Table Of ContentFREE WILL SKEPTICISM IN LAW AND SOCIETY
“Freewillskepticism”referstoafamilyofviewsthatalltakeseriously
thepossibilitythathumanbeingslackthecontrolinaction–i.e.,the
free will – required for an agent to be truly deserving of blame and
praise, punishment and reward. Critics fear that adopting this view
would have harmful consequences for our interpersonal relation-
ships, society, morality, meaning, and laws. Optimistic free will
skeptics, on the other hand, respond by arguing that life without
freewillandso-calledbasicdesertmoralresponsibilitywouldnotbe
harmfulintheseways,andmightevenbebeneficial.Thiscollection
addressesthepracticalimplicationsoffreewillskepticismforlawand
society.Itcontains eleven original essays that providealternatives to
retributive punishment, explore what (if any) changes are needed
for the criminal justice system, and ask whether we should be
optimistic or pessimistic about the real-world implications of free
will skepticism.
is a lecturer in criminal law and criminology at
the University of Aberdeen, where she is also a codirector of the
Justice Without Retribution Network.
isSusanLinnSageProfessorintheSageSchoolof
PhilosophyandSeniorAssociateDeanoftheArtsandHumanitiesat
Cornell University. He is the author of Living without Free Will
(),ConsciousnessandtheProspectsofPhysicalism(),andFree
Will, Agency, and Meaning inLife ().
. is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning
and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University. He
isalsoacodirectoroftheJusticeWithoutRetributionNetworkatthe
University of Aberdeen School of Law. His books include Free Will
and Consciousness () and Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and
Moral Responsibility ().
FREE WILL SKEPTICISM IN
LAW AND SOCIETY
Challenging Retributive Justice
ELIZABETH SHAW
UniversityofAberdeen
DERK PEREBOOM
CornellUniversity
GREGG D. CARUSO
SUNYCorning
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Contents
List of Contributors page vii
Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society: An Overview
Gregg D. Caruso, Elizabeth Shaw,and Derk Pereboom
: .
Free Will Denial and Deontological Constraints
Saul Smilansky
Free Will Skepticism and Its Implications: An Argument
for Optimism
Gregg D. Caruso
Beyond the Retributive System
Bruce N. Waller
Free Will Skepticism and Prevention of Crime
Derk Pereboom
Deontology and Deterrence for Free Will Deniers
Benjamin Vilhauer
Free Will Skepticism, General Deterrence, and the
“Use” Objection
Kevin J.Murtagh
v
vi Contents
Fichte and Psychopathy: Criminal Justice Turned
Upside Down
Michael LouisCorrado
Causality and Responsibility in Mentally Disordered
Offenders
John Callender
The Implications of Free Will Skepticism for Establishing
Criminal Liability
Elizabeth Shaw
Free Will Skepticism and Criminal Punishment:
A Preliminary Ethical Analysis
Farah Focquaert
Index
Contributors
is a consultant psychiatrist and Honorary Senior
Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author
of Free Will and Responsibility: A Guide for Practitioners ().
. is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Corning and
Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University. He is also a
codirector of the Justice Without Retribution Network at the University
ofAberdeen.HisbooksincludeNeuroexistentialism:Meaning,Morals,and
Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience (coedited with Owen Flanagan, ).
is Arch Allen Distinguished Professor of Law
EmeritusattheUniversityofNorthCarolinaSchoolofLaw.Hewrites
mainlyaboutthephilosophyofcriminallaw,buthehasalsowrittenon
law and economics, on tort law, and on comparative law.
is Professor of Philosophical Anthropology at Ghent
University. She is the author of numerous papers in leading scientific
and philosophical journals. She is a coeditor of theforthcoming Routle-
dge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment.
. is an Assistant Public Defender in Asheville, North
Carolina, where he represents juveniles and indigent adults in criminal
cases. His philosophical work has focused on punishment, sentencing
theory, and free will.
is Susan Linn Sage Professor in the Sage School of
Philosophy and Senior Associate Dean of the Arts and Humanities at
Cornell University. He is the author of books including Free Will,
Agency, and Meaning in Life ().
is a lecturer in criminal law and criminology at the
University of Aberdeen. She is a codirector of the Justice Without
Retribution Network.
vii
viii List of Contributors
is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Haifa, Israel. He is the author of Free Will and Illusion
(), Moral Paradoxes (), and over eighty papers in philo-
sophical journals and edited collections.
is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Phil-
osophyDepartmentatCityCollege,CUNY.Hehaspublishedavariety
of articles in edited volumes and journals, including The Philosophical
Quarterly,Philosophical Studies,theCanadian Journalof Philosophy,and
the American Philosophical Quarterly.
. is Professor of Philosophy at Youngstown State
University. His books include Against Moral Responsibility (), The
Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility (), and The Injustice of
Punishment ().
Free Will Skepticism in Law and Society:
An Overview
Gregg D. Caruso, Elizabeth Shaw, and Derk Pereboom
Free will skepticism refers to a family of views that all take seriously the
possibility that human beings lack the control in action – i.e., the free
will–requiredformoralresponsibilityinaparticularbutpervasivesense.
Thissenseistypicallysetapartbythenotionofbasicdesertandisdefined
intermsofthecontrolinactionneededforanagenttobetrulydeserving
of blame and praise, punishment and reward (see, e.g., Pereboom ,
; Levy ; Caruso and Morris ). For agents to be morally
responsible for their actions in this sense is for the actions to be theirs in
suchawaythattheywoulddeservetobeblamediftheyunderstoodthat
it was morally wrong, and they would deserve to be praised if they
understood that it was morally exemplary. The desert at issue here is
basic in the sense that the agents would deserve to be blamed or praised
just because they have performed the action, given an understanding of
its moral status, and not, for example, by virtue of consequentialist or
contractualist considerations (Pereboom : ). Accordingly, here we
willunderstandfreewillasthecontrolinactionrequired forbasicdesert
moral responsibility, and free will skepticism as doubt or denial that we
have this sort of control.
Somefreewillskepticsdenythatwearemorallyresponsibleinthissense
becausetheybelieveitisincoherentorimpossiblethatwesatisfyitscontrol
conditions (Strawson , , ). That is, it’s incoherent or
impossible that we have the free will required to be morally responsible
in this sense. Others maintain that, though not incoherent or impossible,
our best philosophical and scientific theories about the word provide
strongandcompellingreasonsforadoptingtheskepticalperspective.What
all varieties of free will skepticism share, however, is the belief that the
evidential standard for our having basic desert moral responsibility is not
met,andasaresultthereisastrongpresumptionagainstthelegitimacyof
the practices associated with it – such as the reactive attitudes of resent-
ment, indignation, backward-looking blame, and retributive punishment.
