Moral Responsibility A Constructivist Account

In his influential piece, Freedom and Resentment, P.F. Strawson suggested a new approach to the old debate between freedom and determinism. He proposed understanding agential responsibility by analyzing psychological and sociological questions relating to our interactive practices of praise and blame. Strawson did not give an account of moral responsibility by defending the agent´s exercise of his free will (libertarian account). Neither did he justify our practices of moral responsibility based on their utility (consequentialist account). Strawson´s compatibilism argued instead that ascriptions of responsibility are best understood as “expressions of sentiment” (Shabo 2012:131). Despite Strawson´s significant influence among contemporary accounts on moral responsibility, his theory failed putting an end to the metaphysical debates about agential responsibility. Influenced by Strawson, Gary Watson famously claimed that our practices of holding responsible are “incipient forms of communication” (2004:230). What does the communication between a wrongdoer and his victim imply about the wrongdoer’s responsibility? Does a victim´s resentment (and thus her holding the wrongdoer responsible) contribute to the constitution of the wrongdoers´ responsibility, as an expressivist account would hold? Or does the victim, by virtue of resenting the wrongdoer, merely track a quality of will which he has independently of his being held responsible, as a realist would defend? Is there a third option, namely, a middle ground between expressivism and realism? I think there is — Mckenna´s Conversational Theory (2012). In this thesis, I defend this view. Agential responsibility is best understood as an unfolding conversation between those in the moral community holding wrongdoers responsible and those being held responsible. The topic of such a conversation will be the wrongdoers´ quality of will. It is in virtue of such quality of will that responsible agents open up the possibility of a conversation about the moral values of their actions. The analogy between conversation and responsibility is illuminating, but how far can McKenna stretch this analogy? In this thesis, I discuss the limits of McKenna´s view and defend it against an objection. McKenna’s theory presupposes an exchange between the wrongdoer and the victim. However, the pervasive phenomenon of private blame and blame in the absence of the wrongdoer threatens to render his account inadequate. Should we follow McKenna in building a theory of moral responsibility based on an interpersonal exchange between blamer and blamed? I contend that we should do so