Abstract

Various philosophers have wanted to move from a “Strawsonian” understanding of the “practices of moral responsibility” to a compatibilist/non-skeptical result. In my 2016 paper, I criticized versions of this strategy that are based on what some have called Strawson's "reversal" thesis.  In this talk, I focus on a closely related strategy moving from a “response-dependent” theory of responsibility.  I argue that the response-dependent theory offers no response to the incompatibilist.  More generally, I aim to show that a key analogy associated with this strategy fails to support a compatibilist result.  In some sense, it seems clear that nothing could show that nothing we have been laughing at has really been funny.  If "the funny" is similar to "the blameworthy", then perhaps it would follow that nothing could show that no one we have ever blamed has really been blameworthy.  The comparison is interesting, but ultimately inconclusive: even if we grant that these properties are normatively similar, the latter has substantive empirical presuppositions, whereas the former does not.  And this undermines the move to a non-skeptical conclusion.