desert, fairness, and resentment
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This article was downloaded by: [University of Saskatchewan Library]On: 11 September 2013, At: 04:52Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Desert, fairness, and resentmentDana Kay Nelkin aa Department of Philosophy , UC San Diego , La Jolla , CA ,92093 , USAPublished online: 23 May 2013.
To cite this article: Dana Kay Nelkin (2013) Desert, fairness, and resentment, PhilosophicalExplorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, 16:2, 117-132, DOI:10.1080/13869795.2013.787438
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Desert, fairness, and resentment
Dana Kay Nelkin∗
Department of Philosophy, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
Responsibility, blameworthiness in particular, has been characterized in a number ofways in a literature in which participants appear to be talking about the same thingmuch of the time. More specifically, blameworthiness has been characterized in termsof what sorts of responses are fair, appropriate, and deserved in a basic way, wherethe responses in question range over blame, sanctions, alterations to interpersonalrelationships, and the reactive attitudes, such as resentment and indignation. In thispaper, I explore the relationships between three particular theses: (i) the claim thatone is blameworthy to the extent that it is fair to impose sanctions, (ii) the claimthat one is blameworthy to the extent that one deserves sanctions, and (iii) the claimthat one is blameworthy to the extent that it is appropriate to respond with reactiveattitudes. Appealing to the way in which luck in the outcome of an action canjustifiably affect the degree of sanctions received, I argue that (i) is false and thatfairness and desert come apart. I then argue that the relationship between the reactiveattitudes and sanction is not as straightforward as has sometimes been assumed, butthat (ii) and (iii) might both be true and closely linked. I conclude by exploringvarious claims about desert, including ones that link it to the intrinsic goodness ofreceiving what is deserved and to the permissibility or rightness of inflicting suffering.
Keywords: desert; responsibility; accountability; fairness; reactive attitudes; moral luck
1. Introduction
In his remarkably influential paper, “Freedom and Resentment”, Peter Strawson (1962/2003) suggested that we could sidestep an apparent stalemate among participants of thedebate about free and responsible action by focusing not on questions such as whetherdeterminism is true or relevant to freedom, but by starting with the “non-detached attitudesand reactions of people directly involved in transactions with each other; of the attitudes andreactions of offended parties and beneficiaries; of such things as gratitude, resentment, for-giveness, love, and hurt feelings” (62). Calling these the “reactive attitudes”, Strawson wenton to suggest that what it is to be a responsible agent is to be the appropriate target of suchattitudes.1 While many have challenged the claim that responsibility consists entirely in theappropriateness of certain sorts of responses, many have at the same time accepted a related,albeit weaker, thesis, namely that there is a mutual entailment between responsibility andbeing the appropriate target of such attitudes. More specifically, focusing in on blame-worthiness in particular, many have accepted the following biconditional: One is blame-worthy if and only if one is the appropriate target of the negative reactive attitudes suchas resentment and indignation.
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
∗Email: [email protected]
Philosophical Explorations, 2013Vol. 16, No. 2, 117–132, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13869795.2013.787438
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Accepting this latter claim is logically consistent with accepting a number of othertheses about blameworthiness, including some that make reference only to features ofblameworthy agents, such as that to be blameworthy one must have the ability to do other-wise or that one is blameworthy for an action if and only if one acted on one’s own reasons-responsive mechanism.2 Still, the idea that blameworthiness can be correctly characterizedby reference to what responses to blameworthy action are appropriate is of great impor-tance. For example, it has been used to fix terms, to ensure that differing parties in thedebate are talking about the same phenomenon, and in arguments that particular featuresof agents are in fact required for blameworthy action.3
The reactive attitudes, however, are but one sort of response in terms of which blame-worthiness has been understood. In fact, earlier in “Freedom and Resentment”, beforeStrawson even introduces the reactive attitudes, he points out that what had been agreedto be at stake in the debate is moral condemnation and just punishment. And toward theend of his paper, he returns to these phenonema, taking them to be “all of a piece” withthe reactive attitudes. Supposing we accept the biconditional connecting blameworthinessto the reactive attitudes, then, should we also accept a biconditional connecting blame-worthiness to the appropriateness of punishment or (to avoid introducing what maystrike some as a legal term) to the appropriateness of informal sanction? And, if weshould, how are the theses related?
The recent literature on responsibility offers an intriguing variety of answers. WhatStrawson seemed to think did not require much in the way of argument, others haveargued for in some detail, and still others have quite strenuously denied. In adjudicatingamong the variety of answers, it will be crucial to make sure we understand the theses athand. Here, too, there is no shortage of interpretations. For example, some have under-stood “appropriateness” in one or other of the biconditionals as best cashed out interms of “fairness”, others as “desert”, others as a kind of “accuracy”, and otherssimply as “fittingness”.
In what follows, I will home in on the relationships between theses that appeal to fair-ness and desert, and to theses that appeal to sanction and the reactive attitudes. In Sections 2and 3, appealing to considerations regarding moral luck, I will argue that fairness and desertcome apart, at least to an extent. Then in Sections 4 and 5, I offer some suggestions aboutwhat the relationship between the various theses is, and, in particular, how sanctions and thereactive attitudes might be related. I then go on in Section 6 to explore the implications ofthe theses that appeal to desert. Although I will show that there are reasons not to acceptsome theses about blameworthiness, my aim here is not to defend any particular alternativethesis, but rather to explore the ways in which they might be related. In this way, my aim ismodest, but I hope that the exercise can contribute to the larger project of adjudicatingamong various accounts of responsible agency.
