Moral Responsibility

This chapter critically examines the concept of moral responsibility at the heart of everyday interpersonal and legal practices. While we routinely hold people morally responsible – praising and blaming them as if they genuinely deserve it – the chapter argues that such desert-based judgments are philosophically unjustified. Drawing on a range of philosophical literature, it distinguishes between several types of responsibility, including causal, role, and liability responsibility, and focuses on the central question of basic desert moral responsibility. The chapter defends the view that this kind of responsibility requires a form of free will we do not possess. Building on Derk Pereboom’s work, the chapter proposes a forward-looking, non-desert-based alternative grounded in protection, moral formation, reconciliation, and restoration. It also challenges the widespread assumption that moral responsibility practices are psychologically fixed or evolutionarily hardwired, citing crosscultural and empirical research to support their malleability. By replacing retributive attitudes with constructive, future-oriented responses, the chapter shows how free will skepticism can preserve what matters most in our moral lives – without relying on morally problematic notions of blame, indignation, or deserved suffering.