Strawson, Ordinary Language, and the Priority of Holding Responsible over Being Responsible

Balaguer, Mark

doi:10.5840/harvardreview20239753

The Harvard Review of Philosophy

Volume 30, 2023

Free Will

Mark Balaguer

Pages 121-141

https://doi.org/10.5840/harvardreview20239753

Strawson, Ordinary Language, and the Priority of Holding Responsible over Being Responsible

It is often held that P. F. Strawson endorsed a radical and groundbreaking priority thesis according to which?holding someone morally responsible?is prior to (or more fundamental than)?being morally responsible.?I do three things in this paper.?First, I argue for a novel interpretation of Strawson according to which he did not endorse a priority thesis that is radical or groundbreaking or original; instead, Strawson’s “priority thesis” is just a consequence of his view that the meanings of our words are determined by our usage and intentions and practices concerning those words.?Second, I argue against the radical priority thesis that is often (erroneously) attributed to Strawson.?Third, I argue that while Strawson’s view does not involve a radical priority thesis, it does imply that debates about the nature of moral responsibility (and many other debates about normative ethics, metaethics, and conceptual analysis) are?trivial?in a certain sense.

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