2. Luck and the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis
In “Two Faces of Responsibility”, Gary Watson (1996/2004) distinguishes between twosenses of responsibility, and relatedly, two senses of blameworthiness. “In the attributabilitysense, to blame (morally) is to attribute something to a (moral) fault in the agent . . .” (1996/2004, 266). (Example: stealing the book was a shoddy thing to do; or: he was mentallyimpaired, but acted very cruelly.) In contrast, in the accountability sense, blame requiresthe “imposition of demands on people” (273). It is this latter sense that we will be most con-cerned with here.4
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Spelling out the idea of accountability, Watson (1996/2004) writes,
To require or demand certain behavior of an agent is to lay it down that unless the agent sobehaves she will be liable to certain adverse or unwelcome treatment . . . Holding accountablethus involves the idea of liability to sanctions. (275).
In this passage, Watson suggests that the relationship between blameworthiness in theaccountability sense and the liability to sanctions is very close indeed. It seems that “liab-ility” should be read, not as a mere descriptive claim about what someone will actually besubject to, but, rather, a normative claim about the fairness of imposing sanctions.5 On onereading, there is a simple mutual entailment between blameworthiness and the fairness (or,more cautiously, the lack of unfairness) of sanctions: A person is morally blameworthy ifand only if a sanctioning response would not be unfair.
We might refine the thesis still further so as to take into account differing degrees ofblameworthiness, as follows:
A person is morally blameworthy to the extent that a sanctioning response of a particular sever-ity would not be unfair.
Call this the “Fairness of Sanctions Thesis”. It accords with a variety of intuitions. If Cathe-rine takes thirds at a family dinner before taking the time to ensure that everyone else hasalready had the opportunity for seconds, this might be blameworthy, but not to a greatextent. State punishment seems wildly out of place, and so does social exile. In fact, intypical cases of this kind, at most a mild response would seem to be fair and warranted.On the other hand, if Debbie, unprovoked, commits a calculated murder just to see if shecould pull it off, all sorts of responses would seem fair, including a number that wouldresult in harm to Debbie, such as incarceration by the state, social shunning, and more.
Further, it should be emphasized that the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis is not a definitionof blameworthiness, nor does it exhaust its necessary and sufficient conditions. Consistentwith the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis is the idea that blameworthiness depends essentiallyon agents’ rational and motivational capacities in a given situation, for example. The Fair-ness of Sanctions Thesis simply claims that there is a mutual entailment between one’sdegree of blameworthiness and liability to sanction that is not unfair. Further, it is atleast logically consistent with other claims of mutual entailment such as one relating thereactive attitudes to a person’s blameworthiness that we can call the “Reactive AttitudesThesis”:
A person is blameworthy to the extent that it is appropriate to adopt the reactive attitudes, suchas resentment and indignation, toward her.
Despite its appeal, I will present an argument in the remainder of this section that the Fair-ness of Sanctions Thesis is false.6 To see why, we will need to focus on a set of cases inwhich sanctions appear to be fair (or at least not unfair). And it will help first to focuson cases, not of sanctions (which we can understand here as intentionally presented as aresponse to wrong-doing), but simply of unwelcome consequences of choices. Considergambling on slot machines. Now when people freely choose to gamble in this way, it isnot unfair when some gamblers lose and others win big. Dworkin has coined this sort ofluck in consequences “options luck” (Dworkin 1981). People make choices, knowing therisks, and there is nothing unfair in there being, as a result, an unequal distribution of
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losses and gains. Similarly for other sorts of gambles, including investing in the stockmarket, giving up a steady income to pursue one’s dream on Broadway, and so on. Inthe same way, it seems, we could imagine a system of sanctions that works in a similarway.7 If one gambles morally, so to speak, by making an immoral choice, one couldknow that one might end up with any in a range of sanctions as a result. There would beno unfairness in one’s receiving any of a range of sanctions as a result of one’s freechoice. For example, suppose that two people gamble in a different way, by playingRussian Roulette instead of the usual casino version. Could the one whose bullet firesreasonably complain at receiving greater sanction than one whose bullet does not? If onehas freely exposed oneself to this risk, it seems that there is no unfairness in the case inwhich it comes to pass.
This reasoning suggests that we should accept the following premise:
(2) There are circumstances in which it is not unfair to receive a sanction whose degree ofseverity depends in part on the harmfulness of the outcome of an avoidable choice of risk,freely undertaken, even if one has no control over the precise outcome.
From the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis and (2), (3) follows:
(3) There are circumstances in which one can be morally blameworthy to an extent that is deter-mined in part by the outcome of an avoidable choice of risk, freely undertaken even if one hasno control over the precise outcome.
Thus, we have an argument to the conclusion that there is moral luck of a kind. The assassinwho hits his target is more blameworthy than one who does not. Similarly, the drunk driverwho hits a child is more blameworthy than one who does not.
And yet, there are strong reasons to reject (3). Despite the fact that we often do seem toblame people differentially for taking the same risks, depending on the actual outcomes,reflection suggests to many that we are either mistaken in doing so or we are respondingto other perceived differences in the cases that are genuinely relevant to blameworthiness.For example, when people are asked to reflect on the case of the two drunk drivers, or thetwo assassins, and the similarity of each member of the pair (aside from the outcomes oftheir choices) is emphasized, they often revise their initial differential reactions. And wecan explain why we might have our initial reactions. For example, in the case of intentionalattempts, outcomes are a (rough) proxy for how committed one was to the plan; in othercases, we might mistakenly assume that a greater risk was in fact taken in cases in whichharm was done.8 In real life, all else is not usually equal, and we naturally read backfrom outcomes to other relevant features of the cases.
But this supports the denial of (3), namely, (4):
(4) It is not the case that there are circumstances in which one can be morally blameworthy toan extent that is determined in part on the outcome of an avoidable choice of risk, freely under-taken even if one has no control over the precise outcome.
Accepting (4) provides us with a contradiction, and so a reductio of the Fairness of Sanc-tions Thesis and (2).
It seems to me that the answer is to reject the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis.9 Doing sodoes not imply that there is no relationship at all between blameworthiness and fair sanc-tion; but it does imply that the relationship is, at the least, more complicated than thestraightforward function captured by the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis.
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At this point, it might be objected that it is (2), rather than the Fairness of SanctionsThesis, that is the problematic premise. Perhaps it would be unfair to have such a systemof sanctions as described earlier, a system that parallels that of the kinds of differential con-sequences we accept as options luck in the case of gambling or other forms of choice underuncertainty, for example.
In reply, we need to ask what sort of unfairness would there be? It is not distributiveunfairness. In the relevant sense, both those whose attempts fail and those whose attemptssucceed are treated equally by being given the same chances. Nor does it seem to be unfairin a personal or non-distributive sense of “unfair”. For if there were only one offender,whether she succeeded or failed in her attempt, it does not seem that she would have justifi-able reason to complain about injustice in the consequences. We could even set up the sanc-tions so that no one can get “more than she deserves” in any intuitive sense. If we couldsomehow figure out the exact amount of sanction deserved for undertaking a certain actof wrongdoing with a certain risk, then at most those who succeed would get that sanction,while those who fail would get a lesser sanction. Thus, there is good reason to reject theFairness of Sanctions Thesis.
3. Luck and the Desert of Sanctions Thesis
At the same time, we have introduced the idea of desert as relevant to determining non-distributive fairness, and this might seem to suggest a variant of the Fairness of SanctionsThesis that appeals, not to fairness, but to desert. Instead, we have the Desert of SanctionsThesis:
A person is morally blameworthy to the extent that a sanctioning response of a particular sever-ity would not be undeserved.
Before we can see whether this thesis fares better when it comes to the kind of reductio thatchallenged the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis, it will be helpful to say a few things abouthow we should understand desert here. As Joel Feinberg (1970) noted, the word“desert” is used in a variety of ways. Following Feinberg, let us think about what hecalls “personal desert”, which he distinguishes from desert that might be applicablewhen we speak of art objects being deserving of admiration or problems deserving ofconsideration. While the concept of desert is not analyzable, that does not mean wecannot make a number of claims about it that will both help us pick out the concept andilluminate it. In the relevant sense, Feinberg writes that persons deserve modes of treatmentthat are “generally ‘affective’ in character, that is, favored or disfavored, pursued oravoided, pleasant or unpleasant” (61).
What is meant by “generally affective?” Feinberg allows that in a particular case onemight deserve something that is generally regarded as unpleasant even if one does not soregard it oneself. I believe that he is right to note that a wrongdoer can get what he deservesin a negative sense even if the wrongdoer in fact finds it pleasant or does not find it unwel-come. Perhaps he is masochistic, for example. However, I think that rather than take theroute that Feinberg does and suggest that the kind of treatment deserved must be generallyfavored, even if not in particular cases, it is more plausible to suggest that the treatment besomething that is either good or bad for the person in all cases in which desert is achieved,even if not recognized as such by the person. So desert involves some sort of harm, whetherthat includes felt suffering or not. There is much more to say about desert, but for now let uswork with an intuitive understanding.
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Let us now see how the Desert of Sanctions Thesis fares against the kind of reductio wepresented for that thesis. The reductio that is parallel to our original one of the Fairness ofSanctions Thesis now goes as follows:
(The Desert of Sanctions Thesis) A person is morally blameworthy to the extent that a sanction-ing response of a particular severity would not be undeserved.
(2′) There are circumstances under which desert of sanction is determined in part by theoutcome of an avoidable choice of risk, freely undertaken even if one has no control overthe precise outcome.
(3′) There are circumstances in which one can be morally blameworthy to an extent that isdetermined in part on the outcome of an avoidable choice of risk, freely undertaken even if onehas no control over the precise outcome.
(4′) It is not the case that there are circumstances in which one can be morally blameworthyto an extent that is determined in part on the outcome of an avoidable choice of risk, freelyundertaken even if one has no control over the precise outcome.
Again, it seems we have a reductio of the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and (2′). But in thiscase, we have good reason to take a different approach. We can save the Desert of SanctionsThesis by rejecting (2′), since (2′) is not intuitive in the way that (2) is. In contrast to the ideathat it could be fair to have an element of chance in the sanctions with which we respond towrong-doing, as long as the procedure is fair in other ways, it is not at all intuitive that whatresponse someone deserves can vary depending on outcomes of agents’ actions over whichthey have no control. For example, in the sort of Russian Roulette case described earlier, ifboth players pull the trigger, with the same odds of killing their target, and because offactors completely out of their control one kills and one does not, it is not intuitive thatthe outcome affects what sort of sanction the two deserve, particularly if we are clearthat we are not using “desert” simply to mean the same as “fairness”. Or take a differentpair of cases: two people delay getting their car’s brakes checked. In each case, as theperson drives home, the brakes fail. In one case, a dog runs in front of the car and theperson cannot stop despite pumping the brakes and the dog is killed. In the other case,the dog appears a split second later than in the first case, and makes it across the streetsafely giving the second driver the chance to gradually come to a stop. Is one more deser-ving of sanction than the other? Of course, intuitions about a few cases by themselves willnot fully settle the question of whether we should reject (2′), since it is impossible to showin this way that there are no cases in which desert is determined partly by the outcome ofone’s choices over which one lacks control. However, I think that it is also plausible thatthese intuitive responses generalize, and that we also find intuitive the general principlethat rejects this kind of luck in desert. And although there are those who defend somethinglike (2′), in the process they also reject (4′) – in essence, accepting moral luck, or, morespecifically, luck in degree of blameworthiness (Moore 1997). As before, there seem tobe good reasons for accepting (4′). Thus, if (2′) has to go, so be it.
The reductio does not work as an argument against the Desert of Sanctions Thesis. Whydo the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis fare differently whenit comes to luck? Here is a first pass at an answer: it depends on the difference between fair-ness (of various sorts) on the one hand and desert on the other. While I will return to thenotion of desert in more detail in later sections, consider here that fairness invokesjustice in the way we treat each other. There are different kinds of justice, and of fairnessin this sense, as we saw earlier – a distributive notion and a nondistributive one. Andwhile desert may have implications for how we treat each other, it seems to be only oneof multiple considerations that can affect fairness in our treatment of each other. Thus,
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while there may be times when it is fair (and, a fortiori, not unfair) to introduce an elementof luck in how we treat each other, desert itself is not what licenses this.
