Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes and Free Will: Reflections on Wallace's Theory

Abstract

R. Jay Wallace's Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments develops an original compatibilist approach to issues about moral responsibility and freedom that cannot be ignored by anyone working on these topics. Wallace's theory is in the sense that it is heavily indebted to P. F. Strawson's influential work on reactive attitudes. But we would seriously underestimate the originality of Wallace's accomplishment if we said that his theory was merely an extension of Strawson's. It includes new twists that Strawson did not envisage and removes some weaknesses in Strawson's position that are clearly there. The Strawsonian approach is one of several new compatibilist approaches to responsibility and freedom that have changed the face of debates about these topics over the past four decades; and Wallace's book is the most developed and challenging Strawsonian view available. I have reservations about some of Wallace's conclusions, but I have nothing but admiration for the book. It develops an original position and is written with critical acumen and in a lucid style that could be shown to graduate students as a model of what good philosophical writing can be. I am an incompatibilist about free will and responsibility, so I will focus my remarks on Wallace's defense of compatibilism. That defense is central to the book, though focused mainly in chapter 4 to 7. (I agree with much of what he says about the reactive attitudes in chapters 1 to 3, including his critical remarks on Strawson's own view.) Wallace admits that everyday intuitions about the incompatibility of free will and determinism are powerful. Nonetheless, he thinks incompatibilist intuitions rest upon mistaken extensions of our ordinary practices of excusing and exempting persons from moral responsibility. His goal is to expose these mistakes. Compatibilists usually try to attack the incompatibilist assumption that having alternative possibilities or the power to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism. But Wallace thinks this line of attack is weak (pp. 115, 259). He thinks compatibilists should instead reject the claim that moral