## 1. Moral Responsibility Skepticism and Basic Desert



To begin, it is important to first get clear on what type of moral
responsibility is being doubted or denied by skeptics. Most moral
responsibility skeptics maintain that our best philosophical and
scientific theories about the world indicate that what we do and the
way we are is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control,
whether that be determinism, chance, or luck, and because of this
agents are never morally responsible in the sense needed to justify
certain kinds of *desert-based* judgments, attitudes, or
treatments--such as resentment, indignation, moral anger,
backward-looking blame, and retributive punishment. This is not to say
that there are not other conceptions of responsibility that can be
reconciled with determinism, chance, or luck. Nor is it to deny that
there may be good reasons to maintain certain systems of punishment
and reward. Rather, it is to insist that to hold people *truly
deserving* of blame and praise, punishment and reward, would be to
hold them responsible for the results of the morally arbitrary or for
what is ultimately beyond their control, which is fundamentally unfair
and unjust. Other skeptics defend the more moderate claim that in any
particular case in which we may be tempted to judge that an agent is
morally responsible in the *desert-based* sense, we lack the
epistemic warrant to do so (e.g., Rosen 2004). 



Derk Pereboom provides a very helpful definition of the kind of moral
responsibility being doubted by skeptics, which he calls *basic
desert* moral responsibility and defines as follows:



> 
> 
> For an agent to be morally responsible for an action in this sense is
> for it to be hers in such a way that she would deserve to be blamed if
> she understood that it was morally wrong, and she would deserve to be
> praised if she understood that it was morally exemplary. The desert at
> issue here is basic in the sense that the agent would deserve to be
> blamed or praised just because she has performed the action, given an
> understanding of its moral status, and not, for example, merely by
> virtue of consequentialist or contractualist considerations. (2014a:
> 2)
> 
> 
> 



Consistent with this definition, other moral responsibility skeptics
have suggested that we understand basic desert moral responsibility in
terms of whether it would ever be appropriate for a hypothetical
divine all-knowing judge (who didn't necessarily create the
agents in question) to administer differing kinds of treatment (i.e.,
greater or lesser rewards or punishments) to human agents on the basis
of actions that these agents performed during their lifetime (see
Caruso & Morris 2017; cf. G. Strawson 1986, 1994). The purpose of
invoking the notion of a divine judge in the afterlife is to instill
the idea that any rewards or punishments issued after death will have
no further utility--be it positive or negative. Any differences
in treatment to agents (however slight) would therefore seem warranted
only from a *basic desert* sense, and not a consequentialist
perspective.



Most moral responsibility skeptics distinguish between
*consequentialist-based* and *desert-based* approaches
to blame and punishment (see, e.g., Nadelhoffer 2011; Pereboom 2001,
2014a; Morris, forthcoming; cf. Vargas
2012a, 2015 who rejects this distinction as too simplistic).
Consequentialist-based approaches are forward-looking in the sense
that agents are considered proper targets of reprobation or punishment
for immoral actions on the grounds that such treatment will, say,
prevent the agent (or other agents) from performing that type of
action in the future. *Desert-based responsibility*, on the
other hand, is considered to be backward-looking and retributivist in
the sense that any punitive attitudes or treatments that are deemed
appropriate responses for an immoral act/decision are warranted simply
by virtue of the action/decision itself, irrespective of whatever good
or bad results might follow from the punitive responses (see Morris,
forthcoming). Understood this way, basic desert moral responsibility
requires a kind of power or ability an agent must possess in order to
justify certain kinds of desert-based judgments, attitudes, or
treatments in response to decisions or actions the agent performed or
failed to perform. These reactions would be justified on purely
backward-looking grounds and would not appeal to consequentialist or
forward-looking considerations, such as future protection, future
reconciliation, or future moral formation. It is this kind of moral
responsibility that is being denied by moral responsibility skeptics
(e.g., Pereboom 2001, 2014a; G. Strawson 1986; N. Levy 2011; Waller
2011, 2014; Caruso 2012; Vilhauer 2009a,b, 2012; Sommers 2009; Focquaert, Glenn, & Raine
forthcoming).



Importantly, moral responsibility skepticism, while doubting or
denying basic desert moral responsibility, is consistent with agents
being responsible in others senses. For instance,
*attributability* responsibility is about actions or attitudes
being properly attributable to, or reflective of, an agent's
self. That is, we are responsible for our actions in the
attributability sense only when those actions reflect our identity as
moral agents, i.e., when they are attributable to us. Since
attributability makes no appeal to basic desert or backward-looking
praise and blame, it remains independent of desert-based
accountability (see Shoemaker 2011, 2015; Watson 1996; Eshleman 2014)
and is consistent with moral responsibility skepticism.



The *answerability* sense of responsibility defended by Thomas
Scanlon (1998) and Hilary Bok (1998) is also claimed by some skeptics
to be consistent with the rejection of basic desert (see Pereboom
2012, 2014a; cf. Jeppsson 2016a). According to this
conception of responsibility, someone is responsible for an action or
attitude just in case it is connected to her capacity for evaluative
judgment in a way that opens her up, in principle, to demands for
justification from others (Scanlon 1998; Bok 1998; Pereboom 2014a).
When we encounter apparently immoral behavior, for example, it is
perfectly legitimate to ask the agent, "Why did you decide to do
that?" or "Do you think it was the right thing to
do?" If the reasons given in response to such questions are
morally unsatisfactory, we regard it as justified to invite the agent
to evaluate critically what her actions indicate about her intentions
and character, to demand an apology, or request reform.



According to Derk Pereboom (2014a), a leading moral responsibility
skeptic, engaging in such interactions is reasonable in light of the
right of those harmed or threatened to protect themselves from immoral
behavior and its consequences. In addition, we might have a stake in
reconciliation with the wrong doer, and calling her to account in this
way can function as a step toward realizing this objective. We also
have an interest in her moral formation, and the address described
functions as a stage in the process. On this forward-looking reading,
answerability responsibility is grounded, not in basic desert, but in
three non-desert invoking desiderata: future protection, future
reconciliation, and future moral formation (see Pereboom 2014a).



Basic desert moral responsibility has also been distinguished from
*take charge responsibility* (Waller 1989, 1990, 2004, 2011,
2014). Bruce Waller, for instance, has argued: 



> 
> 
> Just deserts and moral responsibility require a godlike
> power--the existential power of choosing ourselves, the godlike
> power of making ourselves from scratch, the divine capacity to be an
> uncaused cause--that we do not have" (2011: 40). 
> 
> 
> 



Yet, he maintains, 



> 
> 
> you [nevertheless] have take-charge responsibility for your own life,
> which is a responsibility you deeply value and enjoy
> exercising... (2011: 108). 
> 
> 
> 



*Taking responsibility* is distinguished from *being morally
responsible* in that, if one takes responsibility for a particular
outcome it does not follow that one is morally responsible for that
outcome. One can take responsibility for many things, from the mundane
to the vitally important. For example, one can take responsibility for
teaching a course, organizing a conference, or throwing a birthday
party. The responsibility taken, however, is profoundly different from
the moral responsibility that would justify blame and punishment,
praise and reward (Waller 2011: 105; Pereboom 2001: xxi).



While some philosophers may claim (or assume) that taking
responsibility entails being morally responsible (e.g., Smilansky
2012), this seems to conflate a very important distinction. To take
responsibility for, say, organizing a conference, is to agree to put
forth the effort needed to achieve a certain set of goals or
tasks--e.g., inviting speakers, putting out a CFP, reserving the
space, etc. If the conference were to fail for reasons completely
outside the control of the agent--say there was a major snowstorm
that day and several of the speakers could not make it--it would
remain a separate and open question whether the agent who took charge
for organizing the conference was deserving of blame for the failure.
For many, the intuition is rather strong that she is not, especially
in cases where the reasons for failure are external to the agent
(e.g., a snow storm, canceled flights, etc.). But skeptics would
contend that the same remains true when the failure is due to the
agent's own flaws (e.g., their laziness) since in a naturalistic
world devoid of miracles these too are the result of factors outside
the control of the agent (e.g., determinism, chance, or luck).


## 2. Arguments for Moral Responsibility Skepticism



Now that we understand the kind of moral responsibility being doubted
or denied by skeptics, we can examine the arguments *for* moral
responsibility skepticism. Traditionally, the concept of moral
responsibility has been closely connected to the problem of free will.
In fact, many contemporary philosophers simply define free will in
terms of the control in action needed for moral responsibility (though
an epistemic condition for moral responsibility is generally also
added)--see, for example, Pereboom (2001, 2014a), G. Strawson
(1986, 1994), Campbell (1957), Clarke (2005a), N. Levy (2011),
Richards (2000), Caruso (2012), Nahmias (2012), Mele (2006), Sommers
(2007b, 2009), Vargas (2013), Wolf (2011), Vilhauer (2009a), Callender
(2010). According to these theorists, the concepts of free will and moral responsibility stand or fall together. And while there are a few notable exceptions to defining
free will in this way--namely John Martin Fischer's
*semi-compatibilism* (Fischer & Ravizza 1998; Fischer 2007)
and Bruce Waller's reverse semi-compatibilism (2015)--even
these philosophers nevertheless acknowledge that moral responsibility,
as an independent concept, can be threatened by the same kind of
concerns as free will (e.g., determinism, indeterminism, chance, and
luck). I will examine each of these threats in turn. 


### 2.1 Hard Determinism



*Causal determinism*, as it is commonly understood, is roughly
the thesis that every event or action, including human action, is the
inevitable result of preceding events and actions and the laws of
nature. The traditional *problem of free will and determinism*
comes in trying to reconcile our intuitive sense of free will with the
idea that impersonal forces over which we have no ultimate control may
causally determine our choices and actions. [I should note that a
related problem arises with regard to God's foreknowledge (see
the entry on
 foreknowledge and free will).]
 In the past, the standard view advancing moral responsibility
skepticism was *hard determinism*: the view that causal
determinism is true, and incompatible with free will and moral
responsibility--either because it precludes the *ability to do
otherwise* (leeway incompatibilism) or because it is inconsistent
with one's being the "ultimate source" of action
(source incompatibilism). For hard determinists, *libertarian*
free will is simply impossible because human actions are part of a
fully deterministic world and *compatibilism* amounts to a
"quagmire of evasion" (James 1884; see the entry on
 arguments for Incompatibilism).