Thus, considerations of luck do not lead us to reject the Desert of Sanctions Thesis in theway that they do lead us to reject the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis. However, should weaccept the thesis? Let us begin to approach this question indirectly by seeing whether itis compatible with other plausible theses.
4. Luck and the Reactive Attitudes Thesis
On one understanding of the Reactive Attitudes Thesis, accepted by Michael Otsuka (2009)and others, it would be inconsistent to accept the Reactive Attitudes Thesis and the Desertof Sanctions Thesis. Again, luck comes into play in the reasoning.
Here is an example of the reasoning:
. . . consider another case in which each of two expert fencers grabs a sword and lunges at thevictim’s heart simultaneously. They both justifiably believe that these swords are lethal instru-ments. Yet unbeknownst to them, one of them is a theatrical prop that is designed to harmlesslycollapse upon impact. In this case it will be clear which of them drew blood. Moreover, I thinkit justifiable for those close to the victim to resent that person more than the other for actuallypiercing the victim’s flesh and grievously, mortally injuring him. He’s the murderer – the onewho deprived them of the person they love. (Otsuka 2009, 381)
Otsuka takes it that luck can affect how much in the way of resentment is appropriate and soaffect how blameworthy one is. But if luck cannot affect desert of sanctions, then it wouldseem that the Desert of Sanctions Thesis cannot be the right account of blameworthiness. Atthe very least, it appears that one would have to choose between the Desert of SanctionsThesis on the one hand and the Reactive Attitudes Thesis on the other.10
However, I do not think we are forced to make this choice. To see why, note that to getthe result that the Reactive Attitudes Thesis leads to luck in blameworthiness, one needs toaccept a particular principle about the appropriateness conditions of the reactive attitudes,namely, that more resentment is appropriate (and, in particular, justified) the more harm isdone. But while we might think that it is understandable to feel more resentment in the casewhen more harm is done, it is far from clear that we should feel more, as opposed to moregrief and distress, or that we would be more justified in feeling more resentment. It is plaus-ible that we ought to feel equally resentful of both swordsmen, for example. And even inless dramatic cases, I think we can distinguish between what would be understandableand what would be justified.11 Thus, there is a way to accept the Reactive AttitudesThesis while rejecting moral luck for blameworthiness, thereby preserving the Desert ofSanctions Thesis. At least considerations of moral luck do not force a choice betweenthese. Nevertheless, questions remain about the relationship between these theses.
5. The relationship between sanctions and reactive attitudes
We saw in the last sections that the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the Reactive AttitudesThesis are not rendered inconsistent by considerations of luck. But is there reason to acceptboth? If they are both true, what makes them both true? Is one more fundamental than theother? Is one an instance of the other? As we saw earlier, Strawson (1962/2003), for one,saw an especially tight fit between the reactive attitudes and sanctions, writing that the reac-tive attitudes and the willingness to inflict suffering that is “essential to punishment” are “allof a piece”, for example (90). And it is notable that resentment and indignation are
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sometimes called the “retributive emotions”, suggesting a close link between the attitudesand sanctions. Sometimes the link seems to be simply assumed, but sometimes it is articu-lated in detail and even argued for. I will now turn to some of the ways that the two havebeen, and might be, linked.
On one view, the reactive attitudes are themselves a kind of informal sanction. And ifthis is right, then it makes it natural to speak not only of the desert of sanctions, but of thedesert of the reactive attitudes themselves. On this view, it can be natural to read “appropri-ateness” in the Reactive Attitudes Thesis as “desert”.
Derk Pereboom focuses on a notion of responsibility that is understood in terms of thedesert of blame. In a central sense at stake in the free will debate, he suggests that the notionof moral responsibility at issue is a notion of “basic desert”. In his view:
for an agent to be morally responsible for an action in this sense is for it to be hers in such a waythat she would deserve to be blamed if she understood that it was morally wrong, and she woulddeserve to be praised if she understood that it was morally exemplary. The desert at issue here isbasic in the sense that the agent would deserve to be blamed or praised just because she hasperformed the action, given an understanding of its moral status, and not, for example,merely by virtue of consequentialist or contractualist considerations. (Pereboom, in press,chap. 6, ms p. 2)
This thesis connecting responsibility and desert is not explicitly stated in terms of eithersanction or the reactive attitudes.12 But since at least one form of blame is the reactive atti-tudes themselves, it is natural to conclude that they are deserved (as opposed to, say, accu-rate, or fitting) just in case their target is blameworthy insofar as they are themselves a kindof sanction or harm. Let us consider the claim that the reactive attitudes are appropriate inthe sense of “deserved”.
Now some have argued that the mere having of negative reactive attitudes is not harmfulto their target, because the attitudes might never be expressed, and so their target mightnever even be aware of their existence.13 However, I think that this is at best an incompleteargument. While it is controversial, I find it plausible that things can be bad or good for uswithout our being aware of them. So it may very well be that your resenting me is bad forme even if I never find out about it and am not affected by it in indirect ways such as yourspending less time with me. At the same time, this is far from an argument that beingresented must be bad for me. Perhaps being resented by a hateful person is a good or atleast not a bad thing for me. Thus, even if we accept the (controversial) view that onecan be harmed by something even if one does not experience it or suffer in any felt way,there are plausible intuitive reasons for thinking that the mere holding of reactive attitudesis not necessarily a bad thing for their target.
However, even if we reject the idea that being the target of the reactive attitudes is a kindof sanction, we might find that the expression of the attitudes is a harm, and this would atleast provide a clear link between the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the Reactive AttitudesThesis.14 And it might initially seem that the move from the holding of the attitudes to theexpression of the attitudes offers a clearer case of harm. Yet I think that on reflection we cansee that the expression of attitudes is even more clearly not essentially harmful. Theexpression of attitudes may very well be more typically harmful, but it is easy toimagine cases not only when the expression of such attitudes is welcomed by the target,but when the expression is really a good thing for the target. Suppose you commit aminor transgression. Having a small-minded teacher express her attitudes for all to seemight make one the most popular person in school, and might be a good thing in allsorts of ways – allowing one to see how she really feels, constituting the achievement of
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one’s aim in getting under her skin, and so on. Again, given the intuitive appeal of suchcases,15 and without more in the way of argument to think that the expression of the atti-tudes is essentially harmful, there is reason to think that it is not.
However, other ways to link the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the Reactive AttitudesThesis remain. One might take it that the former is true if and only if the latter is because thereactive attitudes dispose their holders to sanctioning behavior. Strawson (1962/2003), forone, suggests this sort of link between the reactive attitudes and sanctions, writing that thereactive attitudes
. . . tend to inhibit, or at least limit our goodwill towards the object of these attitudes, tend topromote an at least partial and temporary withdrawal of goodwill; they do so in proportionas they are strong . . . Just as the other-reactive attitudes are associated with a readiness toacquiesce in the infliction of suffering on an offender, within the “institution” of punishment,so the self-reactive attitudes are associated with a readiness on the part of the offender toacquiesce in such infliction without developing the reactions (e.g., of resentment) which hewould normally develop to the infliction of injury upon him; i.e. with a readiness, as wesay, to accept punishment as “his due” or “just”. (77)16
Accepting a similar approach, Watson (1996/2004) goes on to suggest that the fact that“blaming attitudes involve a readiness to adverse treatment” is precisely what makes ques-tions of fairness arise for the reactive attitudes as well as for the adverse treatment itself.Here Watson seems to be connecting the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis with an understand-ing of the Reactive Attitudes Thesis that cashes out “appropriateness” not in terms of desert,but in terms of fairness. It will be helpful to consider this reasoning, and the way it connectssanctions and the reactive attitudes.
In assessing the claim under consideration, that the attitudes dispose us to treat theirobjects adversely, we need first to ask about its status. It appears to be a point abouthuman psychology. And here I think that even if it is true that typically resentment givesrise to such a disposition, it is also reasonable to think that there can be exceptions. Forexample, those who believe strongly that we ought not to treat anyone in adverse waysmight still feel indignation from time to time, and it seems conceivable that they are noteven disposed to cause harm. This, too, has the status of an empirical claim, and it is notobvious how we would begin to test it since dispositions can be overridden in theirexpression by other dispositions to act in opposite ways. Let us set this aside for now,then, and turn to the question of whether the claim that reactive attitudes dispose one tosuch behavior can do the work intended here, namely, show how, if the two theses underconsideration are true, the reasons for their truth are connected.
Consider first the suggestion that certain other attitudes we might have are also con-nected with dispositions to treat others adversely. Jealousy, or xenophobia, might plausiblybe thought to be so connected with dispositions to treat others in adverse ways. Perhapseven judgments of certain sorts, such as that someone is prone to violence, mightdispose one to adverse treatment, particularly if we take into account that the associationis merely typical, or if necessary, then one that might be overridden by other dispositions.These are not obviously blaming attitudes. Yet if they bear the same connection that thespecifically reactive attitudes, such as resentment and indignation, bear to adverse treatmentor the infliction of suffering, then we might ask whether this connection can be whatexplains why the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the Reactive Attitudes Thesis are bothtrue, if they are. These examples also provide a way of questioning Watson’s explicitreasoning connecting the fairness of sanctions to the fairness of the attitudes. Supposeagain, not implausibly, that jealousy disposes the jealous – not always, perhaps, but
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typically – toward adverse treatment. And suppose that the adverse treatment is unfair.Does this make the jealousy itself unfair? It may be destructive, and inappropriate onother dimensions, but it is not intuitively unfair to its object. Similarly, suppose thatone’s judgment about a co-worker’s lack of trustworthiness or lack of compassion disposesone to treat one’s co-worker unfairly in adverse ways. It would not seem to make the judg-ment unfair.17
Now return to the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the Reactive Attitudes Thesis withoutfeaturing fairness as a way of understanding appropriateness. We can now ask why and inwhat way the having of the reactive attitudes could be inappropriate simply because it dis-poses its holder to inappropriate behavior. If the attitudes themselves are not harmful andcould be appropriate on other dimensions, such as being based on accurate assessmentsof the situation, and the dispositions in question can be overridden, then in what sense isthe having of the attitudes inappropriate? Without a particular way of understanding “appro-priateness” it is unclear exactly how this suggestion about dispositions will help explain theconnections between the two theses.
Even if these ways of linking the reactive attitudes to sanctions do not serve to explainwhy both theses are true if they are, there is yet another way in which the reactive attitudesand sanctions might be linked. It is this: having reactive attitudes presupposes that sanctionsare deserved. To take an example, if I am indignant that someone stole my friend’s compu-ter passwords, then I either believe or am in some way committed to his deserving some sortof sanction. Pereboom, for one, defends the idea that the reactive attitudes entail a beliefattributing desert to their target. He writes,
[o]n the view that seems most plausible to me, the attitudes of moral resentment and indigna-tion include the following two components: anger targeted at an agent because of what he’sdone or failed to do, and a belief that the agent deserves to be the target of that anger justbecause of what she has done or failed to do. (Pereboom, in press)18
This thesis is clearly consistent with the earlier account that takes reactive attitudes to besanctions. And there may be more than one connection between the reactive attitudesand sanctions. But if we accept the argument that the reactive attitudes are not themselvessanctions, then it is less clear that we can consistently accept the thesis that blameworthinessis to be cashed out only in terms of the desert of the reactive attitudes themselves. This isbecause, as mentioned before, we are understanding “desert” in a way that what is deservedis something bad or good for the person who is deserving. So we would have to understandthe blame in the presupposition of “deserved blame” here in terms of something other than(or in addition to) the reactive attitudes themselves. Still, the idea that the reactive attitudescommit us to their target being deserving of some harm is a plausible one and one to betaken seriously. On this view, the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the Reactive AttitudesThesis are linked in this way: it is plausible that the reactive attitudes are appropriate atleast in part in the sense that their presuppositions are true; and one important presupposi-tion of the negative reactive attitudes is that the target is deserving of something bad for himor her.
