Does anyone deserve blame?
If our characters come from causes we never chose, is blame ever deserved?
I
Responsibility is real and requires freedom
People are genuinely responsible for what they freely do, and deserve praise or blame accordingly.
- Best argument
- Our moral lives presuppose it, and the presupposition is not idle: it tracks real differences between those who choose and those who are forced. Taking people seriously as agents means holding them responsible. Treating every wrongdoer as a mere product of causes can itself be disrespectful.
- Strongest objection
- If the choice traces back to factors beyond the agent's control, the desert seems to evaporate. Two people with identical characters in identical situations will act identically; the one born luckier gets the praise.
- Defended by
- Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Robert Kane
II
Responsibility is a social practice
Responsibility does not depend on a metaphysical fact about free will. It lives in our natural reactive attitudes and the practices built on them.
- Best argument
- P. F. Strawson's famous essay 'Freedom and Resentment' argued that resentment, gratitude and indignation are part of human relationships, not theories that could be refuted. Even if determinism were proven, we could not simply stop feeling them, and we would have no good reason to try. The question to ask is when these attitudes are appropriate within the practice, not whether the practice is justified from outside.
- Strongest objection
- A practice can be natural and still unjustified. Many cultures found it natural to blame people for accidents or for their ancestry. If our attitudes rest on a false belief about how people work, the fact that they are natural does not vindicate them.
- The reply
- Strawsonians reply that the practice already contains the resources for self-correction: we do excuse the coerced, the ignorant and the ill, and can extend that understanding where evidence demands.
- Defended by
- P. F. Strawson, R. Jay Wallace
III
Nobody deserves anything
Basic desert, the idea that someone deserves to suffer or be rewarded simply because of what they did, is never justified.
- Best argument
- Whether the universe is determined or random, our actions ultimately trace to factors we did not control. We can still hold people accountable in forward-looking ways: to protect others, to encourage change, to repair relationships. But retributive punishment, making people suffer because they deserve it, has no basis. Pereboom compares justified detention to quarantine.
- Strongest objection
- Without desert, punishment looks purely instrumental, which could justify punishing innocent people if it deterred crime well enough. Desert is what limits punishment to the guilty.
- The reply
- Defenders reply that rights and fairness can limit punishment without appeal to desert, and that a quarantine model would in practice be far more humane than current systems.
- Defended by
- Derk Pereboom, Gregg Caruso, Baruch Spinoza
For the full background, variations and open questions, read the entry: Can anyone deserve blame?.