Hard determinism had its classic statement in the time when Newtonian
physics reigned (see, Spinoza 1677 [1985]; d'Holbach 1770), but
it has very few defenders today--largely because the standard
interpretation of quantum mechanics has been taken by many to
undermine, or at least throw into doubt, the thesis of universal
determinism. This is not to say that determinism has been refuted or
falsified by modern physics, because it has not. Determinism still has
its modern defenders (e.g., Honderich 1988, 2002) and the final
interpretation of physics is not yet in (see, for example, the entry
on
 Bohmian mechanics).
 It is also important to keep in mind that even if we allow some
indeterminacy to exist at the microlevel of our existence--the
level studied by quantum mechanics--there would still likely
remain *determinism-where-it-matters* (Honderich 2002: 5). That
is, 



> 
> 
> At the ordinary level of choices and actions, and even ordinary
> electrochemical activity in our brains, causal laws govern what
> happens. It's all cause and effect in what you might call real
> life. (Honderich 2002: 5) 
> 
> 
> 



Nonetheless, most contemporary skeptics tend to defend positions that
are best seen as successors to traditional hard determinism.


### 2.2 Hard Incompatibilism



One of these positions is *hard incompatibilism*, which
maintains that whatever the fundamental nature of reality, whether it
is deterministic *or* indeterministic, we lack basic desert
moral responsibility. Hard incompatibilism amounts to a rejection of
both compatibilism and libertarianism. It maintains that the sort of
free will required for basic desert moral responsibility is
incompatible with causal determination by factors beyond the
agent's control and *also* with the kind of indeterminism
in action required by the most plausible versions of libertarianism
(see Pereboom 2001, 2014a).



The argument for hard incompatibilism can be sketched as follows:
Against the view that free will is compatible with the causal
determination of our actions by natural factors beyond our control
(i.e., compatibilism), most hard incompatibilists maintain that there
is no relevant difference between this prospect and our actions being
causally determined by manipulators (e.g., Pereboom 2001, 2014a). [For
additional arguments against compatibilism, see the entry on
 arguments for incompatibilism.]
 Against *event-causal libertarianism*, hard incompatibilists
generally advance the "luck" or "disappearing
agent" objection, according to which agents are left unable to
*settle* whether a decision/action occurs and hence cannot have
the control in action required for moral responsibility (Pereboom
2001, 2014a; 2017c; Waller 1990, 2011, N. Levy 2008, 2011; for
non-skeptics who advance similar objections see Ekstrom 2000; Mele
1999a, 2017; Haji 2001). The same problem, they contend, arises for
*non-causal libertarian accounts* since these too fail to
provide agents with the control in action needed for basic desert
(Pereboom 2014a). While *agent-causal* libertarianism could, in
theory, supply this sort of control, hard incompatibilists argue that
it cannot be reconciled with our best physical theories (Pereboom
2001, 2014a; Waller 2011; Harris 2012; cf. N. Levy 2011)
and faces additional problems accounting for mental causation. Since this exhausts the options for views on which we have the sort of free will needed for basic desert moral responsibility, hard incompatibilists conclude that moral responsibility skepticism is the
only remaining position.



Critics of hard incompatibilism include both compatibilists and
libertarians. See, for example, the entries on
 compatibilism,
 incompatibilist (nondeterministic) theories of free will, and
 arguments for incompatibilism.
 I will here only briefly discuss one possible compatibilist
reply--the attempt to block the conclusion of the manipulation
argument, one of the main arguments employed by hard incompatibilists
and other incompatibilists.



Most manipulation arguments introduce various science-fiction-like
scenarios, or manipulation cases, aimed to show that agents who meet
all the various compatibilist conditions for moral responsibility can
nevertheless be subject to responsibility-undermining manipulation.
These arguments further maintain that these manipulation cases
resemble in the relevant ways agents in the normal (non-manipulated)
deterministic case. They go on to conclude that if agents fail to be
morally responsible in the manipulated cases they also fail to be
morally responsible in the normal deterministic case (see Pereboom
1995, 2001, 2014a; Mele 2008; Todd 2013; for a less demanding version
of the argument, one that aims to show only that the manipulation in
question is *mitigating* with respect to moral responsibility,
see Todd 2011). 



Consider, for example, Pereboom's famous "four-case"
argument. The argument sets out three examples of actions that involve
manipulation, the first of which features the most radical sort of
manipulation consistent with all the leading compatibilist conditions,
each progressively more like the fourth, which is an ordinary case of
action causally determined in a natural way. The challenge is for the
compatibilist to point out a relevant and principled difference
between any two adjacent cases that would show why the agent might be
morally responsible in the latter example but not the former. Here,
for instance, is the second case:



> 
> 
> Plum is just like an ordinary human being, except that a team of
> neuroscientists programmed him at the beginning on his life so that
> his reasoning is often but not always egoistic, and at times strongly
> so, with the intended consequence that in his current circumstances he
> is causally determined to engage in the egoistic reasons-responsive
> process of deliberation and to have the set of first and second-order
> desires that result in his decision to kill White. Plum has the
> general ability to regulate his actions by moral reasons, but in his
> circumstances, due to the strongly egoistic nature of his deliberative
> reasoning, he is causally determined to make his decision to kill. Yet
> he does not decide as he does because of an irresistible desire.
> (2014a: 77)
> 
> 
> 



Is Plum morally responsible in the basic desert sense for killing
White? Defenders of manipulation arguments say "no." They
further argue that there is no relevant difference between this case
and mere causal determinism. By comparing this case to the other three
cases--the final case being just like the above except that
natural deterministic causes have taken the place of the
neuroscientists--Pereboom and others argue that it is simply
*irrelevant* whether Plum's psychological states
ultimately trace back to intentional agents or non-intentional causes.
What does matter, and what is responsibility-undermining, is that in
all four cases the agent's actions are ultimately the result of
factors beyond their control.



In response, compatibilists adopt either *hard-line* or
*soft-line* replies (see McKenna 2008). Hard-line replies grant
that there is no relevant difference between agents in the various
manipulated scenarios and ordinary (non-manipulated) agents in
deterministic settings, rather they attack the intuition that agents
are not morally responsible in the manipulated cases. They maintain
that as long as the various compatibilist conditions for moral
responsibility are satisfied, manipulated agents are just as free and
morally responsible as determined agents--despite what might be
our initial intuition. Soft-line replies, on the other hand, try to
differentiate between the various cases. They search for relevant
differences between the cases, differences that would account for why
manipulated agents are not free and morally responsible, but
non-manipulated and causally determined agents are. There are,
however, problems with both types of replies.



The main worry people have with the hard-line approach is that it
conflicts too deeply with our intuitions about the relevant class of
manipulation cases (Capes, forthcoming). Many people find it highly
implausible that someone like Plum could be morally responsible in the
basic desert sense for his behavior given how the behavior came about
(cf. Fischer 2011, 2014; McKenna 2008, 2014, 2017; Sartorio 2016;
Tierney 2013, 2014; Capes 2013; Haji & Cuypers 2006). The main
worry with the soft-line approach, on the other hand, is that any
difference identified as the relevant one between manipulated agents
and ordinary determined agents may be a difference that applies only
to current manipulation cases but not future cases. For example, most
extant manipulation cases involve external agents who act as
intentional manipulators, whereas this is missing in the normal case
of natural determinism. Proponents of soft-line replies might
therefore be tempted to point to this as the relevant difference.
Setting aside for the moment the potential question-begging nature of
this move, the reply also suffers from the fact that new manipulation
arguments have recently been devised that avoid external agents
altogether.



A similar problem confronts soft-line replies that point to
responsibility-conferring conditions not specified in a particular
manipulation case (Lycan 1987; Baker 2006; Feltz 2012; Murray &
Lombrozo 2017). That is, even if one could point to a relevant
difference between an agent in an extant manipulation case and an
agent in the naturally-determined case, this may only serve as an
invitation for proponents of the manipulation argument to revise the
vignette on which their argument is based so that the agent now
satisfies the relevant condition on which the soft-liner insists
(Capes, forthcoming). The challenge, then, for defenders of the
soft-line approach is to show that there is some kind of requirement
for free action and moral responsibility that can be satisfied by
agents in deterministic settings but which cannot (in principle) be
satisfied by agents in manipulation cases. [For a recent attempt at
satisfying this challenge, see Deery and Nahmias (2017); for a reply,
see Capes (forthcoming).] 


### 2.3 Impossibility of Ultimate Responsibility



Another argument for moral responsibility skepticism, one that makes
no appeal at all to determinism or indeterminism, was first introduced
by Friedrich Nietzsche (1886 [1992]) and later revived and fleshed out
by Galen Strawson (1994, 2011). This argument maintains that free will
and ultimate moral responsibility are incoherent concepts, since to be
free in the sense required for ultimate moral responsibility we would
have to be *causa sui* (or "cause of oneself") and
this is impossible. Nietzsche, for example, writes:



> 
> 
> The *causa sui* is the best self-contradiction that has been
> conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But
> the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly
> and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for "freedom
> of the will" in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still
> holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the
> desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's
> actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and
> society involves nothing less than to be precisely this *causa
> sui* and, with more than Baron Munchhausen's audacity, to
> pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of
> nothingness. (1886 [1992] sec. 21)
> 
> 
> 



Galen Strawson makes a similar case for the impossibility of moral
responsibility with his so-called *Basic Argument* (1986, 1994,
2011). The central argument can be summarized as follows:


1. Nothing can be *causa sui*--nothing can be the cause
of itself.
2. In order to be truly or ultimately morally responsible for
one's actions one would have to be *causa sui*, at least
in certain crucial mental respects.
3. Therefore, no one can be truly or ultimately morally
responsible.



