[b]From “Moral Responsibility in a Deterministic Universe”
by Ray Bradford
In his essay “Freedom and Resentment,” the philosopher P.F. Strawson provides strong rebuttal for the claim that moral responsibility would evaporate in a deterministic universe. Strawson takes a unique approach to the conflict by challenging the assumption that a theoretical question of determinism could pragmatically alter the reactive attitudes we undergo as part of the human experience. Strawson focuses on what he describes as “personal reactive attitudes” that include feelings of anger or resentment in response to another individual’s demonstration of ill will. He takes great length to show when they do and do not arise in the course of human behavior, and to demonstrate that human existence without such attitudes would be largely inconceivable. [/b]
When confronted with claims like this, the first thing that always pops into my head is this: how is the claim more than just an intellectual contraption? In other words, how would it become applicable to Mary “out in the world” when she is confronted with the agonizing predicament of choosing or not choosing to abort her baby?
And, in my discussion with peacegirl above, she seemed of the opinion that our emotional and psychological reactions to the world around us were also wholly subsummed in the “design” – in the immutable laws of matter.
Thus:
According to Strawson, when we find ourselves knowingly wronged by another individual who exhibits both awareness of the wrongdoing and a normal psychological state, we react with “morally reactive attitudes” of anger or resentment. In contrast, when someone wrongs us under the pretense that “he didn’t realize what he was doing” or “she was not herself at the moment,” or if the perpetrator possesses psychological abnormalities (compulsions, moral underdevelopment in the case of children), we tend to suspend our personal reactive attitudes and take what Strawson calls an “objective attitude” toward the individual. We discuss the ways the individual should be managed or directed most efficaciously. Occasionally we demonstrate such attitudes with fellow human beings in normal psychological states as well. Adopting an objective attitude toward “normal” individuals usually results from either intellectual curiosity or the desire to “avoid the strains of involvement.” On the pragmatic level, Strawson sees the claim that determinism would destroy the basis for moral responsibility as tantamount to claiming that a theoretical conviction of determinism would cause us to abandon personal reactive attitudes altogether in favor of objective attitudes.
What does it mean to make a distinction regarding a “pragmatic level” when all levels of human interaction [including the subjunctive] are subsumed in the only possible reality? How are “normal” and “abnormal” psychological states not also but necessary components the only possible reality?
I keep thinking there must be some aspect of “compatibilism” here that I’m always missing. And perhaps someday it might finally be within my grasp. If in fact it is there to be within one’s grasp at all.