In his piece “Freedom and
Resentment,” Strawson uses resentment as the basis of a discussion on
determinism. He notably makes a distinction between two kinds of attitudes or
involvements in human relationships.
The first he considers “wholly
objective,” and relates to cases of injuries in human relationships where one
might say “he wasn’t himself” or “or “was himself; but he is warped or
deranged, neurotic or just a child” (79). This group of considerations is one
in which the actor is considered not morally
liable for their actions. Such interactions are objective in nature because the
non-responsible actors are seen as “objects of social policy” to “managed or
handled or cured or trained” (79). The other, opposite attitude is the active
or participatory attitude to human interactions.
In Strawson’s account the objective
attitude towards relationships plays a major role in defining determinism: “our
adoption of the objective attitude towards the abnormal is the result of prior
embracing of the belief that the behavior, or the relevant stretch of behavior,
of the human being in question in determined” (82). Strawson uses this to argue
that determinism is not grounds to abandon our morals, but merely a
“consequence of our abandoning, for different reasons in different cases, the
ordinary inter-personal [active and participatory] attitudes” (82.)
Given this relationship between the
objective nature of relationships and determinism, I was intrigued by how this
relates to free will and people living in poverty or coming from difficult
backgrounds. Considering that the objective relationship arises when we say an
individual is not at fault for their actions in relation to two individuals from
an urban slum is an interesting exercise. One escapes the slum to go on to
college and steady career, the other drops out of high school and joins a gang.
The first is considered is the exception that cements the rule: the second,
some might say, is not responsible for his outcome and we should not fault him
for it. A wealthy teen that falls into the same kind of problems experiences receives
just the opposite response: he alone is responsible for the actions that threw
away his higher standing at the start. So to boil that long-winded and convoluted
thought down: Does Strawson’s argument
imply that poor people have less freewill than rich people?
Hi Campbell,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that I would classify people who are impoverished in the category of the "objective reactions." Strawson uses phrases such as 'He had to do it' and 'It was the only way' to account for people who we might actively fault for their actions (think: person who steals bread for his family from the store out of necessity) (77). So in the case of people who are directly doing a wrong act, I think that Strawson would not want us to have objective reactions. For this category, he states that these situations do not "invite us to suspend towards the agent, either at the time of his action or in general, our ordinary reactive attitudes" (77).
Your example, however, seems to deal with instances when impoverished people have not done anything that would merit resentment, or vicarious resentment. While it is unfortunate that a person does not succeed because of his circumstances, this does not justify any feelings of resent towards him.
I think that this becomes more complicated with wealthier people because there is more of a possibility that the reason the wealthy person did not succeed was because of actions that merit resentment. If a wealthy person knowingly disregarded his parent's efforts to educate him and help him advance, the parents would be justified in feeling resent, and I think that Strawson would say we would be justified in feeling vicarious resent.
For this reason, at times, we can fault the wealthy for their offensive disregard without faulting the impoverished.
Hey Nisha and Campbell,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nisha's initial conclusion (1st sentence) about how Strawson would answer Campbell's question, but I don't agree with how she got there/where she ends up at the end.
If I'm not mistaken, what Campbell is trying to highlight is the idea that those whom we view objectively are "not morally liable for their actions." Nisha, the section you're quoting is referencing a different case, but in this scenario, we ARE in fact changing our attitudes toward the actor. Even if the mentally deranged person is performing a "wrong act" (Strawson would probably say especially in this case), we cannot hold her accountable, and should instead seek to "treat" or "control" her.
This is extremely important for Campbell's point. Again, if I understand him correctly, he's asking if the relative lack of agency experienced by a poor person is grounds for placing her in the category of "objective reactions." This would mean not morally condemning her. Yet I think your question rests on a misunderstanding about those we view objectively: they do not have less free will than their "normal" counterparts, we merely think it is inappropriate to resent them. The grounds for placing somebody in this category are not fluid on Strawson's picture, so the poor person doesn't fit the bill based on how he makes the distinction
However, I think if you push that point in the way I've alluded to (and which I think you probably had in mind), we could see something that challenges his basic point: why can't the classification be fluid? It doesn't make a ton of sense to restrict it to those who are "mentally deranged" or "children." This relates to Melissa's post about who determines moral responsibility, and I'm excited to discuss.
Hey guys,
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the discussion Devon and I had in tutorial, and is also relevant to Melissa's post regarding grey areas. Strawson claims that we view the morally underdeveloped and the mentally incapacitated with the objective view - such that we do not hold them morally responsible for their actions. This seems acceptable to me because 'moral responsibility implies freedom' (73) and if we do not have a mental capacity that allows us to make decisions freely, then we should not be held accountable for those decisions.
However, you could argue that a poor person also has no freedom to choose what he does, not as a result of mental incapacities, but as a result of his past and the conditions he was raised in. For example, if a starving person were to steal a loaf bread from a grocery store because if he did not eat he would die; it seems that he has done the rational thing in stealing and had no choice but to steal. Is it now rational for us to look at him with the objective view, or do we still hold him morally accountable for his action?
Campbell,
ReplyDeleteYou state that 'In Strawson’s account the objective attitude towards relationships plays a major role in defining determinism'. I don't think that is exactly what Strawson does, in fact he prefaces the quote you supply with 'But there is something else which...is equally certainly not try. And that is a sense of 'determined' such that...' in order to show that the origin of the objective view is not dependent on the truth of determinism. This is one of his main arguments for why the truth of determinism has no impact on the justification for blame and moral responsibility, so I think that it is important to understand this. Please correct me if I am wrong.