This might seem a very natural idea, but on reflection, there are good reasons to questionwhether the mere having of reactive attitudes commits one to any proposition about sanc-tions or harm. For it seems possible to imagine cases in which people are resentful or indig-nant without thinking that anyone should suffer, without wanting anyone to suffer andwithout thinking that it would be a good thing for anyone to suffer. One can find oneselfresenting a parent or an older child, say, without wanting any harm to come to them, and
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to the contrary, wanting only good things for them. Does this sort of case show that the reac-tive attitudes are not essentially desert-presupposing?
To answer this question, we will need to explore in at least a bit more detail what desertentails. For, as I will try to show, this sort of case may be fully consistent with the reactiveattitudes presupposing desert.
6. What does a commitment to desert commit us to?
If a person’s being deserving of sanction entails that harm in response to his wrongful action isgood, or that it ought to happen or even, possibly, that one has reason to inflict it, then therewill be difficulty connecting the Reactive Attitudes Thesis and the Desert of Sanctions Thesisby showing that the attitudes themselves presuppose a commitment to desert. For as we saw, itseems possible for people to feel resentment, say, without believing that the target shouldsuffer, or that it would be a good thing that she suffer. And yet desert is often understoodto entail these very things. For example, thinking about institutional punishment, Moore intro-duces the idea of retributivism as the view that “it is a sufficient reason . . . to mete out a par-ticular punishment to a particular person on a particular occasion – that the person deserve tobe punished” (1997, 104). And two paragraphs later, he equates the “commitment of retribu-tivism” as a commitment “to the intrinsic goodness of punishing the guilty”. Now these do notseem to be equivalent formulations, but both are familiar theses about desert: one is a deon-tological thesis about what someone’s being deserving gives us (sufficient) reason to do andone an axiological one about the intrinsic goodness of punishing the deserving. There aremany variations of Moore’s claims, and it will help to distinguish a few here:
(1) X’s being deserving of sanction provides a reason to harm.(2) X’s being deserving of sanction can contribute to one’s having a reason to harm.19
(3) X’s being deserving of sanction makes it permissible to harm.(4) X’s being deserving of sanction provides a sufficient reason to harm.(5) X’s being deserving of sanction provides an obligation to harm.20
(6) X’s being deserving of sanction entails that X’s being harmed is intrinsically good.
Of course, one can accept (1) or (2) without accepting (3) or (4). And one can accept (3)without accepting (1) or (2). Perhaps more controversially, one can accept each of the otherswithout accepting (6). To see why, consider some analogous cases. We can imagine situ-ations in which it is permissible for people to do self-destructive things, for example,and we do not have to think performing such actions is intrinsically good. There aretimes, too, when we have reason to do something that is not intrinsically good. Perhapsit is instrumentally good, or we have promised to do it, for example.
The first thing to note here is that which of (1)2(6) we adopt (if any) is not a settledmatter, even among those who take it that people are, in general, deserving of things thatare good and bad for them in virtue of the moral qualities of their actions. This suggeststhat even if more than one of these theses is correct, no one is making an obviousmistake by, agreeing that someone is deserving of harm while denying that someone’s suf-fering would be an intrinsic good or that one has reason to inflict such suffering. This isenough to preserve the idea that the reactive attitudes presuppose an attribution of desertwithout their holders themselves believing that someone’s suffering would be an intrinsicgood or that they have reason to inflict harm.
It is true that if there is a sound conceptual argument for one of the stronger theses like(4) or (5), say, then there is a sense in which those who hold the reactive attitudes are
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committed to a proposition contrary to one they actually believe; that is, they are committedin the sense that it is entailed by propositions that they do believe and should accept onrational reflection. However, given that we have no such recognizably sound argument athand, the fact that people appear able to resent without taking themselves to have such obli-gations is fully consistent with resenting presupposing an attribution of desert. Thus, we candefend the challenge to the idea that the reactive attitudes presuppose desert, as long as weeither reject the strong desert claims such as those that claim that the suffering of the deser-ving is an intrinsic good, or, at the very least recognize that they are not at all obvious.21
It does not follow that the reactive attitudes do in fact presuppose an attribution ofdesert. And there are other challenges to the view that they do. For example, somehave argued that while the appropriateness of resentment can be captured in terms ofthe accuracy of its component judgments, those judgments are exhausted by other prop-ositions such as that the target has done wrong and in so doing manifested disrespect.22
Now when faced with such a disagreement, one very natural reaction is to think that thetwo parties are simply talking about different phenomena, and perhaps there is a variety ofattitudes that go under the name “resentment”. However, it is also possible that we simplyhave a genuine disagreement. If that is correct, then there is much work to be done to sortthrough which of these alternative pictures of resentment and indignation is correct. Here Iwill make just one observation about an explanatory advantage to the view that the reac-tive attitudes presuppose desert. It is the very fact that questions not only of desert, but offairness, have been thought to be at stake in the central debate about moral responsibility.While I have argued that desert and fairness come apart in certain ways, they may notcome apart entirely. For as we saw, desert might be one relevant kind of considerationin deciding what is fair. If one takes it that the Reactive Attitudes Thesis is central to char-acterizing the kind of blameworthiness in the debate, the view that the reactive attitudesare connected to fairness in some way is either to be embraced or must be explained away.
