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ArgumentThe reactive-attitudes argument
Holding others responsible needs no proof about free will.
Supports Compatibilism
Peter Strawson · Freedom and Resentment · 1962
- Toward others we spontaneously feel resentment, gratitude or indignation: these reactive attitudes form the ordinary fabric of shared life, and it is in them, first of all, that we hold someone responsible.
- Yet we do not tune them to any thesis about causes: we suspend them before a very young child or a sick person, not because a proof of would compel us to, but because there, the other was in no position to answer us as an equal.
- To hold someone responsible is thus to treat them as a partner of whom an account can be asked; and this expectation, woven into our very relationships, we could not give up without ceasing to live among others as human beings.
Therefore So we can hold ourselves and others responsible in a determined world: not through a power to escape causes, but through the relationships in which we stand. This is the path of .
How far does this reasoning convince you?
Not at all
Entirely