2. The Standard Reading

Below is the perhaps most emblematic expression of the Inescapability Claim in ‘Freedom and Resentment’:

That Strawson makes the Inescapability Claim and takes it to be central to his approach is indisputable. Paul Russell (Reference Russell and Russell2017b: 34) is perfectly right when he observes that the Inescapability Claim sits “at the heart of Strawson’s naturalistic strategy”. But what does it mean that we are “naturally committed”, as Strawson says we are?

Something like a consensus has emerged among commentators. Here are a few representative examples of how the Inescapability Claim is regularly presented:

These presentations express what we may call the Standard Reading of the Inescapability Claim. The Standard Reading treats the Inescapabilty Claim as a psychological thesis: an empirical, (in principle) verifiable claim about the rigidity of our actual practice vis-à-vis a belief in the truth of determinism, stating that a conviction of the truth of determinism would be “ineffectual”. The reason for this cognitive or otherwise psychological immunity is taken to be, simply, that it is “psychologically impossible” for us to abandon our responsibility practices and, specifically, the reactive attitudes constituting these practices, in virtue of “our psychological make-up” (Coates Reference Coates2017: 804; Shabo Reference Shabo2012: 132). While this is not the only existing interpretation (cf., Campbell Reference Campbell2017; Coates Reference Coates2017; Rummens & De Mesel Reference Rummens, De Mesel, Eriksen, Hermann, O’Hara and Pleasants2023), it is by far the most common interpretation of the Inescapability Claim (see Fischer Reference Fischer, Shoemaker and Tognazzini2014: 104f.; McKenna & Russell Reference McKenna, Russell, McKenna and Russell2008: 6; Miller Reference Miller2014a, Reference Miller2014b; Nagel Reference Nagel1986: 124; Shoemaker Reference Shoemaker2020; Vargas Reference Vargas2004: 220; Wolf Reference Wolf, McKenna and Russell2008: 73; also, at least in part, Sars Reference Sars2022a; Watson Reference Watson, Shoemaker and Tognazzini2014).

It is also widely agreed that the Inescapability Claim is unpromising; that it cannot ground a credible response against the responsibility skeptic. Even to those who are otherwise sympathetic to Strawson’s approach, the Inescapability Claim seems unhelpful (e.g., Russell Reference Russell and Russell2017a: 98). Of course, how to understand the claim and how promising it is are closely connected issues.

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of criticisms that are regularly levelled against the Inescapabilty Claim: that it is implausible Footnote ² and that it is irrelevant Footnote ³. To be more precise, commentators tend to find the claim to be either:

1. (a) empirically implausible,

2. (b) naturalistically implausible,

3. (c) rationally irrelevant, or

4. (d) dialectically irrelevant.

Let’s review these criticisms as to get a sense of how sensible they are and, correspondingly, how unpromising a response to the responsibility skeptic the Inescapability Claim is on the Standard Reading.

(a) The empirical plausibility challengeFootnote ⁴ casts doubt on the strength of the Inescapability Claim, holding that it needs to be significantly attenuated to be a plausible psychological thesis. Is it really plausible that an unwavering skeptic convinced of the irrationality of reactive attitudes could not possibly bring herself to also, as Tamler Sommers puts it, “feel in her gut that robust moral responsibility is a fiction?” (Reference Sommers2007: 336, original emphasis). And even if it would not be possible for her to do so, given her social circumstances and upbringing, is it really plausible that no one may come to maturity without any disposition to reactive attitudes? Admittedly, it may take time (a life-time, or perhaps several generations’) and effort (continuous self-correction, or perhaps some social engineering). But to admit that it might be very hard falls short of saying that it is impossible; it does not show that engaging in responsibility practices is an absolutely irremovable feature of human life. The challenge presses the critical question: Is there really strong enough empirical support for Strawson’s psychological thesis?

(b) The naturalistic plausibility challenge also casts doubt on the strength of the Inescapability Claim, but it holds that it needs to be attenuated if it is to constitute a plausible “form of naturalism” (Russell Reference Russell and Russell2017b). According to Russell (Reference Russell and Russell2017b: 37), Strawson’s argument hinges on the claim that we inescapably “feel or experience” or “entertain” particular episodes of the reactive attitudes. But, so the criticism goes, on no plausible naturalistic understanding of human beings could it be held that we inevitably entertain episodes of these emotions “whatever reason suggests to us” (Reference Russell and Russell2017b: 38). These attitudes are reactive, but they are not mere reflexes. While it might be that we are psychologically hard-wired to be prone to or disposed to have these kinds of emotions to others and ourselves, this is compatible with (at least, a credible form of) skepticism about the appropriateness of reactive attitudes. If Strawson’s Inescapability Claim is that we would simply continue to manifest episodes of reactive attitudes even if we were convinced of their inappropriateness, then he holds a naturalistically implausible view of human emotions and of the reactive attitudes in particular.