The expanded version of the argument runs as follows (Strawson
2011):


1. Interested in free action, we're particularly interested in
actions performed for a reason (as opposed to reflex actions or
mindlessly habitual actions).
2. When one acts for a reason, what one does is a function of how one
is, mentally speaking.
3. So if one is to be truly responsible for how one acts, one must be
truly responsible for how one is, mentally speaking--at least in
certain respects.
4. But to be truly responsible for how one is, in any mental respect,
one must have brought it about that one is the way one is, in that
respect. And it's not merely that one must have caused oneself
to be the way one is, in that respect. One must also have consciously
and explicitly chosen to be the way one is, in that respect, and one
must have succeeded in bringing it about that one is that way.
5. But one can't really be said to choose, in a conscious,
reasoned, fashion, to be the way one is in any respect at all, unless
one already exists, mentally speaking, already equipped with some
principles of choice, "P1"--preferences, values,
ideals--in the light of which one chooses how to be.
6. But then to be truly responsible, on account of having chosen to
be the way one is, in certain mental respects, one must be truly
responsible for one's having the principles of choice P1 in the
light of which one chose how to be.
7. But for this to be so one must have chosen P1, in a reasoned,
conscious, intentional fashion.
8. But for this to be so one must already have had some principles of
choice P2, in the light of which one chose P1.
9. And so on. Here we are setting out on a regress that we cannot
stop. True self-determination is impossible because it requires the
actual completion of an infinite series of choices of principles of
choice.
10. So true moral responsibility is impossible, because it requires
true self-determination, as noted in (3).



This argument trades on some strong and commonsense intuitions.
It's intuitive to think that one is initially the way one is as
a result of heredity and early experience--and it's
undeniable that these are factors for which one cannot be held in any
way responsible (morally or otherwise). Yet, it also makes sense to
think that one cannot at any later stage of life hope to accede to
true or ultimate moral responsibility for the way one is by trying to
change the way one already is as a result of one's genetic
inheritance and previous experience, since both the particular way in
which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of
one's success in one's attempt to change, will be
determined by how one already is as a result of one's genetic
inheritance and previous experience. And any further changes that one
can bring about only after one has brought about certain initial
changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by
one's genetic inheritance and previous experience. Such is
Strawson's argument for the impossibility of moral
responsibility.



While this argument is simple, eloquent, and rather intuitive, it has
been widely criticized by compatibilists and libertarians alike (see,
e.g., Hurley 2000; Clarke 2005a; Bernstein 2005; Fischer 2006; Kane
2000; Coates 2017; for replies see Istvan 2011; Parks 2009). Some
critics question Strawson's notion of *ultimate
responsibility*, which he defines as 



> 
> 
> responsibility of such a kind that, if we have it, then it *makes
> sense* to suppose that it could be just to punish some of us with
> (eternal) torment in hell and reward others with (eternal) bliss in
> heaven. (2011: 43) 
> 
> 
> 



Others critics challenge the claim that in order to be responsible for
one's actions, one has to be the cause of oneself. In the
opposite direction, others try to escape from the regress of the
argument by making sense of the possibility of self-creation
(Bernstein 2005; see also Kane 1996; Lemos 2015; Roskies 2012). Others
still attack the claim that if what one does when one acts for a
reason is to be up to one, then how one is mentally, in some respect,
must be up to one (Clarke 2005a). Finally, some simply suggest that accounts of free action
are often meant to be accounts of precisely how it *can be*
that, even if it is not up to an agent how she is mentally, her action
can still be up to her, she can still have a choice about whether she
performs the action, even when she acts for reasons (Mele 1995:
221-27).



Defenders of the Basic Argument have attempted to counter these
objections in a number of ways. Some respond by arguing, contra
Fischer (2006), that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise
that an agent can be responsible for an action only if she is
responsible for *every* factor contributing to that action (see
Istvan 2011). Others argue, in response to Mele (1995) and Clarke
(2005a), that it is highly counterintuitive to believe that an agent
can be morally responsible for an action when no factor contributing
to that action is up to that agent (Istvan 2011). In response to the
suggestion that certain versions of agent-causal libertarianism can
immunize the agent to the Basic Argument (see Clarke 2005a), they
argue that such accounts actually fail to do so (Istvan 2011). Lastly,
some defenders of the Basic Argument recast the argument in a form
that eliminates certain problems associated with Strawson's
original version and offer additional thought experiments to bolster
its underlying assumptions (see Parks 2009).


### 2.4 Luck



Another argument that maintains that regardless of the causal
structure of the universe we lack free will and moral responsibility
holds that free will and basic desert moral responsibility are
incompatible with the pervasiveness of *luck* (see N. Levy
2009a, 2011; cf. Haji 2016). This argument is intended not only as an
objection to *event-causal libertarianism*, as the *luck
objection* is, but extends to compatibilism as well. At the heart
of the argument is the following dilemma: either actions are subject
to *present luck* (luck around the time of the action), or they
are subject to what Thomas Nagel (1979) influentially named
*constitutive luck* (luck that causes relevant properties of
agents, such as their desires, beliefs, and circumstances), or both
(N. Levy 2011). Either way, luck undermines moral responsibility since
it undermines responsibility-level control. This is what Neil Levy
calls the *Luck Pincer* and it can be summarized as follows
(Levy 2011: 84-97; as summarized in Hartman 2017: 43):



> 
> 
> *Universal Luck Premise*: Every morally significant act is
> either constitutively lucky, presently lucky, or both.
> 
> 
> 
> *Responsibility Negation Premise*: Constitutive and present
> luck each negate moral responsibility.
> 
> 
> 
> *Conclusion*: An agent is not morally responsible for any
> morally significant acts. 
> 
> 
> 



Let us examine the argument in more detail, focusing first on what
exactly is meant by "luck."



While there are several competing accounts of "luck" in
the literature, the Luck Pincer is couched in terms of a modal account
(N. Levy 2011; cf. Pritchard 2005, 2014; Driver 2012; Hales 2015,
2016; Latus 2000, 2003; Hartman 2017; Zimmerman 1987, 2002, 2009;
Coffman 2015; see also entry on
 moral luck).
 The modal account, as developed by Levy (2011), defines luck by way
of possible worlds without reference to indeterminism or determinism,
and it classifies luck as either *chancy* or *not
chancy*. An agent's being *chancy lucky* is defined
as follows: 



> 
> 
> An event or state of affairs occurring in the actual world is chancy
> lucky for an agent if (i) that event or state of affairs is
> significant for that agent; (ii) the agent lacks direct control over
> the event or state of affairs; and (iii) that event or state of
> affairs fails to occur in many nearby possible worlds; the proportion
> of nearby worlds that is large enough for the event to be chancy lucky
> is inverse to the significance of the event for the agent. (N. Levy
> 2011: 36)
> 
> 
> 



On the other hand:



> 
> 
> An event or state of affairs occurring in the actual world that
> affects an agent's psychological traits or dispositions is
> non-chancy lucky for an agent if (i) that event or state of affairs is
> significant for that agent; (ii) the agent lacks direct control over
> that event or state of affairs; (iii) events or states of affairs of
> that kind vary across the relevant reference group, and...in a
> large enough proportion of cases that event or state of affairs fails
> to occur or be instantiated in the reference group in the way in which
> it occurred or was instantiated in the actual case. (N. Levy 2011:
> 36)
> 
> 
> 



Note that the first two conditions are the same for an agent's
being chancy and non-chancy lucky--i.e., (i)
*significance,* and (ii) *lack of direct control*. And
we can say that an event is *significant* for an agent if she
cares about the event and it can have either good or bad significance
for her (N. Levy 2011: 13). It may, for instance, be chancy whether I
have an odd or even number of hairs on my head at 12 noon, but it
would be strange to say that this is a matter of luck since we
generally reserve the appellation "luck" for events that
*matter* (N. Levy 2011: 13)--i.e., we do not generally
speak of entirely trivial events as lucky (i.e., as good or bad for an
agent). With regard to the second condition, we can say that an agent
has *direct control* over an event if the agent is able (with
high probability) to bring it about by intentionally performing a
basic action and if the agent realizes that this is the case (N. Levy
2011: 19; cf. Coffman 2007).



To help understand how the third condition differs in the two
definitions--i.e., the *modal condition* (chancy luck) and
the *uncommon instantiation condition* (non-chancy
luck)--lets consider some examples. A paradigmatic example of a
chancy lucky event is Louis's winning the lottery. This is
because (i) he lacks direct control over winning the lottery since
there is no basic action that he can perform to bring it about, (ii)
the event of his winning the lottery is also at least minimally
significant, and (iii)--the modal condition--in most close
possible worlds with a small divergence from the actual world, Louis
does not win. On the other hand, Elaini may be non-chancy lucky for
being a genius with a high IQ in comparison with her peers (Hartman
2017: 44-46). This is because (i) Elaini lacks direct control
over being a genius, (ii) it is significant for her, and
(iii)--the uncommon instantiation condition--being a genius
is not commonly instantiated in that reference group (assuming, of
course, that most of her actual peers are not geniuses).



To these three conditions, we can now also add the distinction between
*present luck* and *constitutive luck*. We can say that
an agent's decision is the result of present luck if a
circumstantial factor outside of the agent's control at or near
the time of action significantly influences the decision. Such
circumstantial factors could include the agent's mood, what
reasons happen to come to her, situational features of the
environment, and the like. For instance: 



> 
> 
> Our mood may influence what occurs to us, and what weight we give to
> the considerations that do cross our mind...Our attention may
> wander at just the wrong moment or just the right one, or our
> deliberation may be primed by chance features of our environment. (N.
> Levy 2009a: 245; see also 2011: 90) 
> 
> 
> 



In contrast, we can say that an agent's decision is the result
of constitutive luck if that decision is partially settled by her
dispositional endowment, which is outside of her control (N. Levy
2011: 87). Finally, while present luck is limited to cases of chancy
luck, constitutive luck can be a subspecies of both chancy and
non-chancy luck since it can refer to a disposition that an agent
possesses in either a chancy or a non-chancy way (N. Levy 2011:
87).



