Gary Watson

1. Introduction

Gary Watson (b. c. 1944) is a contemporary analytic philosopher whose work has reshaped discussion of agency, moral responsibility, and moral psychology. Writing primarily from the mid‑1970s onward, he is often grouped with figures such as P. F. Strawson, Harry Frankfurt, and T. M. Scanlon in moving debates about free will away from purely metaphysical questions about determinism and toward the internal structure of agency and the interpersonal nature of blame.

Watson’s most cited essays, including Free Agency (1975), Skepticism about Weakness of Will (1977), and Two Faces of Responsibility (1996), develop a distinctive picture of persons as evaluative agents whose actions can be understood along at least two dimensions: what those actions express about their character and values, and how they are answerable to others within practices of mutual accountability.

In parallel, he has helped consolidate moral psychology as a central subfield of analytic ethics, emphasizing phenomena such as weakness of will, resentment, guilt, and psychopathy as crucial for understanding responsibility. His work is frequently used as a bridge between philosophical theory and practical questions in criminal law, clinical ethics, and debates about mental impairment.

While Watson does not present a single unified “system,” his essays are widely read as articulating a coherent framework in which responsibility is rooted in both the agent’s evaluative self‑governance and the social practices through which we demand reasons and hold one another to account. This entry surveys his life and milieu, the development of his thought, his central ideas and arguments, and the main lines of criticism and influence that define his place in contemporary philosophy.

2. Life and Historical Context

2.1 Biographical Outline

Public information about Gary Watson’s personal life is comparatively sparse. He was born in the United States around 1944 and came of age intellectually during the post‑war expansion of analytic philosophy. His principal period of publication begins in the 1970s and continues into the twenty‑first century, with an active career in teaching and research culminating in retirement from full‑time teaching at the University of Southern California around 2012, after which he has remained philosophically active.

2.2 Philosophical and Institutional Setting

Watson’s work emerges within a North American analytic tradition shaped by debates on free will and determinism, the legacy of Humean and Kantian ethics, and the revival of Aristotelian themes about character and virtue. He writes in sustained dialogue with:

• P. F. Strawson’s account of responsibility and reactive attitudes
• Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical conception of the will
• Developments in Anglo‑American criminal law focusing on mens rea, excuse, and mitigation.

The broader historical setting includes the rise of moral psychology as a distinct research area, interdisciplinary interest in emotion and character, and growing legal and clinical concern with disorders such as psychopathy and addiction. Within this environment, Watson’s essays function as nodal points connecting theoretical discussions of agency with concrete questions about when it is fair to praise, blame, punish, or exempt individuals.

3. Intellectual Development

3.1 Early Work: Agency and Free Will (1970s)

Watson’s early writings focus on free agency and the nature of human action. In Free Agency (1975), he develops an account of freedom grounded in an agent’s evaluative standpoint rather than in the metaphysics of indeterminism. This period is marked by close engagement with Frankfurt‑style theories of the will, but Watson emphasizes value‑laden self‑governance more than hierarchical structure alone.

At the same time, he begins to question traditional conceptions of weakness of will. Skepticism about Weakness of Will (1977) reframes akrasia as a conflict between competing evaluative perspectives within a single agent, laying foundations for his later interest in internal fragmentation and self‑control.

3.2 Consolidation in Moral Psychology (late 1970s–1980s)

By the 1980s, Watson’s focus broadens from individual free will to the psychological underpinnings of responsibility practices. His co‑edited volume Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions (1987) collects work that links action, character, and reactive attitudes such as resentment and guilt. During this period, he refines a broadly Strawsonian view that sees responsibility as embedded in interpersonal life, while retaining interest in the structure of agency itself.

3.3 Two Faces of Responsibility (1990s–2000s)

In drafts circulated from the mid‑1990s and later published as Two Faces of Responsibility, Watson crystallizes a key distinction between attributability and answerability. This marks a shift toward analyzing how different forms of appraisal, blame, and moral address correspond to different underlying normative relations to action and character. His work from this phase also explores moral authority and the conditions under which agents may challenge or accept moral demands.

3.4 Responsibility, Impairment, and Law (2000s–present)

Later writings extend his framework to cases of psychopathy, addiction, and related impairments. Essays such as The Trouble with Psychopaths (2011) examine whether certain agents are exempt from responsibility practices, and how legal and moral standards intersect. Throughout this phase, Watson’s earlier analyses of agency and responsibility serve as the conceptual background for more applied discussions in moral and legal theory.

