Strawsonian Compatibilism 1396.5.3. Assessing Strawson’s Practical Rationality Argument
Consider next Strawson’s practical rationality argument. Many critics have taken
issue with Strawson’s reasoning here. A.J. Ayer (1980), for instance, has argued
that one standard of rationality is simply living in accord with the truth, and if
the truth of determinism were incompatible with certain beliefs (about what can
be deserved if no one can do otherwise), then by one clear standard, it would be
irrational to choose to commit to the reactive attitudes were it possible for one to
make such a choice. To objections of this sort Susan Wolf (1981) has offered an
ironic defense of Strawson’s view. Were we to choose to forsake the reactive
attitudes in light of the discovery that we are not free, our doing so would be
something that would itself be an expression of our freedom as rational agents,
that is, acting in accord with what we think we ought to do. Then our very effort
to withdraw from the reactive attitudes because we believe ourselves not to be
free would itself be an affirmation of ourselves as free agents. This, however,
according to Wolf, would be a hollow defense of our rationality. What this
would mean is that we cannot consistently choose to live as if we are unfree
agents, and thus it would not be rational to do so. But this would not show that
we are in fact free. And it would still be true that we would think of ourselves as
something we do not want to be.
The preceding dispute operates under the assumption that the costs to human
flourishing suggest that, as a matter of practical rationality, we should persist in
embracing the interpersonal stance and the full spectrum of the reactive attitudes.
But others have argued that it is not at all clear that, thinking in terms of the gains
and losses to human life, it would be rational to persist in endorsing the reactive
attitudes—and in particular those morally reactive attitudes pertaining to blame and
punishment (e.g., Pereboom, 2001, 2014; Smilansky, 2000; G. Strawson, 1986).
Pereboom (2001, 2014), for instance, rejects Strawson’s core claim about the prac-
tical rationality of retaining the relevant reactive attitudes. Doing so, he argues,
might well be worse in terms of the gains and losses to human life. Rather, it’s
open that life would be better without them. Ridding ourselves of the propensity to
moral anger and to punitive emotions and dispositions, we could still embrace
caring and loving relationships, still find meaning in life, and still persist in deliber-
ations about what to do in light of what is most valuable. Granted, the option of a
cold, fully objective stance would make it practically irrational to withdraw fully
from the stance whereby we hold morally responsible. But we need not do this. We
can remain committed to the interpersonal stance while finding it rational to reject
just the parts of that stance that presuppose the senses of freedom and moral
responsibility that implicate basic desert.
6.5.4. Assessing Strawson’s Multiple Viewpoints Argument
Strawson’s appeal to considerations of multiple viewpoints is also open to some
tough objections. An argument of this sort goes through, minimally, only if
it meets two conditions. First the propositions accessible from the differing