(c) The rational relevance criticism calls into question the relevance of the Inescapability Claim as the key premise in an argument about whether it would be rational to engage in responsibility practices and have reactive attitudes such as resentment, indignation and guilt. Even if the Inescapability Claim were true, and it were psychologically impossible for us to be engaged in responsibility practice and have reactive attitudes, this just seems completely irrelevant for whether it would be rational to be so engaged and have these attitudes. This criticism takes two different forms in the literature: it focuses either on fact or on justification. Its factual form: even if we are, per the Inescapability Claim, psychologically incapable of ceasing to have reactive attitudes to others’ behavior and our own, we are not therefore responsible beings. It might still very well be that we are not responsible beings, but just cannot help but treat other people and ourselves as if we were (Wolf Reference Wolf, McKenna and Russell2008). Its justificatory form: the mere fact that we cannot help but have reactive attitudes and are simply stuck with responsibility practices, given our psychological make-up, does not justify us in having these attitudes and engaging in these practices. The inevitability of doing something is the wrong kind of reason (or in any case an insufficient reason) for rationally justifying us in having reactive attitudes and engaging in responsibility practices.Footnote ⁵

(d) The dialectal relevance criticism questions the claim’s supposed dialectical relevance for the responsibility debate. On the assumption that the rational relevance criticism is correct, it asks: given that being psychologically necessitated to engage in responsibility practices does not make it rational to engage in such practices, what is even the point of stating the Inescapability Claim? Stating it is just off topic. What the skeptic is asking about is the rationality, or otherwise normative justification, of these attitudes and practices. That is the issue that divides skeptics, libertarians, and compatibilists. As Gary Watson (Reference Watson, Shoemaker and Tognazzini2014: 25) puts it, to point out that “even if [… the sceptical] conviction were correct, we couldn’t adjust our lives accordingly […] leaves these interlocutors’ basic position completely intact”. Therefore, the criticism goes, the Inescapability Claim “just seems irrelevant to the issues of the essay” (Watson Reference Watson, Shoemaker and Tognazzini2014: 25).

What these criticisms together show is that, even though Strawson’s approach in general has been very influential, one of Strawson’s most central claims is widely held in very poor regard. Indeed, if Strawson’s Inescapability Claim really is, as the Standard Reading has it, that we are simply stuck with our reactive attitudes and our responsibility practices due to a psychological incapacity of ours, and that pointing to this supposed fact of human psychology is furthermore meant to somehow refute the responsibility skeptic’s doubts, then the dissatisfaction with Strawson’s claim seems rather reasonable. But—just given how unconvincing that claim seems to be, we should feel impelled to ask—is that really how the claim is to be understood? What interpretative support is there for the Standard Reading?

3. Rejecting the Standard Reading

Somewhat surprisingly—given just how entrenched this interpretation is in the expansive commentary on Strawson’s approach—the Standard Reading is, as an interpretation, quite implausible. I’ll be arguing that there is no solid support for this particular reading of the Inescapability Claim—neither anything explicit nor anything upon rational reconstruction. To the contrary, the reading conflicts with other aspects of Strawson’s approach, for which we do have clear interpretative support. But most strikingly of all, the Standard Reading has persisted to dominate contemporary philosophical engagement with ‘Freedom and Resentment’ despite the fact that Strawson himself explicitly rejected the understanding of his claim that it assumes.

First of all, nowhere in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ or elsewhere does Strawson put the claim explicitly in terms of human psychology. There are passages that might, prima facie, allow for such a reading. But there is no explicit argument for so understanding Strawson’s claim in the literature. The interpretative basis for the Standard Reading cannot simply be that Strawson appeals to ‘human nature’. This does not itself imply that the Inescapability Claim is to be understood as a psychological thesis; an account of human nature only in psychological terms would be wholly inadequate.

