Seven Views of Contemporary Compatibilism 201moral sense, which involves a capacity to appreciate the reactive attitudes. What
matters, then, when we respond to the quality of a morally responsible agent’s
will depends upon whether that agent has a moral sense, one that is effective in
helping to modulate an agent’s conduct in the world and most notably in her
interpersonal relations with others.
Russell’s proposal provides for an interesting point of comparison with Wal-
lace’s (1994) view, as we have set it out here. While both are clearly Strawson
inspired views, their differences reveal different paths as regards how one thinks
about the crucial capacities for moral agency and the related scope of moral
responsibility. Note that Wallace restricts his account of the capacities bearing
on free will and responsibility to a general ability to grasp and comply with
moral and nonmoral obligations. In doing so, he explicitly limits the scope of
moral responsibility in Kantian fashion to the domain of deontic notions (cast in
terms of obligations, rights, duties, permissibility, impermissibility, right, wrong,
and so on). Russell (2013), by contrast, has a more inclusive sense of capacity
that is meant to be alive to the wide range of considerations that our ethical sen-
timents and emotions can track. This interestingly is revealed in Russell’s 1995
book, which was devoted to understanding Hume’s views about freedom and
responsibility and showing their relevance to the contemporary free will debate.^9
On the Humean view, what our moral sense tracks is not limited just to morality
conceived in terms of obligations and related concepts, but instead also encom-
passes attention to traits of a person liable to elicit pleasurable or painful qual-
ities of mind (1995: 179–80).
A difference that emerges, then, between Russell and Wallace has to do with
the capacities presupposed by the intended domain of our responsibility con-
cerns. Freedom understood in terms of capacities to comply with obligations
might be more stringent than when understood in terms of the full range of
ethical concerns that Russell is willing to include, such as being a creepy person
or acting unvirtuously. Acting with a moral sense alive to these considerations
might not impose the same sorts of burdens in terms of freedom. One important
question for Russell is how permissive on his view free and responsible agency
is. We have evaluated a range of compatibilist proposals, Wallace’s included,
but also Scanlon’s and Dennett’s, in terms of their relevance to desert entailing
moral responsibility. There is a plausible case to be made for the view that
desert- entailing moral responsibility and the freedom it presupposes should be
limited to moral wrongdoing, a deontic notion. Why? Some would argue that
one can basically deserve the hard treatment associated with blaming only if she
does morally wrong. If so, there is a worry that Russell’s Strawsonian inspired
compatibilism does not engage directly the controversies at the heart of the free
will debate.^10
Set the preceding considerations aside. A further interesting aspect of Rus-
sell’s compatibilist proposal is that it is critical of compatibilism despite being
an endorsement of it—hence the label Critical Compatibilism. In this respect,
Russell (2002b) distances himself from Strawson’s (1962) explicit allegiance to
optimism. As the Strawsonian optimist sees it, determinism poses no threat at all