126 Strawsonian Compatibilism
the truth about what freedom and responsibility are, and as an independent
matter, there is a set of interpersonal practices and emotional responses. In stark
opposition to this alternative model, what Strawson hoped to convey in the con-
ception of moral responsibility animating his arguments for compatibilism is that
it is not as if our moral responsibility judgments are one thing and our practices
of holding responsible and our emotional susceptibilities are another. Rather, our
judgments of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, and our actual blaming and
praising, are made appropriate by and gain the entire measure of their meaning
from their interpersonal and affective role in our lives. And accordingly, there is
a sense in which this grounding is naturalistic—the appropriateness and meaning
of moral responsibility judgments is grounded in these actual practices, and not
in a realm independent of them.
It would be misleading to report that most or even many contemporary phi-
losophers endorsed Strawson’s naturalistic approach to theorizing about free will
and moral responsibility. But most working in this arena now accept that to theo-
rize about moral responsibility one must show some deference to the way it
relates to our moral emotions and our moral responsibility practices.
We turn now to an examination of Strawson’s famous essay and of the con-
stellation of controversies that his paper has instigated. It will be useful to start
by situating Strawson’s essay within its historical context, since his remarks are
especially directed at a distinctive audience and a particular set of theories and
arguments that, in his estimation, had missed the mark in thinking clearly about
freedom and responsibility.^2
6.1. Strawson’s Audience: Optimists, Pessimists, and Skeptics
Strawson chose an idiosyncratic set of terms to refer to the audience he meant to
engage. His choice was, perhaps, unfortunate, since these terms—optimists, pes-
simists, and skeptics—tend to confuse rather than illuminate, especially for new-
comers to these philosophical issues. The optimists Strawson was referring to
were compatibilists; the pessimists were libertarians; and the skeptics were hard
determinists (what in contemporary times we would call free will skeptics,
including hard incompatibilists). One of the oddities of his choice of terms is
that one would have thought that libertarians are better described as optimists.
Aren’t they the ones that demand especially high metaphysical standards for free
will and believe that those standards are met? That seems pretty optimistic!
Moreover, why aren’t pessimists just the same as skeptics? Isn’t being a skeptic
about free will and moral responsibility just to be a pessimist about it? Puzzle-
ment vanishes, however, once one bears in mind that the terms optimist, pess-
imist, and skeptic are not used by Strawson as terms that describe an attitude
toward the nature of freedom and responsibility. They are, rather, terms that
describe philosophers’ attitudes toward the prospects for continued belief in
freedom and responsibility in the face of the possibility that determinism is true.
Compatibilists are optimistic about the prospects for freedom and responsibility