Gary Watson

Reasons and Responsibility

The idea that moral responsibility is crucially connected to the capacity to respond to reasons is a natural one. It is not an accident that the ‘‘age of reason’’ appears to coincide with the age of responsibility. But this connection has been defended and developed in very different ways. The most detailed and widely known recent formulation of the idea is due, jointly and individually, to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza.1 In Responsibility and Control, Fischer and Ravizza gather together and extend many of their earlier arguments in an effort to present a comprehensive theory that is informed by criticisms of their previous publications. Although many of the notions and strategies employed in the book are familiar from these previous publications, Responsibility and Control is an important contribution to the subject for several reasons. For one thing, it is good to have the ideas set out systematically. Whereas most discussions are confined to responsibility for actions, for example, this work presents a framework for analyzing responsibility for consequences, responsibility for omissions, and responsibility for character as well. More important, Responsibility and Control moves beyond the previous theory in two significant ways. First, it provides a more nuanced and multidimensional account of ‘‘reasons-responsiveness’’ than before. Second, the authors no longer take reasons-responsiveness, however refined, to be sufficient, for actions with that property still might not ‘‘belong’’ to the individual in the right way. Chapters 7 and 8 argue that responsibility is

Soft libertarianism and hard compatibilism

In this paper I discuss two kinds of attempts to qualify incompatibilist and compatibilist conceptions of freedom to avoid what have been thought to be incredible commitments of these rival accounts. One attempt -- which I call soft libertarianism -- is represented by Robert Kanes work. It hopes to defend an incompatibilist conception of freedom without the apparently difficult metaphysical costs traditionally incurred by these views. On the other hand, in response to what I call the robot objection (that if compatibilism is true, human beings could be the products of design), some compatibilists are tempted to soften their position by placing restrictions on the origins of agency. I argue that both of these attempts are misguided. Hard libertarianism and hard compatibilism are the only theoretical options.

Morality as Equal Accountability : Comments on Stephen Darwall's The Second-Person Standpoint

My remarks on The Second-Person Standpoint are in three parts. I begin with an overview of the argument and with some preliminary questions and observations. In the second part, I develop some doubts about Stephen Darwall’s argument from second-personal competence to second-personal authority. Finally, I take up some questions about the relation between the right and the good in Darwall’s philosophy.

A Moral Predicament in the Criminal Law

Abstract This essay is about the difficulties of doing criminal justice in the context of severe social injustice. Having been marginalized as citizens of the larger community, those who are victims of severe social injustice are understandably alienated from the dominant political institutions, and, not unreasonably, disrespect their authority, including that of the criminal law. The failure of equal treatment and protection and the absence of anything like fair and decent life prospects for the members of the marginalized populations erode the basis for its allegiance to demands of the political community. The criminal law thus occupies a problematic normative position with respect to lawbreakers in this population; in many cases, it finds itself in the position of convicting them for crimes for which the political community itself bears some significant responsibility. The attempt to administer criminal justice therefore faces a serious moral predicament; on the one hand, criminal law has a right and an obligation to protect citizens against serious crimes; on the other hand, because of its responsibility for the plight of many defendants, the dominant society is itself implicated in the wrongdoing in question. This paper tries to characterize the predicament in a perspicuous way and to suggest ways of proceeding in its face.