196 Seven Views of Contemporary Compatibilism
permissibility of significantly harming her or allowing her to be significantly
harmed (189). All basic desert involves is the fittingness of modifying one’s
relation with a blamed person, in particular the withdrawing of good will upon
being wronged (Scanlon, 2013). He is clear that he does not think that punish-
ment can be justified on the grounds of basic desert. Here, what Scanlon has in
mind by basically deserved blame is gentler—far gentler—than the sort of
deserved blame other desert- entailing theorists have in mind. Thus, Scanlon does
not endorse standard compatibilism about basic desert- entailing moral respons-
ibility. His view is intermediate between such a compatibilism and some of the
skeptical views we will discuss in Chapter 12.
It is, however, doubtful that Scanlon would take a charge of departure from
standard compatibilism to be unwelcome. The same applies to the previously
noted criticism of his treatment of substantive responsibility (that the distribution
of burdens are ultimately a matter of luck). Scanlon remarks that if our ordinary
notions of blame and the justification for the responsibilities people come to
shoulder depart from his theory of responsibility, then his proposal is to be
regarded as a revisionist one. As he puts it, “I am quite content with this result”
(1998: 294).
8.8. Wallace’s Fairness- Based Compatibilism
In Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (1994), R. Jay Wallace argued for
compatibilism by appeal to fairness as informing the normative constraints on
holding morally responsible. He then drew conclusions about the conditions of
agency presupposed by these constraints, arguing that they are compatible with
determinism. Like Scanlon, Wallace adopts a Strawson- inspired approach by
setting aside questions about the metaphysics of agency as a starting point for
theorizing. Instead he seeks an internal justification of our practices of holding
responsible. These inform us about the relevant conditions of free and respons-
ible agency. There is also a more specific appeal to a Strawsonian strategy found
in Wallace’s argument for compatibilism. Recall Strawson’s Argument from
Exculpation (Section 6.4.1). Strawson first identified distinct kinds of exculpat-
ing pleas and then sought the underlying rationale that rendered them applicable.
In light of this rationale, determinism, Strawson argued, would not provide
grounds for invoking any exculpating considerations of either kind. Hence, it
gives us no reason to think that it would undermine freedom or responsibility.
Wallace advances an argument with a similar structure. He attempts to show that
the normative basis for the appropriate application of these various exculpating
pleas does not presuppose any conditions of agency incompatible with
determinism.
Seeking to improve upon Strawson’s own way of focusing on certain emo-
tions, Wallace distinguishes the morally reactive attitudes of resentment and
indignation from other attitudes and emotions. According to Wallace, a reactive
attitude of resentment or moral indignation has as its object a certain sort of
belief: that a person has violated an obligation to which she is held (1994: