Experiment #111 · Thought experiment

Strawson's Reactive Attitudes

Compatibilism from moral practice

P. F. Strawson · 1962 · Free will, moral responsibility

First published: P. F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment", *Proceedings of the British Academy* 48 (1962): 1–25.

Resentment, gratitude, indignation — these reactive attitudes are constitutive of moral life. No general truth of determinism could rationally compel us to abandon them.

Strawson argued that questions of free will and moral responsibility cannot be settled by metaphysical considerations about determinism. The "reactive attitudes" (resentment, gratitude, love, indignation) are constitutive features of how we engage with one another as persons; the demand to suspend them in light of a metaphysical thesis is psychologically impossible and morally hollow. Compatibilism is grounded not in metaphysics but in practice: responsibility is a stance we take toward each other, whose conditions are normative rather than metaphysical. The paper reshaped twentieth-century free-will debates and remains a central reference for practical-stance compatibilism.

Formulation

Reactive attitudes (resentment, gratitude, etc.) are interpersonal responses constitutive of moral relations. Excusing/exempting conditions for these attitudes are themselves moral-practical, not metaphysical. Truth or falsity of determinism cannot rationally compel us to abandon the reactive framework wholesale.

Compare this experiment

Dimensions Engaged

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Observer

Targets Observer · Agency: is moral responsibility a metaphysical fact about agents or a normative stance we take toward each other?

Responses — How Schools Engage

Affirms / takes the bait 2

Naturalism

Compatibilist naturalism: responsibility is fixed by features of agents and contexts that determinism does not threaten. Strawson grounds compatibilism in the structure of moral practice.

Pragmatism

A pragmatist landmark: moral concepts are answerable to the practices that sustain them, not to metaphysical first principles. The reactive attitudes are the bedrock.

Reframes the question 3

Determinism

Hard determinists (Pereboom) press back: Strawson too quickly assumes the reactive framework is non-negotiable. Detached reflection can and should modify it.

Existentialism

Authentic moral life requires engagement with others as persons; Strawson's point is congenial, though existentialists ground engagement in radical freedom rather than in habitual practice.

Reformed / Calvinist Theology

Compatible in form: Reformed compatibilism likewise grounds responsibility in normative-practical rather than metaphysical-libertarian features, though the deeper metaphysics differs.