With these definitions in place we can now return to the *Luck
Pincer* and see how libertarian and compatibilist accounts fare
against it. Libertarian accounts famously face the problem of
explaining how a decision or action can be free, given the libertarian
demand for indeterminacy immediately prior to directly free action.
Moral responsibility skeptics and compatibilists alike have long
argued that such indeterminacy makes the action unacceptably chancy,
in a way that is responsibility-undermining (see, e.g., N. Levy 2009a,
2011; Mele 1999a,b, 2006; Haji 2002, 2004, 2005, 2014; van Inwagen
2000; Pereboom 2001, 2014a; for some replies see
Kane 1999; Clarke 2005b; Mele 2017). And it is argued that this
applies to both event-causal and agent-causal versions of
libertarianism (see Mele 2006; Haji 2004, 2016; N. Levy 2011). The
kind of luck that is problematic here is *present chancy luck*,
since the agent's putatively "free" decision is
chancy (i.e., the same decision would fail to occur in many nearby
possible worlds), significant, and the circumstantial factor outside
of the agent's control (i.e., the indeterminate event(s)) occurs
just prior to the decision. 



Peter van Inwagen (2000) makes vivid the lack of control a libertarian
agent has over genuinely undetermined events by considering what would
happen if God rolled back the relevant stretch of history to some
point prior to an undetermined event and then allowed it to unfold
once more (N. Levy 2009a: 238). Since events would not unfold in the
same way on the replay as they did the first time round, since these
are genuinely undetermined, and nothing the agent does (or is) can
ensure which undetermined possibility is realized, the outcome of this
sequence (in this case the agent's decision) is a matter of
luck. Such luck, skeptics argue, is responsibility-undermining.



Compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility, on the other hand, are
vulnerable to their own powerful luck objection (N. Levy 2009a, 2011;
Haji 2003, 2016; cf. Vargas 2012b). We can divide compatibilist
accounts into two main categories: *historical* and
*non-historical*. Historical accounts are sensitive to the
manner in which an agent comes to be the kind of person they are, in
the circumstances in which they find themselves (see Mele 1995, 2006;
Fischer & Ravizza 1998). If an agent, for instance, decides to
donate a large sum of money to Oxfam, historical accounts of moral
responsibility hold that it is important how the agent came to have
such a generous nature and make the decision they did--for
example, did the agent have a normal history and acquire the
disposition to generosity naturally, or did a team of neuroscientists
(say) engineer them to have a generous nature? Non-historical
accounts, on the other hand, maintain that moral responsibility
depends instead on non-historical factors--like whether an agent
identifies with his/her own desires (Frankfurt 1971) or the quality of
an agent's will (Scanlon 1998).



The main problem with historical accounts is that they cannot
satisfactorily explain how agents can take responsibility for their
constitutive luck. The problem here is analogous to the problem raised
by manipulation arguments (N. Levy 2009a, 2011). Manipulated agents
are the victims of (very bad) luck: the manipulation is significant
for them, they lack control over its (non-) occurrence, and it is
chancy, in as much as there are nearby possible worlds in which the
manipulation does not occur (N. Levy 2009a: 242). The problem of
constitutive luck is similar in that an agent's
*endowments--*i.e., traits and dispositions--likewise
result from factors beyond the agent's control, are significant,
and either chancy or non-chancy lucky. A historical compatibilist
could respond, as they often do to manipulations cases, that as long
as an agent *takes responsibility* for her endowments,
dispositions, and values, over time she will *become* morally
responsible for them. The problem with this reply, however, is that
the series of actions through which agents shape and modify their
endowments, dispositions, and values are themselves significantly
subject to present luck--and, as Levy puts it, "we cannot
undo the effects of luck with more luck" (2009a: 244). Hence,
the very actions to which history-sensitive compatibilists point, the
actions whereby agents take responsibility for their endowment, either
*express* that endowment (when they are explained by
constitutive luck) or reflect the agent's present luck, or both
(see N. Levy 2009a: 247, 2011).



If this argument is correct, present luck is not only a problem for
libertarianism it is also a problem for historical compatibilism. And
while present luck may be a *bigger* problem for libertarians,
since they require the occurrence of undetermined events in the causal
chain leading to free action, the problem it creates for historical
compatibilists is nonetheless significant. With compatibilism, we need
to assess the implications of present luck *in conjunction*
with the implications of constitutive luck. When we do, we see that
though it might often be the case that the role played by present luck
in the decisions and actions of compatibilist agents is relatively
small, it is the agent's endowment--directly, or as
modified by the effects of present luck, or both--which explains
why this is so (N. Levy 2009a: 248). An agent's pre-existing
background of reasons, desires, attitudes, belief, and
values--against which an agent deliberates--is the endowment
from constitutive luck, inflected and modified, to be sure, but
inflected and modified by decisions which either *express*
constitutive luck, or which were not settled by the endowment, *and
therefore were subject to present luck* (N. Levy 2009a: 248).
Hence, the Luck Pincer: actions are either the product of constitutive
luck, present luck, or both. 



Non-historical accounts, on the other hand, run into serious
difficulties of their own with the epistemic condition on control over
action. The epistemic condition maintains that moral responsibility
for an action requires that the agent understands that, and how, the
action is sensitive to her behavior, as well as appreciation of the
significance of that action or culpable ignorance of these facts (N.
Levy 2011: ch.5; cf. Rosen 2003, 2004, 2008; Zimmerman 1997, 2009;
Vargas 2005a). Because the epistemic condition on control is so
demanding and itself subject to the Luck Pincer, non-historical
accounts of compatibilism (as well as other accounts that may survive
the above arguments) face a serious challenge (see N. Levy 2011,
2009b). Consider cases of non-culpable ignorance. Imagine, for
instance, that a 16th century surgeon operates on a patient
without washing his hands or sterilizing his equipment, and as a
result his patient gets an infection and dies. The surgeon would not
be blameworthy in this situation because he was non-culpably ignorant
of the risks of non-sterilization, since germ theory was not
established until much later. In this and other cases of non-culpable
ignorance, the fact that agents are ignorant of the relevant details
is frequently a matter of luck--either present luck or
constitutive luck or both.



We can say that non-culpable ignorance is chancy lucky when an agent
fails to know that *p* (where *p* is significant for
her), lacks direct control over whether she knows that *p*, and
in a large proportion of nearby possible worlds does know that
*p*. Lets say I drop my daughter Maya off at a friend's
house for a play date. She has a peanut allergy and I forget to inform
the other parent, Dolores, at the time of drop-off. When I get to the
coffee shop, I realize this and immediately text Dolores about the
allergy, but because I'm in a "dead zone" the
message does not go through. Not having received my text, Dolores
proceeds to give the kids a snack with peanut butter in it, resulting
in Maya having a near-fatal reaction. Dolores' non-culpable
ignorance in this case is chancy lucky since in a large portion of
nearby possible worlds she would have received the text. The
16th century surgeon example, on the other hand, is better
seen as an example of non-chancy luck, since his ignorance is the
result of bad luck inasmuch as beliefs about germs vary across agents
in different historical periods (the relevant reference group here),
rather than nearby possible worlds. 



Since non-culpable ignorance is responsibility-undermining and much
more common than philosophers typically think, it gives additional
force to the Luck Pincer. Thanks to luck, distant or present, agents
who perform wrongful actions *typically* lack freedom-level
control over their actions because they fail to satisfy the epistemic
condition on such control (N. Levy 2011: 115-16). In cases of
unwitting wrongdoing, there often is no plausible candidate for a
culpable *benighting* action that could ground blameworthiness
(N. Levy 2011: 131). Furthermore, it is often the case that we cannot
reasonably demand of agents that they do not act in ways that express
their epistemic vices (N. Levy 2011: 126). When an agent does not see
that she is managing her moral views badly, it would be unfair to
blame her for doing wrong if she had no internal reasons for omitting
her bad behavior. This is because, when an agent is managing her moral
views badly from the point of view of *objective* morality, it
is often the case that her *subjective* moral values and
beliefs--which *ex hypothesi* she does not know are
wrong--are governing herself in a perfectly rational and
consistent way. Since these internal moral values and beliefs are
themselves a matter of luck--either present, constitutive, or
both--we once again arrive at the Luck Pincer. It would seem,
then, that present luck, constitutive luck, or both, swallows all, and
both libertarian and compatibilist accounts fail to preserve moral
responsibility.



For some objections to the Luck Pincer, see Talbert (2013, 2016),
Hartman (2017), Hales (2016). For a different argument based on luck for the conclusion that agents are *far less* morally blameworthy than we have hitherto
presumed, see Haji (2016). For a compatibilism that is responsive to
concerns of luck but that resists full-blown skepticism about free
will and moral responsibility, see Paul Russell's *free will
pessimism* (2017). 


### 2.5 Scientific Challenges to Moral Responsibility



In addition to these philosophical arguments, there have also been
recent developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences
that have caused some to take moral responsibility skepticism
seriously. Chief among them have been findings in neuroscience that
putatively indicate that unconscious brain activity causally initiates
action prior to the conscious awareness of the intention to act (see,
e.g., Libet et al. 1983; Libet 1985, 1999; Soon et al. 2008; Wegner
2002) and recent findings in psychology and social psychology on
*automaticity*, *situationism*, and the *adaptive
unconscious* (see, e.g., Bargh 1997, 2008; Bargh & Chartrand
1999; Bargh & Ferguson 2000; T. Wilson 2002; Doris 2002).



The neuroscientific threat to moral responsibility originates with the
pioneering work of Benjamin Libet and his colleagues. In their
groundbreaking study on the neuroscience of movement, Libet et al.
(1983) investigated the timing of brain processes and compared them to
the timing of conscious will in relation to self-initiated voluntary
acts. They found that the conscious intention to move (which they
labeled *W*) came 200 milliseconds before the motor act, but
350-400 milliseconds after *readiness potential* (RP)--a
ramp-like buildup of electrical activity that occurs in the brain and
precedes actual movement. These findings lead Libet and others to
conclude that the conscious intention or decision to move cannot be
the true cause of action because it comes too late in the
neuropsychological sequence (see Libet 1985, 1999; Wegner 2002; Soon
et al. 2008; Pockett 2004; Obhi & Haggard 2004; Haggard &
Eimer 1999; Roediger, Goode, & Zaromb 2008). For some scientific
skeptics, these and other findings (e.g., Soon et al. 2008) suggest
that the causal efficacy of the kind of willing required for free will
and moral responsibility is an illusion (e.g., Wegner 2002).



