort immediately to a determinist that punishment implies guilt which implies moral responsibility which implies freedom which implies the falsity of determinism! The determinist counters that that chain of implication only holds for a sort of “negative freedom:” freedom from moral responsibility in cases of coercion, incapacity, insanity, or a sort duress causing the kind of action that could reasonably be expected from anyone. The libertarian will say that this sort of freedom exists, but that’s not the only sort about which she was talking.

Finally Strawson admits that he falls more into the compatible determinist camp, but only if the viewpoint, such as he has presented it, is “radically modified.” Mostly, this modification has to do with how he views the purpose of moral responsibility and subsequent punishment, that is to remember that they are functions of our morality and not the “calculated” causes of it.

David Wiggins disagrees that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant when discussing the “practices” of responsibility, resentment, punishment, etc. We need to determine the truth or falsity of the thesis of determinism before we move on to discussing the finer points of moral responsibility: Strawson’s resentment and other “reactive attitudes.” Refusing to make an assumption about the truth-value of determinism does not exempt one from the consequences of its truth-value. He also thinks that the conclusion drawn by Strawson from his explanation of compatible determinism and incompatible libertarianism is a fallacy. He feels the language and the usage of language doesn’t need to be explained in ways that differ at least a noticeable bit from the norm, as he thinks Strawson seems to think it does. He might even go so far as to say that the purpose of language is to use it properly and in the way one means, not to draw faulty conclusions from convoluted arguments.

Strawson might respond that, as Wiggins points out, the libertarian would agree with the better part of Strawson’s arguments, but not with the conclusion. Because it is mainly the conclusion that Wiggins protests, Strawson may say that’s only because Wiggins doesn’t agree with it. After all, Wiggins doesn’t offer much of an argument, he just writes off Strawson’s conclusion as unsound after saying that it does matter whether or not determinism is true. But if in fact this is not the case, and Wiggins is not being quite so petty as all that, perhaps the main thing Strawson would say is to reiterate that the truth-value of determinism is not a building block for the rest of one’s arguments about free will and moral responsibility.

A part of Strawson’s argument that is appealing to me is that whether or not the philosophers ever find determinism to be definitively true or false may not change how the average commoner views moral responsibility, guilt, punishment, and the like. Of course the average philosopher probably doesn’t spend most of her time wondering how the average commoner would feel about her viewpoint, so perhaps it is irrelevant that I like this particular point of Strawson’s.

But, like Wiggins, I do rather wonder about how Strawson arrived at his particular conclusion from his discussion of optimists and pessimists and attitudes. If what Wiggins says is true, that it is a non sequitur, and so it would seem, if Wiggins says he agrees with nearly everything in the argument but the conclusion. Of course, it is the ‘nearly’ part that might make a crucial difference for Strawson’s credibility here. It does seem a little distressing to me that the conclusion is a statement that moral responsibility comes from our morality, not that we use moral responsibility to further the livelihood of our morality.

Either way, I do agree that the attitudes of the ordinary commoner would remain fairly unaffected by the truth or falsity of determinism, but I don’t agree with Strawson’s way of going about ‘proving’ this. Actually, I don’t really think that sort of statement needs philosophical proof at all. It’s really more of a psychological question in my opinion.