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explain non-offending. There is no reason to assume that normal behaviour
is any less causally explainable than abnormal behaviour. It follows
that normal action may be explained in ways that threaten responsibility
just as abnormal action.
7.8 CONCLUSIONS
In this chapter, I have sketched the outlines of a theory of excuses, the
essence of which is that scientific explanations erode responsibility. It is
this basic idea which founds the idea that retributivism is “unscientific.”
The notion that rule breakers deserve punishment rests on a “badness”
paradigm which may not be tenable under a scientific worldview. The
more we can explain a prima facie blameworthy behaviour - the more we
come to understand it – the less appropriate it will seem to blame it. For
scientific explanations explain by citing causes beyond the individual’s
control and render the notion of alternative possibilities suspect. This
means that scientific explanations are at odds with the idea of personal
responsibility.
Or so I have argued. I want to emphasise that I am supremely unsure
about to what extent the ideas expressed in this chapter are correct. I
do not know whether the claim that nearly all scientific explanations are
excusing if they are true is tenable. The purpose here, however, has been
to challenge the received view that some explanations may excuse
whereas others do not, for this is the basis of a potentially very powerful
criticism of retributivism. When people say that retributivism rests on an
outdated conception of human behaviour, it is presumably something
along the lines of the theory of excuses they have in mind. That “ordinary
morality”, which states that people are fundamentally free too
choose in various ways, is mistaken. That the scientific project will clash
with entrenched and arcane moral concepts.
The next chapter assumes, for the sake of argument, that all criminal
action – indeed, all human action – can be scientifically explained. What
would that mean for the practice of punishment and other moral and
political issues? The next chapter thus deals with the thesis of determinism.