Freedom and Resentment

by Peter Strawson

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Στρώσον Πήτερ (1919-2006), Βρετανός φιλόσοφος, καθηγητής της Μεταφυσικής στη Οξφόρδη. Υπερασπιστής “της φιλοσοφίας της καθημερινής γλώσσας”. Ερεύνησε τη σχέση της καθημερινής γλώσσας και της τυπικής Λογικής. Διατύπωσε τη θεωρία των συγκριτικών περιγραφών στις λογικές προτάσεις. Έργα του: “Introduction to logical theory”, “Individuals” (24grammata.com)

Peter Strawson (1919-2006) said he could make no sense of ideas like free will and determinism. In this regard he was one with those English-speaking philosophers who, following Ludwig Wittgenstein, thought such questions were pseudo-problems to be dissolved by careful attention to actual language use.
Strawson made a contribution to the free will versus determinism discussions by pointing out that whatever the deep metaphysical truth on these issues, people would not give up talking about and feeling moral responsibility, praise and blame, guilt and pride, crime and punishment, gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness.
These moral attitudes were for him more real than whether they could be explained by fruitless disputes about free will, compatibilism, and determinism. They were “facts” of our natural human commitment to ordinary inter-personal attitudes. He said it was “a pity that talk of the moral sentiments has fallen out of favour,” since such talk was “the only possibility of reconciling these disputants to each other and the facts.”
Strawson himself was optimistic that compatibilism could reconcile determinism with moral obligation and responsibility. He accepted the facts of determinism. He felt that determinism was true. But he was concerned to salvage the reality of our attitudes even for libertarians, whom he described as pessimists about determinism. http://www.informationphilosopher.com

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Some philosophers say they do not know what the thesis of determinism is. Others say, or imply, that they do know what it is. Of these, some — the pessimists perhaps — hold that if the thesis is true, then the concepts of moral obligation and responsibility really have no application, and the practices of punishing and blaming, of expressing moral condemnation and approval, are really unjustified. Others — the optimists perhaps — hold that these concepts and practices in no way lose their raison d’être if the thesis of determinism is true. Some hold even that the justification of these concepts and practices requires the truth of the thesis. There is another opinion which is less frequently voiced: the opinion, it might be said, of the genuine moral sceptic. This is that the notions of moral guilt, of blame, of moral responsibility are inherently confused and that we can see this to be so if we consider the consequences either of the truth of determinism or of its falsity. The holders of this opinion agree with the pessimists that these notions lack application if determinism is true, and add simply that they also lack it if determinism is false. If I am asked
which of these parties I belong to, I must say it is the first of all, the partyof those who do not know what the thesis of determinism is. But this does not stop me from having some sympathy with the others, and a wish to reconcile them. Should not ignorance, rationally, inhibit suchsympathies?…

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