Analyzing Strawson s Three Arguments Against The...

The aim of this essay is to assess Strawson’s three arguments against the incompatibilist from his paper, ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (1974). To this aim, I will first give the context of Strawson’s discussion. Next, I will give an account of causal determinism, following McKenna and Russell (2010), then explain the three camps that have emerged from the dialectic: the (i) compatibilist, (ii) incompatibilist and (iii) what I will call the ‘non-Strawsonian’ pessimist. I will then explain how Strawson’s reactive attitudes framework fits with his three arguments against the incompatibilist. I will then give an analysis of why these arguments fail to show that the incompatibilist position is false. Finally, I will conclude by maintaining that Strawson’s reactive attitudes framework do not demonstrate that the incompatibilist is mistaken in holding that determinism would undermine moral responsibility. Before I begin, I will first note that Strawson’s 1974 paper, ‘Freedom and Resentment’ fits into a broader debate about moral responsibility and free will where he argues for a type of compatibilist position in the free will and moral responsibility literature. I will now define the relevant terms. Determinism is the claim that â€Å"everything that happens in the world including all human thought and action-is subject to causal laws and that this involves the necessitation of effects by antecedent causal conditions† (McKenna and Russell, 2012, 1). What this means is that the course of