ABSTRACT
According to P. F. Strawson, the concepts and practices of holding responsible, as animated by reactive attitudes and emotions, presuppose not libertarian free will but what I call co-reactivity: a sensitivity to the scaffolding structure of reactive emotions that is displayed by most human beings most of the time. Many contemporary cognitive theorists, while paying deference to Strawson, have reverted to the idea that a presumption of libertarian free will is essential to reactive practice. Some treat this presumption as a hopeless error, others as a necessary illusion. This divide between Strawsonians and non-Strawsonians has important research implications for cognitive psychology, but, more important still, it has great significance for the theory and practice of corrective justice. The hopeless error theorists will be drawn to a crude consequentialist view of punishment purged of individual blame; the necessary illusion theorists to an equally crude retributivist view. By contrast, those of a Strawsonian bent should find themselves drawn to a novel restorative vision that pays due deference to the natural kinematics of reactive emotions.