There are, however, powerful objections to this interpretation of the
neuroscientific findings. Some critics argue that there is no direct
way to tell which conscious phenomena, if any, correspond to which
neural events (Mele 2009). In particular, it is difficult to determine
what the readiness potential corresponds to--is it, for instance,
an *intention formation* or *decision*, or is it merely
an *urge* of some sort? Al Mele (2009), for instance, has
forcefully argued that the readiness potential (RP) that precedes
action by a half-second or more need not be construed as the
*cause* of the action but rather is best interpreted as the
beginning of forming an *intention* to act. On this reading,
conscious intentions can still be causes. Other critics have pointed
to the "impossible demand" of Libet-like experiments (N.
Levy 2005), or the unusual nature of its experimental design (Nahmias
2002, 2011), or to its irrelevance to moral responsibility (N. Levy
2014a), or to alternative explanations that are less threatening
(Rosenthal 2002; Dennett 2003). These objections have led many
contemporary philosophers (including many skeptics) to reject the
neuroscientific argument for moral responsibility (see, e.g., Pereboom
& Caruso forthcoming; N. Levy 2005, 2014a; Morris 2009). 



There are, however, other scientific threats to moral responsibility
besides those posed by neuroscience. Recent work in psychology and
social psychology on *automaticity*, *situationism*, and
the *adaptive unconscious*, for instance, has shown that the
causes that move us are often less transparent to ourselves than we
might assume--diverging in many cases from the conscious reasons
we provide to explain and/or justify our actions (see, e.g., Nisbett
& Wilson 1977; T. Wilson 2002; Doris 2002; Bargh 1997, 2008; Bargh
& Chartrand 1999; Bargh & Ferguson 2000; Kahneman 2011). These
findings reveal just how wide open our internal psychological
processes are to the influence of external stimuli and events in our
immediate environment, without knowledge or awareness of such
influence. They also reveal the extent to which our decisions and
behaviors are driven by implicit biases (see, e.g., Uhlmann &
Cohen 2005; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz 1998; Nosek et al. 2007)
and other unconscious System-1 processes (Kahneman 2011). No longer is
it believed that only "lower level" or "dumb"
processes can be carried out non-consciously. We now know that the
higher mental processes that have traditionally served as
quintessential examples of 'free will'--such as
evaluation and judgment, reasoning and problem solving, and
inter-personal behavior--can and often do occur in the absence of
conscious choice and guidance (Bargh & Ferguson 2000; T. Wilson
2002; Kahneman 2011).



While these findings may not be enough on their own to establish
global skepticism about moral responsibility, they represent a
potential threat to our everyday folk understanding of ourselves as
conscious, rational, responsible agents, since they indicate that the
conscious mind exercises less control over our behavior than we have
traditionally assumed. Even some compatibilists now admit that because
of these findings "free will is at best an occasional
phenomenon" (Baumeister 2008: 17; see also Nelkin 2005; Herdova
2016). This is an important concession because it acknowledges that
the *threat of shrinking agency* (Nadelhoffer 2011) remains a
serious one independent of the neuroscientific concerns discussed
above. The deflationary view of consciousness which emerges from these
empirical findings, including the fact that we often lack transparent
awareness of our true motivational states, is potentially agency
undermining and could shrink the realm of morally responsible action
(see N. Levy 2014a; Nadelhoffer 2011; King &
Carruthers 2012; Sie & Wouters 2010, Brink 2013; Caruso 2015a; cf. Vargas 2013;
K. Levy 2015; McKenna & Warmke forthcoming; Ciurria 2013; Mele
& Shepherd 2013). A major point of disagreement, however, is over
whether consciousness is necessary for moral responsibility, and, if
so, what role or function it must serve (cf. N. Levy 2014a; Shepherd 2012, 2015a,b,c; Searle 2000, 2001; Hodgson 2005, 2012; Sher 2009; Doris 2002, 2015; Nahmias 2002;
Smith 2005, 2008; Sifferd 2016). 



Lastly, independent of the two more specific concerns mentioned above,
there is also the more general insight, more threatening to
agent-causal libertarianism than compatibilism, that as the brain
sciences progress and we better understand the mechanisms that
undergird human behavior, the more it becomes obvious that we lack
what some have called "soul control" (see Clark 2013).
Naturalists about the mind argue that there is no longer any reason to
believe in a non-physical self which controls action and is liberated
from the deterministic laws of nature; a little *uncaused
causer* capable of exercising counter-causal free will. While most
contemporary philosophers, including most compatibilists, have long
given up on the idea of soul control, eliminating such thinking from
our folk psychological attitudes may not be so easy and may come at a
cost for some. There is some evidence, for example, that we are
"natural born" dualists (Bloom 2004) and that, at least in
the United States, a majority of adults continue to believe in a
non-physical soul that governs behavior (Demertzi et al. 2009;
Fahrenberg & Cheetham 2000; World Values Survey 1991-2004; Riekki et al. 2013). To whatever extent, then, such dualistic thinking is present in our folk psychological attitudes about free will and moral
responsibility (cf. Nadelhoffer 2014; Mele 2014), it is likely to come
under pressure and require some revision as the brain sciences advance
and this information reaches the general public (see, e.g., Greene
& Cohen 2004). Of course, how and in what direction this revision
will occur is an open empirical question--e.g., some may adopt a
*revisionism* about free will and moral responsibility
(a la Vargas 2005b, 2009, 2007, 2012a) while other may opt for
a more *eliminativist* response (a la Pereboom 2001,
2014a; Waller 1990, 2011; Strawson 1986; Caruso 2015b).



[Note: While most anti-skeptical arguments focus on objections to the
manipulation argument, the luck objection, the Basic Argument, the
Luck Pincer, etc., some recent anti-skeptical arguments have also
focused on the role of reference and alternative ways of thinking
about free will and moral responsibility. See, for example, the
arguments of Shaun Nichols (2013, 2015; Nichols et al. 2016) and 
Oisin Deery (2015)
on reference and *preservationism*,
Kelly McCormick (2013, 2016) on anchoring reference in the context of
responsibility talk, and Manuel Vargas on preferring
*revisionism* to *eliminativism* (2005b, 2009, 2007,
2012a).]


## 3. Implications of Moral Responsibility Skepticism



Turning now to the practical implications of moral responsibility
skepticism, we can ask, what would happen if we came to accept this
view? In recent years a small industry has grown up around precisely
this question. Since disbelief in moral responsibility would clearly
have profound consequences for our interpersonal relationships,
society, morality, meaning, and the law, it's important to
question whether these consequences would be (on the whole) good or
bad. Critics of moral responsibility skepticism fear that it would
undermine morality, leave us unable to adequately deal with criminal
behavior, increase anti-social conduct, and/or destroy meaning in
life. Moral responsibility skeptics, on the other hand, offer up a
number of different views--including *illusionism*
(Smilansky 1999, 2000), *disillusionism* (Nadelhoffer 2011),
and *optimistic skepticism* (e.g., Spinoza 1677 [1985];
Pereboom 1995, 2001, 2002b, 2009, 2011, 2013a, 2014a; Waller 1989,
1990, 2004, 2006, 2011, 2014; Sommers 2007a,b; Caruso forthcoming-b; N.
Levy 2011; Vilhauer 2009a,b, 2012, 2013a,b; Milam 2016, 2017; Smuts
2014; Morris, forthcoming).



In recent years, empirical attempts have been made to test the
practical implications of moral responsibility skepticism. One widely
cited study found that diminishing belief in free will, which is
ostensibly related to moral responsibility, caused participants to
"cheat" more on a problem solving task (Vohs &
Schooler 2008). Another study found that participants who were asked
to read anti-free will prompts behaved more aggressively than
participants exposed to neutral or pro-free will prompts (Baumeister,
Masicampo, & DeWall 2009). Another indicates that reduction in
belief in free will correlated with reduction in monitoring of errors
(Rigoni, Pourtois, & Brass 2015). And two additional studies found
that diminishing free will belief impairs learning from negative
emotions (Stillman & Baumeister 2010) and causes participants to
exhibit more negative attitudes toward out-group members (Zhao, Liu,
Zhang, Shi, & Huang 2014). Such findings seem to suggest that
diminished belief in free will and moral responsibility would indeed
have negative consequences. Yet such a sweeping conclusion may be too
hasty.



First, some have criticized these studies on philosophical and
methodological grounds (see, e.g., Miles 2013; Caruso, forthcoming-b;
Morris, forthcoming). The "cheating" study, for instance,
has failed to replicate on a number of occasions (Carey & Roston
2015; Open Science Collaboration 2015; Zwaan 2013
[see Other Internet Resources]) and the passages
used to prompt anti-free will belief have been criticized for not
being representative of what most free will and moral responsibility
skeptics claim (Morris, forthcoming). There is also the question of
whether the negative effects tested in these studies indicate anything
about the *long-term* consequences of moral responsibility
skepticism. Most of these effects are short-lived and temporary. But
as people become more acquainted with the skeptical perspective, and
as they come to understand what it does and does not maintain, it
remains possible that these effects would fade over time. Lastly,
there is also a growing body of evidence in the opposite direction
suggesting that certain *positive* effects may follow from free
will and moral responsibility skepticism (Carey & Paulhus 2013;
Nadelhoffer & Tocchetto 2013; Krueger et al. 2014; Shariff et
al. 2014; Caspar et al. 2017).



