290 Revisionism and Some Remaining Issues
Vargas’s answers by appeal to a principle of philosophical conservation
(2013: chapter 4) regarding our responsibility system, including our practices of
praising and blaming. It is more conservative to retain the system rather than
eliminate it as a skeptic would. If the system is beneficial, why not preserve it?
And it can be retained by revising the key concepts just enough to render the
system normatively warranted and naturalistically plausible. Vargas aims to do
this by introducing his agency- cultivation model. The central insight is that we
have reason to want a system of practices that help in building better beings—in
particular, beings who are alive to moral reasons.^2 As Vargas puts it:
On the agency cultivation model, we justify the responsibility norms, norms
of moralized praising and blaming, in light of the role that the involved
social practices plausibly play in cultivating a form of valuable agency,
given various facts about the fixed and plastic features of our psychology.
Teleology, psychology, and a special form of agency all have a role to play
in the account. (2013: 196)The teleology at issue has to do with justifying our responsibility practices and
our treating people as responsible agents in terms of the social benefits of doing
so. In this respect, Vargas proposes a moral- influenceability compatibilist theory.
A familiar version of this kind of theory that Vargas rejects (e.g., Smart, 1963)
would do this justificatory work directly in utilitarian fashion—of the sort Straw-
son (1962) found misguided. But Vargas wishes to respect the psychology of
persons in a way that is salutary to Strawson’s insights (see Section 6.1). People
do not care about influencing others when engaging in blaming and praising
practices—they are expressing their backward- looking regard for the quality of
will of those whom they praise or blame. Vargas contends that we can appreciate
the value of a system that co- opts these human propensities in ways that are
overall beneficial. So what we should aim for and promote, then, is a special
form of agency that facilitates these salutary social benefits.
The specific form of agency that Vargas proposes—the heart of his own com-
patibilist proposal—is a version of a reasons- responsive theory that aligns
roughly with Wallace’s (1994) and Fischer and Ravizza’s (1998) views. Vargas
writes:
What makes an agent properly subject to norms of moralized praise and
blame is that he or she has the general capacity to suitably recognize and
respond to moral considerations. (2013: 203)Moreover, Vargas marries a reasons- responsive theory to an important Straw-
sonian theme: What praise and blame target is quality of will, and they “foster
and sustain” (204) a kind of agency that is sensitive to moral considerations.
Nevertheless, Vargas’s version of a reasons- responsive theory departs consider-
ably from more traditional versions. He rejects what he calls atomism and
monism about free will and responsible agency, according to which an agent’s