The Implications of Free Will Agnosticism

Sammanfattning

This paper examines the practical implications of free will agnosticism, which is the view that, given the centuries-long stalemate of the free will debate, suspending judgment on whether anyone satisfies the conditions for desert-entailing moral responsibility is an epistemically honest response. After very briefly defending this stance, I argue that it has significant consequences in two domains. In the domain of criminal justice, agnosticism strongly favors non-retributive approaches, since the risk of inflicting underserved suffering outweighs the risk of withholding deserved punishment. In the interpersonal domain, I argue for a practice of “letting go” as an alternative to both sustained blame and cold detachment. Finally, I argue that this caution does not extend symmetrically to gratitude and admiration, since the risk profiles of positive and negative reactive attitudes are structurally asymmetric.