A recent study by Shariff et al. (2014), for instance, found that
people with weaker belief in free will endorsed less retributive
attitudes regarding punishment of criminals, yet their
consequentialist attitudes about punishment were unaffected. They also
found that learning about the neural bases of human behavior, either
through reading popular science articles or taking an undergraduate
neuroscience course, similarly reduced people's support for
retributive punishment. The same connection between belief in free
will and increased punitiveness has also been found in a number of
other studies (see, e.g., Carey & Paulhus 2013; Clark et al. 2014;
Aspinwall, Brown, & Tabery 2012; Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Salovey
2003). Additional studies have found that
where belief in free will is strongest we find increased
*religiosity* and increased commitment to a cluster of
potentially dangerous political beliefs and attitudes such as *Just
World Belief* and *Right Wing Authoritarianism* (see Carey
& Paulhus 2013; Nadelhoffer & Tocchetto 2013). The belief in a
just world, for instance, is the belief that we live in a world where
people generally get what they deserve. But stronger commitment to
just world belief is problematic since it correlates with the tendency
to blame the victims of misfortunes for their own fate (see Lerner
& Simmons 1966; Lerner 1965, 1980; Lerner & Miller 1978;
Wagstaff 1983; Furnham & Gunter 1984; Furnham 2003; Harper &
Manasse 1992; Montada 1998).



Given the mixed results of these empirical studies and the fact that
they tell us very little about any long-term consequences of adopting
the skeptical perspective, the real-life practical implications of
moral responsibility skepticism remain an open question. Perhaps, as
these studies indicate, it would have *both* good and bad
consequences. In which case, the practical question would shift to the
overall balance--i.e., whether, *on the whole*, the
consequences would be good or bad. Or perhaps adopting the skeptical
perspective would *over time* reduce or eliminate any initial
negative reactions--i.e., after an initial adjustment period,
people would come to terms with the new reality and their behavior
would normalize. An illustrative analogy might be made here with
similar concerns voiced in the past about disbelief in God. It was
long argued (and perhaps still is argued in certain quarters of
society) that if people were to come to disbelieve in God, the moral
fiber of society would disintegrate and we would see a marked increase
in anti-social behavior. These fears, however, have not materialized,
as society has grown more secular over time.



The debate over the philosophical and practical implications of moral
responsibility skepticism nevertheless continues, and there is even
some debate among skeptics themselves.


### 3.1 Illusionism vs/ Disillusionism



*Illusionism* is the view that while we lack free will and
moral responsibility, we should nonetheless promote *belief* in
these notions since to disbelieve in moral responsibility would have
dire consequences for society and ourselves (see Smilansky 1999, 2000,
2002, 2013). According to Saul Smilansky, one of the lead proponents
of illusionism, most people not only believe in actual possibilities
and the ability to transcend circumstances, but have 



> 
> 
> distinct and strong beliefs that libertarian free will is a condition
> for moral responsibility, which is in turn a condition for just reward
> and punishment (2000: 26-27; for more on the folk psychology of
> free will and moral responsibility, cf. Nichols & Knobe 2007;
> Nichols 2004; Deery et al. 2013; Sarkissian et al. 2010; Nahmias et
> al. 2005; Nahmias et al. 2007; Murray & Nahmias 2014). 
> 
> 
> 



Smilansky and other proponents of illusionism go on to argue that
while our commonplace beliefs in free will and desert-entailing moral
responsibility are illusions, if people were to accept this truth
there would be wide-reaching negative intrapersonal and interpersonal
consequences. It would be devastating, they warn, if we were to
destroy such beliefs since the difficulties caused by "the
absence of ultimate-level grounding" are likely to be great,
generating "acute psychological discomfort" for many
people and "threatening morality" (Smilansky 2000: 166).
To avoid such deleterious social and personal consequences, and to
prevent the unraveling of our moral fabric, illusionism contends that
people should be allowed their positive illusion of free will and
moral responsibility--i.e., we should not take these beliefs away
from people, and for those of us who have already been disenchanted,
we ought simply to keep the truth to ourselves.



In direct contrast to illusionism, is *disillusionism*: the
view that to the extent that folk intuitions and beliefs about the
nature of human cognition and moral responsibility are mistaken,
philosophers and psychologists ought to do their part to educate the
public--especially when their mistaken beliefs arguably fuel a
number of unhealthy emotions and attitudes such as revenge, hatred,
intolerance, lack of empathy, etc. (Nadelhoffer 2011: 184). Proponents
of disillusionism typically point to the benefits of a world without
moral responsibility. They cite the many instances in which moral
responsibility practices are counterproductive from a practical and
humanitarian standpoint--notably in how they stifle personal
development, encourage punitive excess in criminal justice, and
perpetuate social and economic inequalities (see Waller 2011; N. Levy
2012, 2015; Morris, forthcoming). They maintain that if we abandon moral responsibility "we can look more clearly at the causes and more deeply into the systems that shape individuals and their behavior" (Waller 2011: 287), and this
will allow us to adopt more humane and effective interpersonal
attitudes and approaches to education, criminal justice, and social
policy.



A policy of disillusionism is present in the *optimistic
skepticisms* of several leading moral responsibility skeptics
(e.g., Spinoza, Pereboom, Waller, Levy, Caruso, Harris, Vilhauer,
Milam, and Morris). These optimistic skeptics maintain that life
without basic desert moral responsibility is not only possible, but
also preferable. Prospects of finding meaning in life or sustaining
good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be
threatened (see Pereboom 2001, 2014a; Waller 2011; Sommers 2007a; Milam 2016, 2017). They further maintain that morality and moral judgments would remain intact (see Pereboom 2001, 2014a; Waller 1990, 2004). And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would
be ruled out, they argue that the imposition of sanctions could serves
purposes other than the punishment of the guilty--e.g., it can
also be justified by its role in incapacitating, rehabilitating, and
deterring offenders (see Pereboom 2001, 2013b, 2014a; N. Levy 2012,
2015; Caruso 2016, 2017, forthcoming-a; Pereboom & Caruso
forthcoming; Corrado 2013, forthcoming-a; Vilhauer 2013a,b; Focquaert,
Glenn, Raine 2013, forthcoming; Murtagh 2013).


### 3.2 Reactive Attitudes



One concern people have with moral responsibility skepticism is that
it would threaten our personal relationships and the fulfillment in
life that they provide. P.F. Strawson (1962) famously argued that our
justification for claims of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness is
grounded in the system of human *reactive attitudes*, such as
moral *resentment*, *indignation*, *guilt*, and
*gratitude*. Strawson contends that because our moral
responsibility practices are grounded in this way, the truth or
falsity of causal determinism is not relevant to whether we
justifiably hold each other and ourselves morally responsible.
Moreover, if causal determinism were true and did threaten these
attitudes, as some moral responsibility skeptics are apt to maintain,
we would face instead the prospect of the cold and calculating
*objective attitude*, a stance that relinquishes the reactive
attitudes and treats individuals as objects to be manipulated and
fixed for consequentialist ends. Strawson argues that adopting the
objective attitude would rule out the possibility of the meaningful
sorts of personal relationships we value (see also Wolf 1981, 1990).
Summarizing the Strawsonian concern, then, we can say that adopting
global skepticism about moral responsibility, assuming it was
psychologically possible, would undermine expressions of our
inter-personal reactive attitudes essential to good personal
relationships, and would jeopardize our intra-personal reactive
attitudes such as *guilt* and *repentance*, which are
crucial to personal moral development.



Moral responsibility skeptics generally respond to this Strawsonian
concern in two ways. One response argues that, contra Strawson, it
*is* possible to adopt the objective attitude in a way that
respects persons and does not hinder our personal relationships
(Sommers 2007a). The second and more common response acknowledges that
Strawson may be right about the objective attitude, but denies that
skepticism about moral responsibility requires us to reject all the
reactive attitudes (Pereboom 1995, 2001, 2014a; Waller 1990, 2006, 2011; Milam
2016). This latter approach maintains that the attitudes we most want to retain either are not
undermined by moral responsibility skepticism because they do not have
presuppositions that conflict with this view, or else they have
alternatives that are not under threat. And what remains does not
amount to Strawson's objectivity of attitude and is sufficient
to sustain the personal relationships we value.



Perhaps no one has done more to develop this second line of reply than
Derk Pereboom (see 1995, 2001, 2002a,b, 2009, 2012, 2013a, 2014a). He
argues, for instance, that while certain kinds of moral anger, such as
*resentment* and *indignation*, would be undercut if
moral responsibility skepticism is true, these attitudes are
suboptimal relative to alternative attitudes available to us, such as
moral *concern*, *disappointment*, *sorrow*, and
*resolve*. The expression of these replacement attitudes can
convey the same relevant information as moral anger but in a way that
is less harmful and consistent with the denial of basic desert moral
responsibility. Expression of resentment and indignation "often
fails to contribute to the well being of those whom it is
directed" and is "apt to have harmful effects"
(Pereboom 2014a: 180). Moral anger frequently is intended to cause
physical or emotional pain, and can give rise to "destructive
resistance instead of reconciliation" (Pereboom 2014a: 180). As
a result it has the potential to damage or destroy relationships. It
also often leads to excessively punitive and counterproductive social
practices and policies (see Waller 2011, 2014; Carey & Paulhus
2013; Nadelhoffer & Tocchetto 2013; Shariff et al. 2014). [For
additional arguments against moral anger and the benefits of
relinquishing it, see Flanagan (2016) and Nussbaum (2016).] 



*Guilt* also appears to be one of the reactive attitudes
imperiled by moral responsibility skepticism since it involves the
supposition that one is blameworthy in the basic desert sense for an
immoral action one has performed. Strawsonians fear that absent guilt
we would not be motivated to moral improvement after acting badly, and
we would be kept from reconciliation in impaired relationships.
Furthermore, because guilt is undermined by the skeptical view,
*repentance* is also ruled out, because feeling guilty is a
prerequisite for a repentant attitude. It is unclear, though, whether
guilt is really needed to perform the functions mentioned above.
Suppose instead of guilt an agent acknowledges that she has acted
immorally and she feels deep sorrow for what she has done, and as a
result she is motivated to eradicate her disposition to behave in this
bad way (see Waller 1990: 165-66). Such a reaction, skeptics
contend, can secure the good that guilt can also secure, and it is
wholly compatible with the skeptical perspective (see Pereboom 2001,
2014a; Waller 1990; cf. Bok 1998). Furthermore, since self-guilt can
often be crippling and counterproductive for moral development, an
approach that avoids guilt may actually be more successful in bring
about the desired change in agents (Sommers 2007a). 