Now even if none of the ways of connecting desert and the reactive attitudes that wehave surveyed is correct, it would still be possible for both the Desert of SanctionsThesis and the Reactive Attitudes Thesis to be true together. Their truth might simply begrounded on some third fact or set of facts. It may be, for example, that the non-response-dependent conditions of blameworthiness license both desert and appropriatereactive attitudes. In a very loose sense of “desert” as simply meaning “fitting”, bothmay be deserved, in this view. However, as I hope to have shown, there remains reasonto pursue the idea that there may be a tighter unifying link – or links – as well.
7. Conclusion
I began by arguing that considerations of luck in results show that the Fairness of SanctionsThesis should be rejected and that blameworthiness in a central sense should not be under-stood simply in terms of fairness of sanctions. However, the Desert of Sanctions Thesis andthe Reactive Attitudes Thesis are not subject to the same kind of objection. Further, Ibelieve that they can meet interesting challenges that they are inconsistent with eachother. The question then arises whether, if both are true, why they are, and I explored avariety of options for seeing the two as directly linked, including seeing the attitudes ortheir expression as essentially sanctioning or as necessarily disposing their holders to sanc-tioning behavior. Showing that there are good reasons for rejecting these hypothesizedlinks, I turned to the suggestion that the reactive attitudes are desert-presupposing. Butthe plausibility of this claim depends on what we think desert entails, and I suggestedthat at least at the outset there appears to be a great deal of flexibility in what a
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presupposition of desert commits us to – in terms of what we ought to do, what we are per-mitted to do, and even of what would be good to do.
Thus, while it remains possible that the Desert of Sanctions Thesis and the ReactiveAttitudes Thesis are linked only by a third set of facts that makes them both true, Ibelieve that there is good reason to pursue the idea that they are more directly linked bythe very nature of the presupposition of the reactive attitudes. And we can see that acceptingboth theses, linked in this way, and with desert itself linked to fairness, albeit in a subtleway, provides us with an appealing explanatory unity.
AcknowledgementsMany thanks to Derk Pereboom, Sam Rickless, Maureen Sie, and an anonymous reviewer for mosthelpful comments on earlier drafts, and to David Brink for thought-provoking conversations aboutthese issues. Although they might not all accept the point, they deserve my sincere gratitude.
Notes1. At least this is a very natural way of reading Strawson. See, for example, Watson (1987/2004).2. See, for example, Fischer and Ravizza (1998), who endorse the biconditional version of Straw-
son’s claim, but also offer a substantive account of the conditions of responsible agency thatmakes no reference to the responses of others.
3. Strawson’s own framework can be seen to provide a way for allowing the attitudes to be a guideto what features of agents are part of the necessary conditions for blameworthiness. (See Brinkand Nelkin, forthcoming.)
4. It is important to note that I do not thereby assume all of the further theses that Watson takes tobe true about this latter notion of responsibility. As will become clear in the text, I take it to be anopen question whether each of these is true. My reason for beginning here is to start with anotion of responsibility that clearly goes beyond attributability as Watson understands it, andone that I believe is central to the debate about responsibility.
5. See Wallace for the thesis that blameworthiness should be understood in terms of the fairness ofholding responsible, where holding responsible is understood in terms of “a liability to theresponses of blame and moral sanction” (1994, 82).
6. My argument here draws on that of Otsuka (2009), although he would not accept all of thepremises.
7. Explicitly focusing on punishment by the state, Lewis (1989) considers a kind of overt penallottery in which all attempted crimes are treated similarly in the sense that the likelihood ofmore severe punishment depends on the risk of harm incurred. He then imagines that insteadof drawing straws, we let the attempt/success ratio be the proxy for the degree of risk of attemptsand punish successes more severely than attempts. He presents an argument that there is noinjustice in such a system, and claims that he cannot find good enough reason to reject it. Atthe same time, he suggests skepticism about its soundness.
8. See Nelkin (2008) for a survey of these and other sorts of explanations for our initial reactions.9. Otsuka also rejects a claim similar to the Fairness of Sanctions Thesis, but not because he would
accept (4). In fact, he goes on to argue that two people’s degree of blameworthiness can varyeven when the only difference between them is precisely the kind that appears in the drunkdriver cases, a point to which I return later in the text.
10. It is possible to find a parallel argument in Scanlon (2008), but instead of allowing luck to affectthe degree to which it is appropriate to hold the reactive attitudes, luck affects the degree towhich it is appropriate to modify one’s relationships. There he writes:
Briefly put, my proposal is this: to claim that a person is blameworthy for an action is toclaim that the action shows something about the agent’s attitudes towards others thatimpairs the relations that others can have with him or her. To blame a person is to judgehim or her to be blameworthy and to take your relationship with him or her to be modifiedin a way that this judgment of impaired relations holds to be appropriate . . .. (128–9)
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Thus, rather than understand blame in terms of the reactive attitudes, he understands it in termsof a judgment about how your relationship has been impaired and, it seems, the very modifi-cation in your relationship that such a judgment justifies. Later, he adds:
As I interpret it, blame is not a mere evaluation but a revised understanding of ourrelations with a person, given what he or she has done. Blame is therefore a functionnot only of the gravity of a person’s faults but also of their significance for the agent’srelations with the person who is doing the blaming. The outcome of D’s action may bedue in part to bad luck, but it is also due to a fault on D’s part. It therefore increasesthe significance of that fault for those who have been affected by it. (150)
Thus, it seems that luck can affect your degree of blameworthiness, insofar as luck can affectwhat sort of relationship modification is justified. Now Scanlon offers independent reason toreject a thesis like the Desert of Sanctions Thesis under discussion here (and one I willdiscuss in Section 5), but, interestingly, this argument that appeals to luck offers another ground.