If proponents of the Standard Reading were to make the case for their interpretation, then they could perhaps point to Strawson’s recurrent claim—for which he regularly makes some reference to Hume (e.g., Strawson, Reference Strawson1958; Reference Strawson2008a, n. 7; Reference Strawson2008b, passim)—that just as we have a “natural disposition to belief” in material objects, in other minds, and (roughly speaking) in the reliability of the practice of induction, so we have a “natural disposition to” reactive attitudes (e.g., Strawson, Reference Strawson2008a, n. 7; Reference Strawson2008b, p. 26). Strawson’s references to Hume’s naturalistic strategy against skepticism about material objects and induction might seem to provide some interpretative support for the Standard Reading of the Inescapability Claim. However, when we explore this parallel below—that is, between skepticism about material objects or induction and skepticism about reactive attitudes or responsibility—what we will see is that it does not serve to support the Standard Reading, but quite the contrary.

Proponents of the Standard Reading might also wish to invoke Strawson’s claim (see above) that the responsibility skeptic’s scenario is ruled out because “[t]he human commitment to participation in ordinary inter-personal relationships is […] too thoroughgoing and deeply rooted”. But need this mean, as it might mean for Hume and has been assumed to mean for Strawson, that this commitment is psychologically well-entrenched and incorrigible? (cf., Shoemaker Reference Shoemaker2020: 212) At best, this reading remains underdetermined by the text.

At worst, however, to so understand Strawson might be in conflict with what we do know about his naturalism. Considering the rational relevance criticism, we should ask: what anti-skeptical force does the Inescapability Claim even purport to have? If the Inescapability Claim is that our “human commitment to participation in ordinary inter-personal relationships” is psychologically well-entrenched and incorrigible, then, if the Inescapability Claim is true, this may affirm a sense of relative or subjective certainty (Glock Reference Glock2016). And such certainty may indeed provide at least one sense in which the claim displaces skeptical doubt, in which the relevant commitment is immune to any (abstract or theoretical) argument. However, while that kind of claim would be befitting W. V. Quine’s project of a naturalized epistemology (cf., Glock Reference Glock2016: 276), the conformity to Quine’s project should trouble us: Strawson (e.g., Reference Strawson2008b: 8, 15f., 72) is explicit that that naturalizing project and that naturalistic way with skepticism is not his naturalistic project and not his naturalistic way with skepticism. Thus, on at least one plausible way of unpacking the claim that something is psychologically well-entrenched and incorrigible, the Standard Reading stands in conflict with how Strawson himself presents his naturalistic project.

With respect to the relevance criticisms ((c)–(d)), I think we should say that, while these criticisms take Strawson’s naturalistic approach to miss the point, it is these criticisms themselves that, in different ways, miss the point of Strawson’s naturalistic approach. Strawson did not attempt to provide a justification of our responsibility practices (Campbell Reference Campbell2017; De Mesel Reference De Mesel2018; Heyndels Reference Heyndels2020). But he is not therefore unresponsive to the fact that the skeptic is in effect calling into question the grounding or justification of our responsibility practices. To the contrary. The point of Strawson’s naturalistic approach is to address precisely this demand for a justification, while still not answering it on its own terms. He makes this explicit: “one who presses this question has wholly failed to grasp the import of the preceding answer, the nature of the human commitment that is here involved” (Strawson Reference Strawson2008a: 19f.). This is not to say that Strawson is right; that the demand for a justification of our engagement in responsibility practices, which is central to the responsibility skeptic’s doubt, is mistaken or confused. It is only to say that an interpretation of Strawson’s claim as being, what we may call, a direct answer to the responsibility skeptic’s question is, as such, implausible. Strawson (Reference Strawson2008b: 8) is very explicit that this is not his way with the skeptic. This too suggests that the reading of Strawson presupposed by the standard criticisms is mistaken.

The Standard Reading is not only interpretatively unsupported and in conflict with other aspects of Strawson’s approach, as I have so far argued. That the Inescapability Claim is to be understood as the Standard Reading understands it is, moreover, explicitly denied by Strawson himself. In his “Reply to Ernest Sosa” (cf., Sosa Reference Sosa and Hahn1998; Strawson Reference Strawson and Hahn1998), Strawson rebuts the suggestion that this is how to understand his naturalistic approach:

But according to the Standard Reading, the Inescapabilty Claim is precisely that—viz., that we are simply stuck with our responsibility practices and cannot help but to have reactive attitudes to other people’s behavior and our own, “whether or not it is correct” to do so. This cannot be Strawson’s position: he explicitly denies that it is and agrees that such a dismissal of the skeptical worry “would be weak indeed”. This clearly undermines the Standard Reading of the Inescapability Claim.