Another reactive attitude that some think would be threatened by moral
responsibility skepticism is *gratitude*. Gratitude arguably
presupposes that the person to whom one is grateful is praiseworthy in
the basic desert sense for a beneficial act (cf. Honderich 1988:
518-19). But even if this is so, certain aspects of gratitude
would not be undercut, and these aspects would seem to provide what is
required for the personal relationships we value (Pereboom 2001,
2014a; Sommers 2007a). Gratitude involves being thankful toward the
person who has acted beneficially. This aspect of gratitude is in the
clear--e.g., one can be thankful to a young child for some
kindness without supposing that she is praiseworthy in the basic
desert sense. And while gratitude also often involves joy as a
response to what someone has done, skepticism about moral
responsibility does not yield a challenge to being joyful and
expressing joy when others act beneficially, so this too is in the
clear.



Of course, some of the recommended transformations in emotional
attitudes may not be possible for us. In certain situations refraining
from resentment or moral anger may be beyond our power, and thus even
the committed skeptic might not be able to make the change the
skeptical view suggests. Yet, a committed skeptic need not eliminate
these attitudes completely to accept the conclusion that agents are
never deserving of praise and blame, she must attempt instead not to
*engage* or *entertain* them (Sommers 2007a: 328;
Russell 1992: 296). Shaun Nichols (2007), for example, invokes the
distinction between *narrow-profile* emotional responses, e.g.,
local or immediate emotional reactions to situations, and
*wide-profile* responses, which are not immediate and involve
rational reflection (see also Pereboom 2014a). We might expect to be
unable to appreciably reduce narrow-profile moral anger as an
immediate reaction upon being deeply hurt in an intimate personal
relationship. In wide-profile cases, however, diminishing or even
eliminating moral anger is open--or, at least, we can disavow it
in the sense of rejecting any force it may be assumed to have in
*justifying* a harmful response to wrongdoing. This
modification of moral anger, skeptics contend, might well be
advantageous for our valuable personal relationships, and it has the
potential to bring about the equanimity that Spinoza (1677 [1985])
thought skepticism about free will and moral responsibility, more
generally, would secure (see Pereboom 2001, 2014a; cf. Russell
2004).


### 3.3 Morality



Since moral responsibility skepticism would require us to reject our
ordinary view of ourselves as blameworthy and praiseworthy in the
basic desert sense, critics also fear that it would undermine
morality. Peter van Inwagen, for example, writes:



> 
> 
> I have listened to philosophers who deny the existence of moral
> responsibility. I cannot take them seriously. I know a philosopher who
> has written a paper in which he denies the reality of moral
> responsibility. And yet this same philosopher, when certain of his
> books were stolen, said, "That was a *shoddy* thing to
> do!" But no one can consistently say that a certain act was a
> shoddy thing to do *and* say that its agent was not morally
> responsible when he performed it. (1983: 207)
> 
> 
> 



Fellow libertarian C.A. Campbell agrees and asserts that denying moral
responsibility would destroy "the reality of the moral
life" (1957; quoted from Waller 2004: 427). The view that moral
responsibility is required for morality is not limited, however, to
libertarians. Susan Wolf also contends that if we deny moral
responsibility, then we must 



> 
> 
> stop thinking in terms of what ought not to be. We would have to stop
> thinking in terms that would allow the possibility that some lives and
> projects are better than others. (1981: 386) 
> 
> 
> 



And compatibilist W.T. Stace flatly states, "it is certain that
if there is no free will [and basic desert moral responsibility] there
can be no morality" (1952). Similar remarks can be found
throughout the literature--see, e.g., Copleston (1965: 488),
Murphy (1988: 400), Hintz (1958), Rychlak (1979), Babbitt (1999: 88),
and Smilansky (2000, 2005).



The notion, though, that moral responsibility is a necessary condition
for morality may not be as clear as these philosophers contend and is
directly challenged by most skeptics (see Pereboom 2001, 2014a; Waller
1989, 2004, 2011, 2014; Sommers 2007a; see also Haji 1998, 2002). First, it's unclear what exactly these critics mean when they say that 'morality'
would be undermined by moral responsibility skepticism. Are they
claiming that axiological judgments about intrinsic good and evil,
aretaic judgments concerning virtue, deontic judgments about moral
obligations, right and wrong, etc. are *all* undermined? If so,
that would be an extreme claim. Even if we came to hold that a serial
killer was not blameworthy due, lets say, to a degenerative brain
disease, skeptics contend that we could still justifiably agree that
his actions are morally bad (Pereboom 2001, 2014a; Waller 2004, 2011). Judgments of moral goodness and badness need not require an agent who is blameworthy or praiseworthy, they simply
require grounds by which we can differentiate between the two types of
judgments. If one were a Calvinist, for example, they could point the
transcendent moral law as a way to judge while simultaneously
rejecting all moral responsibility (Waller 2004: 428). Less exalted
moral systems, such as utilitarianism or Kantianism, provide
alternative ways of grounding moral judgments. Of course, if one were
to adopt a Kantian test of universalizability while rejecting the rest
of Kant's moral views (which do presuppose agents are morally
responsible), it would hardly be an orthodox Kantian view. But, as
several skeptics have noted, the denial of moral responsibility is not
inconsistent with the principles of Kantian moral rationalism (see
Waller 2004: 429; Vilhauer 2013a,b; Pereboom 2014a). It is arguable, then, that
axiological judgments of moral goodness and badness would not be
affected by moral responsibility skepticism (Haji 1998; Pereboom 2001,
2014a), and this may be sufficient for moral practice.



Nonetheless, critics might question that if determinism precluded
basic desert blameworthiness, would it not also undercut judgments of
moral obligation? Kant famously argued that "ought implies
can," and that if the moral law commands that we *ought*
to perform some action, it "inescapably follows" that we
must be *capable* of performing that action (1793 [1998: 94];
1781 [1998]: A548/B576). And G.E. Moore, following Kant, argues that
one "cannot say of anyone that he ought to do a certain thing,
if it is a thing which it is physically impossible for him to
do" (1922: 317). But if 'ought' implies
'can,' and if because determinism is true an agent could
not have avoided acting badly, it would be false that she ought to
have acted otherwise (see Nelkin 2011: 100-101; cf. Jeppsson
2016b). Furthermore, if an action is wrong for an agent just in case
she is morally obligated not to perform it, determinism would also
undermine judgments of moral wrongness (Haji 1998).



There are, however, a number of possible ways to respond to this
criticism. One is to argue, as Waller (2004, 2011) does, that while
the 'ought implies 'can' principle (OIC for short)
is widespread and deeply entrenched, it is nonetheless false (see also
Sinnott-Armstrong 1984; Ryan 2003; Graham 2011). In fact, recent work
in experimental philosophy suggests that the principle may not be as
intuitive as philosophers think. Buckwalter and Turri (2015), Mizrahi
(2015a,b), Chituc et al. (2016), Henne et al. (2016), and Turri
(2017) have all run experiments testing ordinary "folk"
intuitions about the link between moral requirements and abilities.
They each independently found that commonsense morality rejects the
OIC principle for moral requirements, and that judgments about moral
obligations are made independently of considerations about ability. By
contrast, they also found that judgments of *blame* were highly
sensitive to considerations about ability, which suggests that
commonsense morality might accept a "blame implies can"
principle or that judgments of blame may play a modulatory role in
judgments of obligation (see Buckwalter & Turri 2015; Chituc et
al. 2016). These empirical findings support Waller's claim that
the OIC principle is a philosopher's invention infected by
mistaken assumptions about moral responsibility (cf. Kurthy &
Lawford-Smith 2015; Kurthy et al. 2017; Cohen forthcoming; Graham
2011; Zimmerman 1996).



Another option for skeptics is to accept the OIC principle but adopt
an *axiological* understanding of 'ought' and an
*epistemic* reading of 'ought implies can'
(Pereboom 2014a). On this reading of the principle, when we say that
an agent 'ought to x,' we are simply making an axiological
judgment about x and recommending that the agent perform x at some
future time. When we say 'ought implies can,' on the other
hand, we mean that it is *epistemically open* to the agent that
she will develop the requisite motivation to x, and in this sense
*can* perform x. Furthermore, the axiological and epistemic
components are connected in that the recommendation made by the
axiological judgment may itself contribute causally to producing the
motivation (Pereboom 2014a: 140). Of course, this is not the
'ought' of obligation Kant and others may have had in
mind, since given the assumption of determinism and that determinism
precludes alternatives, when one tells an agent that she ought to
refrain from performing an action of some type in the future,
it's not the 'ought' of specific action demand, but
rather the 'ought' of axiological evaluation that is
legitimately invoked (Pereboom 2014a: 141). Pereboom calls this the
'ought' of *axiological recommendation* (2014a:
141), and it should not be understood as presupposing a route actually
assessable to an agent, via reasons for action, to her acting in some
relevant way. All that is required for the legitimate use of
'ought,' on this account, is that one be unsure
epistemically about whether such a route is accessible, and in most
real-life cases this requirement is satisfied since we lack certainty
about the future (cf. Nelkin 2014; for reply see Pereboom 2014b). 



From the skeptical perspective, then, morality is not about
backward-looking assessments of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness,
since these are rejected. Rather, morality is forward-looking and
functions by invoking the 'ought' of axiological
recommendation, the epistemic sense of the notion of
'can,' and (at least in the case of Pereboom (2014a,
2017b)) a forward-looking notion of blame grounded in the goods of
protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. While critics may
fear this is still not enough since morality must be capable of
grounding backward-looking judgments of blameworthiness and
praiseworthiness, the skeptic's conception of morality may
nevertheless be sufficient for the vast majority of our moral
practices. [Cf. Fischer 2004; Athanassoulis 2005; Edmundson 2007;
Rosen 2004; Moya 2010; Morris 2015]


### 3.4 Criminal Punishment



One last practical concern about moral responsibility skepticism is
that it is unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior and that
the responses it would permit as justified are insufficient for
acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The
first is that one of the most prominent justifications for punishing
criminals, *retributivism*, is incompatible with moral
responsibility skepticism. The second concern is that alternative
justifications that are not ruled out by the skeptical view per se
face independent moral objections. Critics contend that these moral
objections are decisive. Skeptics about moral responsibility, on the
other hand, argue that non-retributive alternatives exist that are
both ethically defensible and practically workable (see, e.g.,
Pereboom 2001, 2013b, 2014a; N. Levy 2012, 2015; Caruso 2016; Corrado 2001,
2013, 2014, 2017,, forthcoming-a,b; Vilhauer 2013a,b; Focquaert,
Glenn, Raine 2013, forthcoming; Shaw 2011; Murtagh 2013).



