Michael McKenna's Conversation and Responsibility is an ambitious and impressive statement of a new theory of moral responsibility. McKenna's approach builds upon the strategy advanced in P. F. Strawson's (2013 [1962]) enormously influential “Freedom and Resentment.” The account advanced aims to provide Strawson's theory with the sort of detail that is required to fill significant gaps and respond to a wide range of criticisms and objections that have been directed against it. McKenna identifies three key elements in Strawson's account of moral responsibility, two of which he endorses and one of which he rejects (56, compare 2–3, 45–46). The first is the claim “that moral responsibility must be understood by reference to the nature of holding responsible” (30). The second is the claim that holding responsible ought to be explained in terms of our moral reactive attitudes and practices. Taken together these two claims, McKenna notes, involve a commitment to...

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