There is a possible objection that should be considered. It may be remarked that, here, Strawson is not quite denying the Standard Reading of the Inescapability Claim as we find this claim in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, but something slightly different. Above, Strawson talks about “one’s belief in a proposition”; not about one’s engaging in a practice or having reactive attitudes. The “beliefs” that Strawson is concerned with here include, inter alia, the belief that there are other minds, that there are material objects, and that there is a determinate past (cf., Sosa Reference Sosa and Hahn1998: 362). Whether Strawson can be said to explicitly deny the Standard Reading of the Inescapability Claim as we find this in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ may thus be said to turn on whether his approach to skepticism about, for example, material objects and other minds is relevantly analogous to his approach to skepticism about responsibility. Unless the parallel holds, this does not count as a decisive point against the Standard Reading.

Does the parallel hold? I think it does. Here is just one example of Strawson being rather explicit about this point:

Strawson here readily equates the sense in which we are naturally and inescapably committed to, for example, belief in material objects and the sense in which we are naturally and inescapably committed to the reactive attitudes. We see the same general unity to Strawson’s anti-skeptical naturalistic approach in Scepticism and Naturalism (Reference Strawson2008b).Footnote ⁶ And Strawson’s comparison to the justification of induction in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (Reference Strawson2008a, n. 7) also suggests a fundamental unity to his approach to these forms of skepticism.Footnote ⁷

The Standard Reading faces something of a dilemma with respect to this issue. Recall, the most credible interpretative support for the Standard Reading is Strawson’s recurrent references to Hume. However, these primarily occur precisely when Strawson suggests that there indeed is the relevant parallel between his naturalistic approach to skepticism about, for example, material objects or induction and his naturalistic approach to skepticism about reactive attitudes or responsibility (e.g., Strawson, Reference Strawson2008a, n. 7; Reference Strawson2008b, passim). Thus, if the relevant parallel does not hold, the Standard Reading loses its only credible basis for interpretative support. On the other hand, if the relevant parallel indeed holds, then it must be admitted that Strawson explicitly rejects the understanding of his claim that the Standard Reading presents. Either way, then, we would have no reason to assume the Standard Reading, but only reason to resist it.

4. The Metaphysical Reading

In this section, I outline an alternative reading of the Inescapability Claim. On this reading, the Inescapability Claim is a metaphysical claim, in a recognizable sense of ‘metaphysical’: the claim is, centrally, that the concept of responsibility is one of those categories and concepts that form the fundamental general framework of any human conceptual scheme. Let’s call this the Metaphysical Reading. In contrast to the Standard Reading, on the Metaphysical Reading, the responsibility skeptic’s doubt is “idle, unreal, a pretense” (Strawson Reference Strawson2008b: 15), not because their doubt is psychologically inefficacious, but because the skeptic is failing to recognize the bounds of sense; their doubt is, in a particular sense, unintelligible.

I suggest that we think of Strawson’s Inescapability Claim as having two sides: ‘the conceptual side’ and ‘the practical side’. It is tempting to say that the mistake of the Standard Reading is to lay exclusive stress on ‘the practical side’ of the claim. But the more fundamental mistake manifested by the Standard Reading is in fact that of assuming that these two sides are wholly independent; not sides of the same thing. Engagement with Strawson’s other work should make one suspicious of this assumption. It is because of this assumption that the Standard Reading fails not only to recognize both sides of the claim and to see how they relate to each other, but fails, more fundamentally, to even properly grasp ‘the practical side’ of the Inescapability Claim.

On the Metaphysical Reading, the Inescapability Claim is the claim that employing a concept of responsibility is conceptually necessary in the sense that the concept of responsibility is part of any conceivable human conceptual scheme; and it is part of any conceivable human conceptual scheme because, for any human society that we can recognize as such, it is practically necessary that it engages in some practice of responsibility. As such, what is inescapable for beings like us, according to Strawson, is not in the first instance that we have a concept of responsibility (in the sense that we possess at least some conception of it), but that we, as a matter of fact, engage in some practice of responsibility, where a responsibility practice is understood as a conceptual practice structured by a concept of responsibility.

Since Strawson often talks, not in terms of ‘conceptual practice’, but in terms of ‘conceptual scheme’, I will, for ease of expression, sometimes employ this terminology too. Talk of the concept of responsibility being part of a conceptual scheme is then a way of saying that there actually is, among the relevant community of concept-users, a conceptual practice which is structured by the concept of responsibility. It might also be worth noting that, for Strawson, our responsibility practices are characterized by us having reactive attitudes, so, for him, the inescapability of the former implies the inescapability of the latter. For present purposes, however, we may leave the issue of whether reactive attitudes are necessarily part of a responsibility practice to the side.

