Abstract

Traditional work on moral responsibility has for quite some time focused on the compatibility question: is moral responsibility compatible with determinism ? But there is a second question that has also played a central role, though perhaps less explicitly. Call this second question the justificatory question:Can our reactive attitudes, judgments about moral responsibility, and the attendant practice of moral praising and blaming be rationally maintained and justified?It is not uncommon to take providing an answer to the compatibility question to be a necessary step in providing an answer to the justificatory question. One obvious way to respond to the justificatory question is to first assess whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism and then assess the consequences for our attendant attitudes and practices. Compatibilists, for example, provide an affirmative answer to the compatibility question, argue that we can, at least sometimes, be morally res ..