180 Seven Views of Contemporary Compatibilism
examples the ingredient previously found lacking in the context of a softline
reply. A cost of this strategy for compatibilists, we noted, is that it involves
resisting the intuitively plausible thesis that agents in pertinent manipulation
cases are not free and not responsible.
It is at this juncture that the historical compatibilist can push back against
McKenna’s advice. She can point out that she has a principled basis for adopting
a softline reply to many of the far more intuitively disturbing manipulation cases,
like those that involve brainwashing and invasive manipulation. Such cases
violate a historical condition on freedom and responsibility (Fischer and Ravizza,
1998; Haji, 1998; Mele, 1995, 2006b). Historical compatibilists can concede that
when faced with well- executed manipulation cases that build in the pertinent
historical details, they will after all have to take a hardline stance. But, these
historical compatibilists can argue, manipulation cases that build in enough
historical details turn out to be far less troublesome. It is just not by comparison
as counterintuitive in such cases to think that such agents might after all be free
and be morally responsible.
8.2. The Influences of Strawson on the Justification of
our Blaming Practices
As we explained, P.F. Strawson paid special attention to our practices of holding
morally responsible (Chapter 6). Drawing upon a broad form of naturalism,
Strawson claimed that because these practices and the emotions animating them
are natural facts of our social lives, they do not need any external rational justi-
fication. Hence, any special metaphysical condition for responsible agency as a
requirement for engaging in these practices is misguided. Indeed, it involves
over- intellectualizing the facts about our responsibility practices (Section 6.4.5).
While few have agreed with Strawson that we should leave the matter there and
treat our responsibility practices simply as natural facts, a significant number
have accepted Strawson’s general approach by taking it that the primary focus
when theorizing about freedom and responsibility should be our practices of
holding responsible—not a set of conceptually prior questions about the meta-
physics of the agents held responsible. What Strawson got right, according to
these philosophers, is that we do not need any external justification involving
special metaphysical facts about the nature of persons that could underwrite our
practices. But, contra Strawson, that is consistent with an internal constraint on
these practices requiring a normative justification for holding others responsible
(e.g., Russell, 1992, 2013). The justification is taken to be internal rather than
external because it is a feature of the practices themselves that blaming and pun-
ishing, as well as other forms of holding responsible, presuppose fair treatment,
or deservingness, or something of the sort. That is, they have general aptness
conditions for their application, conditions that, if unsatisfied, would (contra
Strawson) be reason to think that these practices are unjustified.
Some contemporary philosophers (Scanlon, 1998, 2008; Wallace, 1994) have
thus advanced compatibilist theses by attending to the normative burdens of