Immediately preceding the passage most commonly associated with the Inescapability Claim in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ that was cited earlier on—which states that our commitment to responsibility practices is “too thoroughgoing and deeply rooted for us to take seriously” the skeptic’s suggestion that we abandon such practices—Strawson talks of the conceivability or intelligibility of the skeptic’s suggestion. He is explicit that he is not saying that it would be “self-contradictory” to think that the truth of determinism would or should change our world such that there were no longer any practices of responsibility. It is because he is not ready to say this that he also abstains from saying that it is “absolutely inconceivable that it should happen” (emphasis added). What he does say, however, is that he is nevertheless “strongly inclined to think that it is, for us as we are, practically inconceivable” (Strawson Reference Strawson2008a: 12, emphasis added). Indeed, that it is ‘practically inconceivable’ (as opposed to ‘absolutely inconceivable’) has to do with—as the immediately subsequent sentence signals—how utterly “thoroughgoing and deeply rooted” our human commitment to such practices is. But the Inescapability Claim cannot be reduced to this (as I propose to call it) ‘practical side’ of the claim. We need to bear in mind that the claim is, in the first instance, a claim of conceivability.

That the claim is one of conceivability or intelligibility is supported by textual evidence beyond this single statement. Towards the end of ‘Freedom and Resentment’, for example, Strawson says, similarly:

Here, as before, the matter concerns whether the scenario that the skeptic asks us to envisage is even intelligible—not whether it is practically or psychologically possible. The point is moreover echoed, most clearly, in a (for present purposes) very suggestive passage in The Bounds of Sense:

Two points are explicit in this passage that are central for the reappraisal of the Inescapability Claim at issue: first, according to Strawson, our conceptual scheme reflects the needs we have and the situations we face. In other words, “Our practices do not merely exploit our natures, they express them” (Strawson Reference Strawson2008a: 27). What our conceptual scheme is like, and what it can be like, depends on our nature, the needs that we have and the situations that we face. This is ‘the practical side’ of the claim. It is, however, not enough to recognize that our natural or practical condition determines the limits of thought, as the Standard Reading might be said to do. What is important is that the practical condition is indeed reflected at the conceptual level: the practical and the conceptual are two sides of the same thing—not two separate things. That is what is not recognized on the Standard Reading.

Second, according to Strawson, this ‘fundamental general framework of ideas’ constitutes the bounds within which any variation of conceptual schemes, such as a development of our current (socio-historically local) conceptual scheme, is conceivable or intelligible as such. It is not the case that ‘the fundamental general framework of ideas’ refers to some psychological base that delimits what is psychologically possible. It rather refers to what Kant, before Strawson, called the bounds of sense; that is, the conceptual structure that is presupposed on any conceptual scheme. The laying bare of that fundamental general framework is the objective of what Strawson calls descriptive metaphysics: the project of uncovering “the massive core of human thinking which has no history—or none recorded in histories of thought” (Strawson Reference Strawson1959: 10). This provides the sense in which the Inescapability Claim is, on the present reading, a metaphysical claim: it is a description of that core of human thinking which responsibility, in its fundamental form, is a part of.

The anti-skeptical force of the Inescapability Claim is that the skeptic’s doubt is “idle, unreal, a pretense” (Strawson Reference Strawson2008b: 15). This is so because the scenario on which the responsibility skeptic’s doubt is premised—that we abandon our responsibility practices—is, in a particular sense, inconceivable or unintelligible. The particular sense in which the skeptic’s suggestion is unintelligible or inconceivable is that it is “practically inconceivable”.

This does not mean that it is almost inconceivable. On the Standard Reading, as Coates rightly notes, Strawson would seem to be saying that “it is practically inconceivable that we could abandon our responsibility practices in just the same way it is practically impossible that I could run a 5 minute mile. It is not literally impossible of course—just really, really hard given my current level of fitness, […] etc.” (Reference Coates2017: 804, original emphasis). In contrast, on the present reading, if it is practically inconceivable, while it might still not be absolutely inconceivable, it is nevertheless, according to Strawson, not really conceivable. In Strawson’s own words, the Inescapability Claim is that “we cannot, as we are, seriously envision ourselves adopting a thoroughgoing objectivity of attitude” (Reference Strawson2008a: 14, emphasis added).

The ‘practical’, as opposed to the ‘absolute’, nature of the inconceivability or unintelligibility that Strawson here invokes means, at bottom, that it is inconceivable how there could actually or in practice be a conceptual scheme like the one that the responsibility skeptic is suggesting. But this does not reduce the point to a non-conceptual (say, merely psychological) point; to adapt a slogan from Sars (Reference Sars2022a: 80), “inconceivability should not be confused with incapacity”.

