ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses primarily philosophical arguments about free will, determinism, moral responsibility, desert and retribution. Tabensky's claim that the logical conclusion of views expressed in The Reader is across-the-board scepticism about current practices of judgement and punishment. In his words: 'It seems that all these notions, if we reflect on our actual deployment of them, can be seen to float free of the determinism/indeterminism question'. A few words are in order about the doctrine known as compatibilism. This can be seen as a kind of deflationary doctrine, one that deflates the apparent significance of determinism. One way, the non-metaphysical way, is to understand it in the spirit of Clint Eastwood in his film The Unforgiven. If that were so and if we had little or no additional understanding of the attackers except that they were in favor of a harshly patriarchal and theocratic rule, then we would, with good reason, regard them as being moral monsters.