Within the American criminal justice system, the most prominent
justification for criminal punishment is *retributivism*. This
retributivist justification for
 punishment
 maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason
that she *deserves* something bad to happen to her just because
she has knowingly done wrong--this could include pain,
deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the *basic
desert* attached to the criminal's immoral action alone that
provides the justification for punishment (see, e.g., Moore 1997;
Berman 2008, 2013). This means that the retributivist position is not
reducible to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying
punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society
or the
 moral
 improvement of those being punished. A number of sentencing
guidelines in the U.S. have adopted *desert* as their
distributive principle, and it is increasingly given deference in the
"purposes" section of state criminal codes, where it can
be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the
code's provisions (see Robinson 2008). Indeed, the American Law
Institute recently revised the Model Penal Code so as to set desert as
the official dominate principle for sentencing. And
courts have identified desert as the guiding principle in a variety of
contexts, as with the Supreme Court's specifying retributivism
as the "primary justification for the death penalty" (see
Robinson 2008: 145-146; see also the entries on
 legal punishment and
 retributive justice.)




While there may be independent reasons for rejecting retributivism,
reasons that have nothing to do with free will and moral
responsibility, it is clear that moral responsibility skepticism is
incompatible with the retributive justification for punishment since
it does away with the idea of *basic desert.* If agents do not
deserve blame just because they have knowingly done wrong, neither do
they deserve punishment just because they have knowingly done wrong
(Pereboom 2014a). The challenge facing moral responsibility
skepticism, then, is to explain how we can adequately deal with
criminal behavior without the justification provided by retributivism
and basic desert moral responsibility. While some critics contend this
cannot be done, moral responsibility skeptics point out that there are
several alternative ways of justifying criminal punishment (and
dealing with criminal behavior more generally) that do not appeal to
the notion of basic desert and are thus not threatened by the
skeptical perspective. These include deterrence theories, moral
education theories, punishment justified by the right to harm in
self-defense, and incapacitation theories.



Deterrence theories are typically classified as a subspecies of
consequentialist theories of punishment. Consequentialist theories
attempt to justify punishment as the best means to achieving certain
independently identifiable goods (see, e.g., Bentham 1823; J. Wilson
1983; Walker 1991; see also entry on Legal Punishment). While
different consequentialist theories explain the final good or goods at
which all our actions aim differently, the most plausible immediate
good that a system of punishment can bring about is the reduction of
crime. For this reason, consequentialist theories generally suggest
that punishment can help to reduce crime by deterring, incapacitating,
or reforming potential offenders. Deterrence theories, in particular,
hold that punishment can serve the dual purposes of deterring future
bad or illegal behavior in the individual (him or herself) who is
punished, as well as deter others from similar acts (Ellis 2003, 2005;
Hoskins 2011). Such theories are perfectly consistent with moral
responsibility skepticism since they are forward-looking and make no
appeal to notions of *just deserts* and blameworthiness.



The most common objection to consequentialist deterrence theories is
that they would allow for manifestly unjust punishments. For example,
excessively harsh punishment of the guilty or punishment of the
innocent could in principle be justified if it were to effectively
serve the aim of deterrence and crime reduction (see McCloskey 1957;
Hart 1968; Nozick 1974; Ten 1987; Smilansky 1990; Primoratz 1999;
Pereboom 2001, 2014a; Honderich 2006; Boonin 2008; Brooks 2012). This is
sometimes called the *use objection* since it holds that
consequentialist theories allow, at least in principle, for the
*use* of persons to achieve certain desirable ends, in
violation of the Kantian intuition that persons should be treated as
ends-in-themselves. There are, however, a number of common responses
to this objection. One is to argue that such 'unjust'
punishments *would* be justified if they would really produce
the best consequence (e.g., Smart 1973: 69-72; Bagaric &
Amarasekara 2000; taken from Duff & Hoskins 2017). Another is to
argue that in the real world it would be extremely unlikely that such
punishment would ever be for the best, and even less likely that the
state could be trusted to reliably pick out those rare cases in which
they would be--thus the criminal justice system should adopt the
view that such punishment is wrong and unjustifiable (see Rawls 1955;
Hare 1981; paraphrased from Duff & Hoskins 2017). Finally, some
reply that a richer or subtler account of the ends that the criminal
law should serve will generate suitable protections against unjust
punishments (see Braithwaite & Pettit 1990; Tadros 2011).



Another approach consistent with skepticism about moral responsibility
is moral education theories. These theories typically maintain that
punishment can be justified only if it benefits the person being
punished. An analogy is sometimes drawn with the justification for
punishing children--i.e., children are typically not punished to
exact retribution, but rather to educate them morally. Jean Hampton,
for instance, writes, "punishment should not be justified as a
deserved evil, but rather as an attempt, by someone who cares, to
improve a wayward person" (1984: 237). On Hampton's moral
education account, punishment is justified if and only if it gets the
wrongdoer 



> 
> 
> to reflect on the moral reasons for [the law's prohibition] so
> that he will make the decision to reject the prohibited action for
> *moral* reasons, rather than for the self-interested reason of
> avoiding pain. (1984: 212) 
> 
> 
> 



Critics, however, object on number of different grounds. Some point
out that while moral education may be *one* plausible aim of
punishment, it is not the "full and complete
justification" Hampton (1984: 209) and others claim it to be
(see Dagger 2011). Others argue that it is far from evident that
punishing adult criminals is similarly likely to result in moral
improvements (Pereboom 2001: 162-3; 2014a: 161). Children and
adult criminals differ in significant respects--i.e., adult
criminals, unlike children, typically understand the moral code
accepted in their society, and children are generally more
psychologically malleable than adults criminals are (Pereboom 2014a:
162; 2001: 163). 



Whether or not moral education theories succumb to these objections
(cf. Drucker 1986; Shook 2004; Shafer-Landau 1991; Dagger 2011), there
is another non-retributive alternative available to moral
responsibility skeptics: an incapacitation account based on the right
of self-defense analogous to the justification for quarantine. This is
the approach favored by Pereboom and Caruso, and it draws on a
comparison between treatment of dangerous criminals and treatment of
carriers of dangerous diseases (Pereboom 2001, 2013b, 2014a, 2017a;
Caruso 2016, 2017, forthcoming-a; Pereboom & Caruso
forthcoming). In its simplest form, it can be summarized as follows:
(1) Moral responsibility skeptics claims that criminals are not
morally responsible for their actions in the basic desert sense; (2)
plainly, many carriers of dangerous diseases are not responsible in
this or in any other sense for having contracted these diseases; (3)
yet, we generally agree that it is sometimes permissible to quarantine
them, and the justification for doing so is the right to
self-protection and the prevention of harm to others; (4) for similar
reasons, even if a dangerous criminal is not morally responsible for
his crimes in the basic desert sense (perhaps because no one is ever
in this way morally responsible) it could be *as* legitimate to
incapacitate him as to quarantine the non-responsible carrier of a
serious communicable disease.



This account differs from the previous ones in two important ways.
First, although one might justify quarantine (in the case of disease)
and incapacitation (in the case of dangerous criminals) on purely
utilitarian or consequentialist grounds, Pereboom and Caruso resist
this strategy. The incapacitation of dangerous criminals is instead justified on the ground of the right to harm in self defense and defense of others--a right that
arguably has broader appeal than consequentialism. They contend that
this justification makes the view more resilient to objections,
especially the use-objection mentioned above (Pereboom 2017a). This is because, as it is illegitimate
to treat carriers of a disease more harmfully than is necessary to
neutralize the danger they pose, treating those with violent criminal
tendencies more harshly than is required to protect society will be
illegitimate as well. Furthermore, innocent people could not be
incapacitated on this account since they pose no direct threat to
others.



Second, the quarantine model places several constraints on the
treatment of criminals (see Pereboom 2001, 2014a). First, as less dangerous diseases justify only
preventative measures less restrictive than quarantine, so less
dangerous criminal tendencies justify only more moderate restraints.
In fact, for certain minor crimes perhaps only some degree of
monitoring could be defended. Secondly, the incapacitation account
that results from this analogy demands a degree of concern for the
rehabilitation and well-being of the criminal that would alter much of
current practice. Just as fairness recommends that we seek to cure the
diseased we quarantine, so fairness would counsel that we attempt to
rehabilitate the criminals we detain. If a criminal cannot be
rehabilitated, and our safety requires his indefinite confinement,
this account provides no justification for making his life more
miserable than would be required to guard against the danger he poses.
Finally, there are measures for preventing crime more generally, such
as providing for adequate education and mental health care, which the
moral responsibility skeptic can readily endorse. The *public
health-quarantine model* proposed by Caruso, for instance, extends
the quarantine analogy into the arena of public health and attempts to
prioritize *prevention* and *social justice*. It calls for a shift away from
the myopic focus on punishment and toward a more holistic approach to
criminal behavior aimed at addressing the causal determinants of crime
and the social injustices that give rise to crime. (For criticisms of
the quarantine model, see Corrado 1996; Smilansky 2011, 2017; Lemos
2016; Tadros 2017).



Given the various non-retributive options available to moral
responsibility skeptics--for additional options see Corrado
(2001, 2013, 2014, 2017, forthcoming-a,b), Vilhauer (2013a,b), N. Levy
(2012, 2015)--it would be hasty to conclude that the skeptical
perspective leaves us unable to adequately deal with criminal
behavior. It may even be the case, as many skeptics are apt to
propose, that rejecting retributivism and basic desert would allow us
to adopt practices and policies that are more humane and effective.