The contrast to ‘absolute inconceivability’ may be illuminated by considering the status that Strawson took the descriptive metaphysician’s claims to have. As Anil Gomes (Reference Gomes, Heyndels, Bengtson and De Mesel2024) has shown, according to Strawson, the claims that describe the fundamental general framework of any conceptual scheme are best understood as claims of non-analytic but still conceptual necessity. In light of the distinction between analytic necessity and conceptual necessity, the claim that the skeptic’s suggestion is not self-contradictory (so perhaps not absolutely inconceivable) may be taken to mean only that it is not analytically false, not defying an analytic necessity. However, this leaves it perfectly open that the skeptic’s suggestion may, nevertheless, attempt to tread beyond the bounds of sense, in the sense that the suggestion still defies a conceptual necessity.

I think we find the very same idea of practical inconceivability in Strawson’s ‘Social Morality and Individual Ideal’:

That these interests are reflected is essential if a moral community is even to be conceivable as such. The point is that what the bounds of sense are is not independent of what we, human beings, are like.

This is Strawson’s naturalism. It is not detached from his metaphysics but is rather at the foundation of it. Again, looking beyond ‘Freedom and Resentment’, Strawson is explicit about this: in order to be able to “arrive at such properly metaphysical conclusions” (Reference Strawson and Strawson2011a: 89) as what the fundamental general framework of ideas that underlies any human conceptual scheme is like, we need to recognize “the foundation of our concepts in natural facts” (Reference Strawson and Schilpp1963: 517). Strawson (Reference Strawson and Schilpp1963, Reference Strawson and Strawson2011a, Reference Strawson and Strawson2011b) calls this ‘the explanatory task’ of the philosopher (see Heyndels Reference Heyndels2019; Bengtson Reference Bengtson2019, Reference Bengtson2020; De Mesel Reference De Mesel, Hyman and Thorneforthcoming). This philosophical study into the natural history of our conceptual scheme allows us to recognize that certain human interests, needs, and situations are so fundamental and so general that they are bound to be reflected on any human conceptual scheme.Footnote ⁹ In this way, a naturalistic explanation informs a metaphysical conclusion.

An alternative to our present conceptual scheme is in the relevant sense inconceivable or unintelligible if it is not within that fundamental general framework of ideas that provides the basis of any human conceptual scheme. According to Strawson, what the responsibility skeptic’s doubt (implicitly) does is invite us to envision an alternative to our current conceptual scheme that is not within that fundamental general framework of ideas, and which is therefore inconceivable as a human conceptual scheme. The charge is not that the responsibility skeptic is suggesting that we should, rationally speaking, do something that we cannot, psychologically speaking, bring ourselves to do (as on the Standard Reading). Rather, the charge is that the responsibility skeptic’s doubt is, in a particular sense, unintelligible: the skeptic is failing to see that they are, in fact, treading beyond the bounds of sense.

Put differently, Strawson should be seen as engaging in what Robert Smithson calls “conceptual cartography”, the mapping of those features of our conceptual scheme which are necessary in the sense that “we cannot imagine humans accomplishing their basic projects without having a conceptual scheme with these features” (Reference Smithson2021, p. 97). And, as Miranda Fricker notes, a central point of such projects is to show “how some kinds of criticism of our practice are worth making, and how some are senseless” (Reference Fricker1998, p. 165, emphasis added).

While this anti-skeptical claim is not based on a transcendental argument (cf., Coates Reference Coates2017; Hieronymi Reference Hieronymi2020), the Metaphysical Reading nevertheless shares with such readings that the skeptic’s mistake is an intellectual one—a conceptual or rational mistake. But, by contrast, on the Metaphysical Reading, the anti-skeptical claim is based on the conjecture that our human nature renders it indispensable that we engage in responsibility practices; there is, the idea is, a naturalistic explanation of why we have the concept of responsibility. In this respect, the reading might be said to share something with readings that take the concept of responsibility to be somehow determined by our practices of holding each other responsible (e.g., Beglin Reference Beglin2018; De Mesel Reference De Mesel2022; Shoemaker Reference Shoemaker2017, Reference Shoemaker, Nelkin and Pereboom2022).

