140 Strawsonian Compatibilism
perspectives cannot be at odds with one another in that they do not yield direct
contradictions. Second, there can be no ground available from the one viewpoint
that provides reason to adopt the other. But the relation between the objective
stance and the interpersonal stance appear to be compromised on both of these
fronts, at least as some of Strawson’s opponents see it. Most obviously, what can
be shown from the objective perspective, under the assumption that determinism
is true, is that no one is able to do otherwise, since doing otherwise is not pos-
sible given the past and the laws. But from the viewpoint of the interpersonal
stance, it does seem that agents are able to do otherwise. Don’t we have a
straightforward contradiction here? How does the fact that there are distinct
stances ameliorate this problem (cf. Nelkin, 2000)? Admittedly, as noted above
(Section 5.1), Strawson might be able to resist commitment to a generalized
ability- to-do- otherwise condition, but this is work done by another argument, not
by the resources of any sort of appeal to multiple viewpoints.
Moreover, the very requirements that the incompatibilists fix upon, it might
be argued, are not ones that themselves find their grounds in propositions origin-
ally issuing from the objective perspective. It is, rather, elements of the interper-
sonal stance that provide reason to consider taking up the objective perspective
(e.g., Nagel, 1986; Pereboom, 2001, 2014). It is, for instance, because in our
moral practices a person’s being constrained results in her being excused by
virtue of not being able to do otherwise that we then consider whether a proposi-
tion of this sort might apply more widely. Or instead, it is because we believe
that having one’s mind, to use Strawson’s own language, “systematically per-
verted” (65) is a basis for exculpation, that we consider whether a more generic
and impersonal set of originating springs of one’s mental life and subsequent
actions is just as responsibility defeating. In both of these cases, the move to the
objective stance is rooted in our interpersonal practices and the reasons taken
from within it to excuse or exempt; Wallace (1994) calls this a “generalization
strategy.” Hence, it seems that the two stances cannot be insulated from each
other as innocently as Strawson’s approach might suggest.
6.5.5. Assessing Strawson’s Charge of Over- Intellectualizing
the Facts
Strawson charges his contemporaries with over- intellectualizing the facts. In
doing so he made perspicuous his commitment to a version of naturalism along
with a rejection of an appeal to metaphysics to settle the free will problem. The
central point Strawson advocated as a basis for his indictment is that our prac-
tices as a whole do not require justification externally and from without, and that
any legitimate type of justification will be internal to the practices themselves.
As far as the meaning of notions like responsibility, desert, and guilt, Strawson
contended, these notions gain their meaning by virtue of a “complicated web” of
attitudes and feelings making up to the moral life (78), and this “structure” or
“framework” is just a natural human fact. Hence, he claimed, we do not need
any external justification for the “readiness to acquiesce in the infliction of