The “basic desert sense” for Caruso is the standard sense of responsibility independent of “consequentialist or forward-looking considerations” (2). Similarly, Caruso asserts: “my own view is that we are never morally responsible for our actions in the basic desert sense” (8 repeated also in 14, 106, and passim). Caruso claims that his scepticism is somehow consistent with a number of conceptions of responsibility, but he is emphatic that it entails the complete rejection of the idea that we could be “ truly deserving of praise and blame punishment and reward” (30 emphasis in the original). While scepticism does not necessarily entail denial, and while at times Caruso seems to admit that his position may allow for either “doubting or denying” moral responsibility (37), his main line, repeatedly expressed throughout his book, is that his scepticism entails the full-throttled denial of moral responsibility. Caruso considers himself a “free will sceptic”. Caruso’s rejection of retributivism cannot be properly understood without at least briefly sketching its grand motivation.
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