On the Metaphysical Reading, the Inescapability Claim is that the very concept of responsibility is an inescapable part of our conceptual scheme, as on any conceptual scheme we can make intelligible to ourselves as such, because the concept is indispensable for beings like us. It is indispensable for beings like us in the sense that it is practically necessary for beings like us that we engage in some form of responsibility practice, where this is understood as a conceptual practice structured by a concept of responsibility. Our practical condition grounds a conceptual need: we need some concept of responsibility simply in virtue of being the kinds of beings that we are (cf., Queloz Reference Queloz2025, ch. 7). In suggesting that we adopt a conceptual scheme that does not employ any such concept, the responsibility skeptic fails to recognize that the concept of responsibility is not a contingent component of our conceptual scheme, but is, in its fundamental form, among those categories and concepts that form the core of human thinking, the fundamental general framework of ideas that underlies any conceivable human conceptual scheme. Hence, what they are purporting to envision, they cannot, in fact, seriously envision; such a conceptual scheme is really inconceivable or unintelligible; their doubt is, in that sense, “idle, unreal, a pretense” (Strawson Reference Strawson2008b: 15).

5. Reevaluating the Inescapability Claim

Simply in virtue of the fact that the Inescapability Claim is not an empirical claim—not a psychological thesis—as I’ve argued above, the main criticisms levelled against the claim are, at bottom, misguided. Of course, this does not mean that the Inescapability Claim, properly understood, is not open to challenge. Indeed, we may reconstruct the empirical plausibility challenge, the naturalistic plausibility challenge, and the dialectical relevance criticism as, respectively:

1. (e) the fundamentality challenge,

2. (f) the concept-application challenge, and

3. (g) the contemporary relevance challenge.

Let’s review each in turn and consider how they might be addressed on Strawson’s behalf.

(e) The fundamentality challenge questions the fundamentality of the concept of responsibility, and thus the correctness of Strawson’s metaphysics. There are at least two different ways of pushing this challenge. For one thing, one might question Strawson’s idea of our human nature—his idea of our practical condition, the needs and situations which render the concept of responsibility an indispensable part of any human conceptual scheme. Alternatively, holding Strawson’s idea of human nature fixed, one may question whether the concept of responsibility is in fact rendered indispensable in virtue of those fundamental needs and situations. Indeed, to question whether we cannot, with enough time and effort, be brought to not engage in any responsibility practice, as the empirical plausibility challenge asks, might here be understood as asking whether the relevant needs and interests really are as fundamental and general as Strawson supposes. Alternatively, it could be understood as asking whether there could not be some other conceptual practice or set of conceptual practices that would adequately address these needs and interests (for relevant discussion, see De Mesel & Cuypers Reference De Mesel and Cuypers2023; Russell Reference Russell and Russell2017a, 2024; Sars Reference Sars2023; Wallace Reference Wallace1996: 25–40, 62ff.; Watson Reference Watson, Shoemaker and Tognazzini2014: 27–31).

(f) The concept-application challenge questions what follows for the applicability of the concept of responsibility given that we (inescapably) have that concept.Footnote ¹⁰ Take, for example, the concept ‘witch’. We do have this concept. That, however, does not imply that we engage in practices of witch burning, nor does it imply—which is why we do not engage in such practices—that we think the concept ever applies. By analogy, might not the skeptic concede that we inescapably have the concept of responsibility while nevertheless contending that this concept lacks any application—just as the concept of witch lacks application? This challenge transposes the main point of the naturalistic plausibility challenge to the conceptual level: just as being prone to reactive attitudes does not by itself imply that we manifest reactive attitudes, having a concept of responsibility does not by itself imply that we actually take people to be responsible.

(g) The contemporary relevance criticism focuses on what the skeptic is (assumed to be) saying. For Strawson’s argument to go through, it needs to be the case that the skeptic is not merely suggesting that we adopt a different practice of responsibility, but rather no practice of responsibility at all—that what they are suggesting is that we do not engage in any responsibility practice. But contemporary responsibility skeptics are usually explicit about the fact that what they are skeptical about is only one form or one kind of moral responsibility—say, ‘robust moral responsibility’, ‘accountability’, or ‘moral responsibility in the basic desert sense’ (see, e.g., Pereboom Reference Pereboom2014, ch. 6; Reference Pereboom2021a; Reference Pereboom2021b). As such, a version of the dialectical relevance criticism reappears: is Strawson’s Inescapability Claim irrelevant to the argument most contemporary responsibility skeptics are making?

We will not, here, be able to fully review the ways in which one might go about addressing these challenges. But something, if only rather preliminary, should be said in Strawson’s defense.

