Who's Afraid of Basic Desert?

ABSTRACT Skeptics about moral responsibility are skeptical about “basic desert moral responsibility.” They claim that “we” are committed to basic desert moral responsibility in a wide range of ordinary practices; accordingly, if skeptics are right, “our” practices rest on a widespread mistake. In turn, the (purported) fact that “we” are systematically in error motivates the skeptic's revisionary proposals for alternative social practices. I aim to head off this line of thought at the first step: we do not have sufficient reason to think that we are committed to basic desert moral responsibility as pervasively as the skeptic contends. The significance of skepticism is proportional to how widespread commitment to basic desert moral responsibility is; accordingly, the less confident we should be that such a commitment is widespread, the less confident we should be that skepticism poses a significant challenge.