11. I think that a similar move might be made to preserve the consistency of the immunity of blame-worthiness to luck and Scanlon’s account of blameworthiness in terms of relationship impair-ment. Perhaps we ought to modify our relationships to the exact same degree in cases ofsuccess and failure to harm, even if it is understandable that we differentiate. It is plausible,for example, that we ought to modify our relationships in exactly the same way for both swords-men. Thus, considerations of luck do not give us reason to reject the biconditional linkingblameworthiness to relationship impairment. However, on independent grounds, I am inclinedto reject it. See Nelkin (2011).
12. Nor is it connected to a notion of accountability. See also Pereboom (2001).13. For example, see Wallace (1994, 56). He does, however take there to be a strong connection
between the reactive attitudes and sanction. See Note 5.14. Fischer and Tognazzini (2011) recognize a significant distinction between the mere having or tar-
geting others with reactive attitudes and outwardly expressing them. In their subtle paper, theyexplicitly take questions about the justification of having the attitudes to be distinct from questionsabout expressing them, and they take these questions to be two different moments or stages on theway to “accountability of the strongest sort” (382). Further, they write, “expressing resentmentmay raise questions of fairness that are not raised by merely targeting an agent with resentment”(393), which seems to suggest that expressing, but not merely feeling, resentment may be a sanc-tion or harm. Notably, though, they do not commit on this question. And further, they explicitlychoose not to define “sanction”, taking it to be a “slippery term best explicated by examples, someinterpersonal (such as demands for compensation and rebukes) and some institutional (such asfines or jail sentences)”. With this understanding of sanction, they take it that questions of the jus-tification of sanctions is yet a further stage after the questions of justification of outwardexpression of the attitudes, a claim which would suggest that at least on their understanding of sanc-tion, the reactive attitudes are not sanctions. But even this conclusion would be too hasty, becausethe further question directly after the questions concerning the justification of outward expression ofthe attitudes is expressed as follows: “Is it justified, in the circumstances, to impose some sort ofsanction (beyond mere outward expression of the reactive attitudes) on [an agent] on the basis ofher [performing an action]?” (394). The parenthetical phrase suggests that the expression of the atti-tudes may be sanctions of a kind after all. Putting all of this together, I conclude that while theirremarks are suggestive of the view described in the text, they can also be understood in a way con-sistent with a lack of commitment to the claim that outward expression is necessarily a sanction inthe sense we have been concerned with here.
15. McKenna (2012) offers a “conversational” view of our blaming practices, in which reactingwith the reactive attitudes is a stage in a kind of moral conversation. He argues that there isat least some reason to accept a version of his view that incorporates a desert thesis. In explain-ing how the view could work with the idea of desert, he appeals to the fact that the expression ofthe reactive attitudes in response to wrongdoing that are part of a kind of moral conversation istypically harmful and to the fact that this particular kind of harm can be intrinsically good, andthus, deserved. McKenna’s view is complex and subtle, and a full exploration will have to awaita future occasion.
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At this point, one might ask whether the fact that the expression of the attitudes is typicallyharmful is by itself enough to give a unified explanation of how the Reactive Attitudes Thesisand the Desert of Sanctions Thesis are related. If the relationship between the reactive attitudesand sanctions is that the (expression of) the attitudes are typically, but not essentially, a harmingresponse, then it would seem that if we take the appropriateness in the Reactive Attitudes Thesisto be understood as desert, then a revised version of the thesis may seem called for. For example:A person is typically blameworthy to the extent that it is appropriate to adopt (or express) thereactive attitudes toward her. Now one way of avoiding this sort of weakening of the thesis,but still highlighting the fact that the expression of the attitudes typically – if not always – con-stitutes a harm, is to return to an idea of Feinberg’s that I rejected earlier. The idea is that what isdeserved should itself be understood only in terms of what is typically, or “generally”, disfa-vored. In other words, on Feinberg’s view, “X deserves response R” can be true even if X wel-comes R, as long as R is generally disfavored. This move seems to me to give up the core ideathat what distinguishes desert from at least some other notions of fittingness is that what isdeserved in any particular case is good or bad for the person. To illustrate: suppose thatsomeone does something seriously wrong. He then receives a response that is neither unwel-come in his eyes nor bad for him in any other way, but it is a response that is “generally”bad for its targets. It seems odd to say that he got what he deserved. Perhaps the response isfitting in an important way, but it is not what he deserved in the distinctive sense at issue here.
16. For a similar view, see Watson (1996/2004, 278–9) and Wallace (1994, 56, 72).17. See Hieronymi (2004) and Graham (2012), for example, for the defense of the view that ques-
tions of unfairness do not arise for the reactive attitudes because holding these blaming attitudesis, in some primary sense, a matter of judging accurately.
18. Pereboom is willing, however, to settle for the weaker thesis that it is close to psychologicallyimpossible for one who expresses her indignation not to believe that the target is deserving ofblame.
19. This might seem no different from (1), but I believe that it is. To see the difference, consideranother example: You are walking home and see that you can continue on your normal routeor take a shortcut through a neighboring farm. The fact that your neighbors are out of towndoes not give you a reason to walk onto their property. However, in other circumstances, thisfact can contribute to your having reason: suppose now that as you are walking you noticethat the door is open and you hear a child’s cry. The fact that your neighbors are out of townmight now contribute to your being the only one in a position to hear the child and toattempt a rescue. In a parallel way, one might think that someone’s being deserving of harmdoes not give you reason to inflict it, but that it can in some circumstances give you somesuch reason. For example, you are in a position in which you have no choice but to inflictharm and you can harm someone deserving of it or someone else. This may give you areason to harm the person who is deserving rather than others.
20. See Kant (1797/1996), for example.21. I am inclined to take the former approach, but have not argued for that here.22. See, for example, Hieronymi (2004) and Graham (2012).
Notes on contributorDana Kay Nelkin is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. She is theauthor of Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility and a number of articles on a variety of topics,including free will and moral responsibility, moral principles, self-deception, and rationality.
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