Criticising Strawson's Compatibilism

Nurana Rajabova is wary of an attempt to dismiss determinism to keep free will.

- Nurana Rajabova

The belief that human beings have moral responsibility is used to judge people based on their actions, then to reward or punish them accordingly. But is this just? This question becomes unavoidable when the theory of determinism enters the discussion. Determinists claim that every event or occurrence in the world, including human desires, thoughts, and acts, are predetermined by physical laws of cause and effect. In such a world there is no space for free will, since any person’s action at any time could not have been different, if all the physical conditions causing it remain the same. As there is no human free will, say the determinists, there can be no moral responsibility either. At the other end of the axis stand libertarians who also view the two phenomena as incompatible, yet the theory they reject is determinism, as they believe that humans do possess free will. Therefore, assigning moral responsibility is justifiable according to their view. In-between these two positions are the compatibilists, who claim that determinism and moral responsibility are not mutually exclusive after all. Different compatibilists explain this with different arguments. In this article, I will only examine one such argument, made by Peter Strawson in his seminal paper ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 48, 1962), with the purpose of seeing whether it does resolve the centuries old puzzle.

Strawson’s Argument

Before we get into the specifics of his paper, we should note that Strawson has a slightly idiosyncratic compatibilist position. Unlike other compatibilists, he does not identify as a determinist. In fact, he denies that he even understands the thesis of determinism. Instead he argues that