Revisionism and Some Remaining Issues 287the actual folk concepts in our thinking about freedom and responsibility.
However, Vargas argues (2013: chapter 3), we should resist endorsing the pre-
scriptive thesis that characteristically goes with the familiar forms of free will
and moral responsibility skepticism. Instead, we should revise our concept by
excising the objectionable incompatibilist strands while preserving the compati-
bilists ones.
Key to Vargas’s revisionist proposal is the contention that what moral
responsibility is—including the freedom requirements for it—could come apart
in a significant way from our folk concept of it. If so, we need to take seriously
the prospect of revising the concept so as to get it to accord with responsibility’s
true nature. This, as Vargas sees things, is precisely the situation in which we
find ourselves. So Vargas prescribes a revisionary form of compatibilism.
According to him (2013: chapter 4), we should make these revisions in a system-
atic way in deference to the normative burdens of justifying our moral respons-
ibility practices, especially those pertaining to the aptness of praising and
blaming. In this way we can “build up” a naturalistically plausible account of
free and responsible agency suited for our normative demands.
We will now set out each of Vargas’s main theses, his descriptive one and
then his prescriptive one. We’ll then consider the tenability of his proposal that
our folk concept of moral responsibility could significantly depart from what
moral responsibility really is.
12.1.1. Vargas’s Descriptive Thesis
How does Vargas argue for his descriptive thesis in favor of free will and moral
responsibility skepticism? On his view, compatibilism, as a descriptive thesis, is
untenable. One reason has to do with the intuitive appeal of certain philosophical
arguments, regardless of the philosophical merits of the arguments themselves.
Vargas countenances the Consequence Argument for incompatibilism and sets
aside a direct consideration of the contents of the argument (2013: 27). Instead,
he asks why the argument has been so appealing. In doing so, he notes that com-
patibilist renderings of the crucial ability in dispute, the ability to do otherwise,
make the argument unpersuasive to “antecedently committed compatibilists”
(28). Nevertheless, this is not a reason for a “standoff ” between compatibilists
and incompatibilists, since:
The “naturalness” or ease of the incompatibilist reading of the argument is
itself evidence that the argument captures an important part of the contents
and logic of commonsense thinking about these issues. (28)According to Vargas, if we run the argument by ordinary people, we find that the
most prevalent reading of the “can” claims embedded in the argument is
incompatibilist- friendly, and this is indirect evidence that our commonsense folk
concept is incompatibilist (28–9). Now Vargas grants that “[b]uilding a case for
folk conceptual incompatibilism on the basis of the reception of arguments for