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Free Will Skeptics Can Have Their Basic Desert and Eat It Too

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2022

LEIGH VICENS
LEIGH VICENS*
Affiliation:
Augustana University lvicens@augie.edu
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Abstract

In this essay, I argue that if we assume with free will skeptics that people lack moral responsibility, or at least a central form of it, we may still maintain that people are ‘basically’ deserving of certain treatment in response to their behavior. I characterize basic-desert justifications for treatment negatively, as justifications that do not depend on consequentialist, contractualist, or relational considerations. Appealing to attributionist accounts of responsibility as well as the symbolic value of protest, I identify protest as a response that may be basically deserved even in the absence of free will, on the grounds that it is a fitting response to the intrinsic features of agents and their actions. The position defended is not a standard form of semi-compatibilism as it allows that some responses to behavior—such as punishment—that would be basically deserved were people free are not basically deserved in the absence of free will.

Keywords

free will skepticismmoral responsibilitybasic desertattributionismprotest
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 2023 , pp. 355 - 366
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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Footnotes

Thanks to Simon Kittle, Neil Levy, Randolph Clarke, Mylan Engel, Daniel Coren, Andrew Ingram, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on this essay.

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