Revisionism and Moral Resposibility

Revisionism about moral responsibility is the view that there is a difference between descriptive account – as we think- and prescriptive account - as we ought to think- about moral responsibility. It is a Revisionist view to believe that (1) the folk intuitions of moral responsibility are incompatibilist, (2) the incompatibilist conception of moral responsibility is incorrect, and (3) the folk intuition of moral responsibility must be reconsidered. Vargas calls the revised concept of responsibility "the responsibility system" and believes that this new concept has all the functions of the previous concept; In other words, it can provide a new justification for individual and social activities that we have formed based on the traditional concept of responsibility - such as blaming, praising, punishing, etc. But it seems that because the model of justification in "the responsibility system" is forward-looking, it is not able to justify retributive justice. At the same time, Vargas must be able to defend the revised concept of responsibility against the "four-case manipulation" argument. This defense is shown to be unsuccessful.