Plenary Session 3

Chair: Name (University)

Responsibility Without Ultimacy: From Scepticism to Pessimism?

Paul Russell
Department of Philosophy
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada

In a highly influential paper Galen Strawson has presented a fundamental sceptical challenge to the very possibility of moral responsibility. In this paper I consider Strawson's "Basic Argument" in support of this radical sceptical conclusion. Much of the force of Strawson's argument, I maintain, turns on  a set of assumptions that are neither fully articulated nor defended in his paper (or in later revisions of it). When these assumptions are fully articulated the force of the basic argument and its associated (catastrophic) conclusion is substantially weakened. In the concluding section of my paper I consider the significance of these observations concerning Strawson's "Basic Argument" for our understanding of "free will" problem on analogy with related issues concerning the "human soul". I argue that a lack of ultimacy does not discredit (true) moral responsibility but rather licenses a relevant measure of pessimism about the human predicament.