Freedom and Responsibility

Abstract

Many authors treat freedom and responsibility as interchangeable and simply apply conclusions about responsibility to freedom. This paper argues that the two are distinct, thus allowing for a “semi-compatibilist” view, on which responsibility but not freedom (in the sense of freedom to do otherwise) is compatible with determinism. It thereby avoids the implausible features of recent compatibilist accounts of freedom without alternative possibilities—as if one could make oneself free just by accepting the limitations on one’s choice. In particular, the paper puts forth two main arguments that responsibility does not imply freedom: an argument from “the stakes,” meaning what is at stake in a given action, or how seriously wrong it is, as affecting responsibility more than freedom, and an argument from temporal standpoint, that responsibility is often assessed from a standpoint farther back in time, when the agent could have taken steps to prevent being unfree later, whereas freedom is typically assessed at the time of action. These arguments are applied to the well-known case of Robert Alton Harris as in Watson (1988), in contrast to a Watsonian account of psychopaths as lacking moral responsibility because of “moral blindness.” Instead, what makes responsibility moral is the reasons for our blame, not necessarily what motivates the agent we take to be blameworthy.