Responses to the Four Commentators

In response to commentators, I address four questions about my free will skepticism about basically deserved moral responsibility and punishment. Replying to Megan Griffith, I argue that while coherent top-down naturalistic accounts of agency can be developed, the evidence that one of them is true is insufficient to reach the high epistemic standard set by basically deserved sanctions. Addressing Robyn Waller, I consider the proposal that manipulated agents are morally responsible, albeit in a mitigated way, and such mitigated responsibility is intuitive for such agents. I argue, however, that the mitigated responsibility intuition is compatible with the absence of basically deserved moral responsibility. Turning to Gunnar Björnsson’s account of sanctions, I examine the suggestion that sanctions can be viewed as basically deserved insofar as they restore a fair balance of psychological/material investment in interests. Although sanctions so conceived might seem not to be basically deserved because they are not imposed just because the criminal has knowingly done wrong, I recognize a compelling basic desert interpretation of Björnsson’s view. To Robert Wallace’s proposal for conceptual revision, that ‘free will’ be understood as whatever control capacities do the work our moral responsibility practices need them to, I respond that this proposal does not facilitate the historical and contemporary free will debate, a crucial function the concept has. The issues raised by my commentators clarify both the attraction of basic desert views and the challenges they face.