On Responsibility and Punishment

In this thesis, I discuss the nature of responsibility and punishment. The main aim is to present a philosophical account of responsibility and punishment that is open to insights from other disciplines such as evolutionary biology, cognitive science, politics, cultural studies, and so forth.In the first section, which consists of three papers, I examine the relationship between responsibility, libertarian free will, and hard determinism. Here, I explain why belief in libertarian free will was historically beneficial and explore its political implications for contemporary societies. I also argue that hard determinism (in a sense incompatible with moral responsibility) is problematic. Finally, I propose a response-dependent theory of moral responsibility that combines a Strawsonian framework with mindreading theories from cognitive science. This form of responsibility does not require libertarian free will and is compatible with the truth of determinism. Moreover, it does not focus solely on the forward-looking aspects of responsibility (such as consequences).In the second section, I turn to punishment as one of the main ways of holding others responsible. This section, also comprising three papers, considers the complex issue of defining punishment from different perspectives. First, I combine the response-dependent theory of responsibility developed in the first section with the response-dependent theory of legal punishment developed by H. L. A. Hart to provide a unified theory of responsibility and punishment. Here, I emphasise the importance of interpretation and social consensus in determining the nature of an action as a crime and a reaction as punishment. I then engage in more detailed discussions on the definition of punishment, focusing first on the debate between punishment positivists and moralists concerning the use of moral concepts in defining punishment, and second on the relationship between (retributive) punishment and revenge.