In response to the concept-application challenge, it should first be noted that what is inescapable, on the Metaphysical Reading, is not that we have a concept of responsibility, but that we engage in responsibility practices—that we use a concept of responsibility and, moreover, that we in fact conceptualize people as responsible. An unexercised ability—i.e., the mere having of some concept—would not address the needs and situations that render the concept practically indispensable. This has force against the skeptic since the truth of the generic ‘we conceptualise people as responsible’ is incompatible with it being the case that we never so conceptualize people, even if it does not require that we always conceptualize people as responsible or that we conceptualize everyone as responsible. The skeptic’s claim is not that the concept of responsibility sometimes does not apply, but that it never applies.

That said, the concept-application challenge is not thereby rendered mute. For one thing, it may still be objected that the consequences, by way of thought and action, of applying a concept are underdetermined by the mere fact that a concept applies. That a concept of responsibility applies in a given case does not by itself mean that it is appropriate to blame the person to which it applies. And, more generally, that a concept of responsibility at least sometimes applies does not by itself mean that there is anyone whom it is appropriate to blame.

But this does not save the skeptic. Not only blaming, but also excusing and justifying someone’s doings are salient ways in which we engage in responsibility practices. (This is Strawson’s (Reference Strawson2008a, p. 11) point when he notes that the skeptic cannot argue from considerations that tend to, and appropriately do, inhibit reactive attitudes in particular cases.) To continue with the example of ‘witch’: There is a world of difference between, on the one hand, thinking that some women are witches but that we shouldn’t therefore burn them and, on the other hand, to not think that women are witches—and, indeed, not even think whether they are witches—and thus not even consider whether it would be appropriate to burn them.

However, the concept-application challenge may also be taken in a different direction. It may be objected that even if we grant that we necessarily use a concept of responsibility, this does not entail that, with respect to some particular concept of responsibility, we are necessarily using it. It remains possible that some concept of responsibility does not only sometimes not apply, but that this particular concept of responsibility in fact never applies. As such, the skeptic about a particular concept of responsibility—which, as noted, many contemporary responsibility skeptics explicitly are—can still hold that at least that concept does not apply. (I think that Strawson, in a way, saw this limitation of his metaphysical project, too; see De Mesel (Reference De Mesel2022).) This point should be conceded. But to concede this is only to concede the pertinence of the contemporary relevance criticism.

The force of the contemporary relevance criticism turns on whether there is any alternative concept of responsibility, unobjectionable to the skeptic, which is not practically inconceivable for beings like us. In other words, whether what the skeptic is skeptical about is really only a particular concept of responsibility and not any concept of responsibility. And this issue turns, centrally, on what the concept of responsibility, in its fundamental form, is. That is, what the form is that any conception of responsibility is a variation of, if it is indeed to be intelligible as a concept of responsibility. For example, if the responsibility skeptic will only accept a concept that justifies us in holding people responsible primarily or exclusively in instrumental or forward-looking terms, but the concept of responsibility in its fundamental form is not like that, but one that justifies holding people responsible primarily or exclusively in non-instrumental or backward-looking terms, then the Inescapability Claim is not irrelevant. By Strawson’s account, then, the responsibility skeptic would, in fact, be making an unintelligible or inconceivable suggestion.

I think the current pertinence of both the contemporary relevance criticism and the fundamentality challenge, reflects not a flaw in Strawson’s approach to responsibility skepticism, but a limitation of the account of Strawson’s approach as provided here. What is missing is a naturalistic explanation that buttresses Strawson’s Inescapabilty Claim by illustrating how our conceptual scheme might be said to reflect our practical condition. To address the current concerns ((e)-(g)), such a naturalistic explanation would have to show how some fundamental needs and situations render engagement in responsibility practices practically necessary, such that a concept of responsibility is indispensable for beings like us. Moreover, it would need to do so in terms of needs and situations that are so fundamental and generic that they would present themselves within any conceivable human society. And show, furthermore, that the concept of responsibility that is practically necessary for beings like us is, in its fundamental form, what the contemporary skeptic in effect proposes that we do away with.

While undoubtedly an ambitious project, I do think that such a naturalistic explanation can be provided. Elsewhere (Emilsson Reference Emilssonmanuscript), I make the case for what such a naturalistic explanation should be within a Strawsonian framework (for a related account, see De Mesel Reference De Mesel, Hyman and Thorneforthcoming). At this point, however, while the Metaphysical Reading of Strawson’s Inescapability Claim has the clear advantage over the Standard Reading that it does not simply reject skepticism as inefficacious but rejects it, rather, as inconceivable or unintelligible, it must also be admitted that more needs to be said in order to actually establish Strawson’s Inescapability Claim and to prove its anti-skeptical force.