4. Major Works and Key Essays

Watson’s influence stems largely from a relatively small number of widely reprinted essays. The following table highlights central works and their main themes:

Several of these essays have been collected in volumes such as Agency and Answerability, which is frequently used in graduate teaching. While Watson has not authored a single magnum opus, commentators often treat his work as forming an interconnected body of theory on agency, responsibility, and moral psychology, with Free Agency and Two Faces of Responsibility serving as its conceptual pillars.

5. Core Ideas on Agency and Free Will

5.1 Free Agency and Evaluative Standpoint

In Free Agency, Watson argues that to be a free agent is to act from one’s evaluative standpoint—the values, principles, and commitments with which one identifies. Freedom is thus not defined primarily by the absence of external constraint, nor by indeterministic causation, but by self‑governance through evaluation.

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“To be a free agent, on my account, is to be able to govern one’s conduct by the values and principles that one identifies with as one’s own standpoint.”
— Gary Watson, Free Agency

This conception is often contrasted with purely hierarchical views (such as Frankfurt’s), which distinguish higher‑order and lower‑order desires. Watson emphasizes that what matters is not merely alignment between levels of desire but the agent’s normative assessment of what is worth pursuing.

5.2 Identification and Internal Conflict

Watson’s account allows for internal conflict between motives and evaluative judgments. In akratic cases, an agent may judge that one course of action is best yet act on another, because the latter reflects a competing evaluative perspective that has motivational force. He suggests that agents can be partially identified with different value‑sets, complicating simple pictures of the unified will.

Proponents of Watson’s approach argue that it better captures phenomena like addiction and weakness of will than models that treat the will as a single, unified faculty. Critics, however, contend that his reliance on “identification” and “standpoints” may leave unclear how to determine which values genuinely define the self for purposes of responsibility, a question further developed in subsequent sections of his work.

6. Responsibility, Blame, and the Two Faces Framework

6.1 Attributability and Answerability

In Two Faces of Responsibility, Watson distinguishes two dimensions of moral responsibility:

He argues that much confusion in debates about responsibility arises from failing to distinguish these “faces.” For example, an action might reveal something about an agent’s character (attributability) even where, due to ignorance or coercion, the agent is not a fair target of blame as moral address (answerability).

6.2 Blame as Interpersonal Moral Address

Building on Strawson, Watson understands blame not simply as a negative evaluation but as an interpersonal response embedded in relationships of mutual accountability.

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“Blame is not merely a judgment of badness, but an interpersonal response that presupposes a relationship of mutual accountability.”
— Gary Watson, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil”

This picture supports a second‑personal understanding of morality: to blame is to address another as someone who owes reasons and can recognize shared norms. In later work, Watson examines how such practices presuppose moral authority, and when that authority can be challenged or denied.

Some theorists adopt Watson’s two‑faces framework to explain different legal standards (e.g., character evidence versus culpability), while others question whether the distinction is exhaustive or whether further “faces” (such as liability to sanction) should be recognized. Debates also concern whether blame must always take the form of interpersonal address or can be purely detached assessment, issues explored in subsequent critical literature.

7. Methodology and Style of Moral Psychology

7.1 Philosophical Method

Watson’s methodology is characteristically analytic and conceptual, yet informed by attention to psychological nuance and everyday moral practices. Key features include:

• Case‑based analysis: He frequently examines ordinary moral phenomena—weakness of will, resentment, forgiveness, psychopathy—to refine conceptual distinctions about agency and responsibility.
• Use of Strawsonian “reactive attitudes”: Following P. F. Strawson, he treats emotions like resentment and guilt as data for theorizing about the structure of responsibility practices.
• Normative‑interpretive approach: Watson aims not only to describe psychological mechanisms but to understand how they function within a normative framework of moral demands and interpersonal expectations.

His arguments often proceed by identifying tensions in existing theories (e.g., classical akrasia models, purely metaphysical free‑will accounts) and proposing alternative conceptualizations that make better sense of our practices of appraisal and blame.

7.2 Style and Audience

Watson writes primarily for a professional philosophical audience, but his style is widely regarded as clear and accessible. He tends to avoid heavy formalism, instead offering careful distinctions, illustrative examples, and close engagement with other philosophers’ texts. His essays are commonly used in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses for this reason.

While his work is not empirical psychology, it is frequently interdisciplinary in orientation. He draws on legal cases, clinical descriptions (particularly of psychopathy and addiction), and everyday moral experience. Proponents see this as enabling fruitful dialogue between philosophy, law, and psychology; some critics suggest that the lack of systematic empirical integration leaves open questions about how well his conceptual accounts track actual psychological processes. Nonetheless, Watson’s methodological stance has been influential in shaping what is now standardly called analytic moral psychology.

8. Impact on Ethics, Law, and Moral Psychology

8.1 Influence on Ethical Theory and Responsibility Debates

Watson’s account of free agency and his two faces of responsibility framework have become central reference points in contemporary ethics. Figures such as R. Jay Wallace, T. M. Scanlon, Angela Smith, and others engage closely with his distinctions between attributability, accountability/answerability, and related notions. His work underpins many reasons‑responsive and relationship‑based theories of responsibility, as well as discussions of the moral significance of blame and forgiveness.

In normative ethics, Watson’s views contribute to debates about autonomy, self‑governance, and the moral relevance of character. Second‑personal and relational approaches to morality frequently build on his analysis of blame as a form of moral address that presupposes mutual authority.

8.2 Contributions to Legal Theory

In legal theory, Watson’s distinctions have been used to clarify the difference between:

Legal scholars draw on his work when discussing diminished responsibility, insanity defenses, and sentencing, especially in relation to psychopathy and addiction.

8.3 Role in Moral Psychology and Interdisciplinary Studies

Watson’s editorial and theoretical work helped consolidate moral psychology as a recognized subfield in analytic philosophy, bridging concerns about emotions, character, and responsibility. His ideas inform empirical and theoretical studies of:

• Reactive attitudes (resentment, guilt, indignation)
• Self‑control and akrasia
• Personality disorders and moral competence

Psychologists and criminologists sometimes use his concepts to frame questions about moral agency and rehabilitation, though the extent of direct empirical uptake varies. Overall, Watson’s impact is seen in how debates about responsibility now routinely integrate questions about agency, interpersonal relations, and psychological capacity rather than treating them in isolation.

9. Debates and Criticisms

Watson’s work has generated extensive discussion, with several recurring lines of critique.

9.1 The Nature of Free Agency and Identification

Some critics question whether Watson’s notion of identification with an evaluative standpoint provides clear criteria for when an action is truly “one’s own.” They argue that agents often harbor multiple, conflicting value‑sets; it is unclear, they contend, how Watson’s framework decides which standpoint grounds responsibility. Alternative views propose more psychologically fine‑grained accounts (e.g., reasons‑responsiveness models) or more structural accounts centered on autonomy and social conditions.

Others challenge whether his relative bracketing of metaphysical questions about determinism leaves responsibility sufficiently grounded. Compatibilists and incompatibilists alike debate whether his focus on evaluative self‑governance can be neutral on deeper issues of causal control.

9.2 Attributability vs. Answerability

The two faces distinction has been widely adopted but also contested. Some philosophers argue that:

• The distinction is overdrawn, and that attributability and answerability are simply different aspects of a single responsibility relation.
• Additional “faces”—such as liability to sanction or expectability—are needed for a complete taxonomy.

Others suggest that Watson underestimates the role of outcome luck and broader social structures in shaping responsibility, focusing too heavily on individual character and evaluative standpoint.

9.3 Blame, Authority, and Exemption

Watson’s portrayal of blame as interpersonal moral address raises questions about who legitimately has standing to blame and whether moral authority is always shared. Critics from feminist, critical race, and political perspectives argue that real‑world power imbalances complicate the ideal of mutual accountability that Watson often presupposes.

In discussions of psychopathy and addiction, some commentators worry that his emphasis on potential exemption from responsibility may either pathologize agents or, conversely, not go far enough in recognizing structural and clinical constraints. Empirically oriented scholars also debate whether the psychological capacities that Watson treats as grounding answerability are supported by current science, pushing for closer integration between his conceptual framework and empirical findings.

10. Legacy and Historical Significance

Within late twentieth‑ and early twenty‑first‑century analytic philosophy, Gary Watson is widely regarded as a central architect of contemporary responsibility theory and analytic moral psychology. His essays helped shift the field from abstract metaphysical debates about free will to a richer focus on evaluative agency, reactive attitudes, and the interpersonal dimensions of blame and excuse.

Historically, Watson’s work stands at the intersection of Strawsonian accounts of responsibility, Frankfurtian accounts of the will, and emerging second‑personal theories of morality. Later philosophers have developed, refined, or contested his concepts, but the structure of many current debates—about blame’s nature, about what it is to be responsible, and about fairness in holding impaired agents to account—reflects his enduring influence.

His essays continue to be standard reading in graduate curricula, and many of his terms have become part of the shared toolkit of philosophers, legal theorists, and morally oriented social scientists. In this way, Watson’s historical significance lies less in a single doctrine than in a conceptual reorientation of how agency and responsibility are understood in contemporary thought.