Moral Responsibility and Motivational Mechanisms

This paper provides a discussion and defense of a recent formulation of the idea that moral responsibility for actions depends on the capacity to respond to reasons. This formulation appears in several publications by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, where the authors argue that moral responsibility involves a kind of control over one’s actions which they call “guidance control.” This kind of control does not require an agent’s ability to do something different from what he actually does, but instead requires only that the actual process leading to the action be responsive in some suitable way to the reasons that the agent has for acting. After summarizing this view, I offer the following two innovations to the authors’ view: I argue that the level of control required for moral responsibility (which I call “regular reasons-responsiveness”) is much stronger than what the author’s view allows for; and 2) I give a common-sense account of the kinds of motivational mechanism relevant to moral responsibility. Given these innovations, I show that this kind of view allows us to easily answer some counterexamples that appear in the current literature on moral responsibility.     

Reason, Responsibility, and Free Will: Reply to My Critics

This paper highlights and discusses some key positions on free will and moral responsibility that I have defended. I begin with reflections on a Strawsonian analysis of moral responsibility. Then I take up objections to the view that there is an asymmetry in freedom requirements for moral responsibility and moral obligation: obligation but not responsibility requires that we could have done otherwise. I follow with some thoughts on the viability of different sorts of semi-compatibilism. Next, I turn to defending the ??luck objection?? to a popular libertarian account of the control that responsibility requires. This is, roughly, the objection that when our decisions are indeterministically caused, their occurrence is a matter of responsibility-undermining luck. Finally, I comment on Frankfurt examples.     

Attitudes,Tracing, and Control

There is an apparent tension in our everyday moral responsibility practices. On the one hand, it is commonly assumed that moral responsibility requires voluntary control: an agent can be morally responsible only for those things that fall within the scope of her voluntary control. On the other hand, we regularly praise and blame individuals for mental states and conditions that appear to fall outside the scope of their voluntary control, such as desires, emotions, beliefs, and other attitudes. In order to resolve this apparent tension, many philosophers appeal to a tracing principle to argue that agents are morally responsible (only) for those attitudes whose existence can be traced back, causally, to a voluntary action or omission in the past. My aim in this article is to critically evaluate this tracing strategy and to argue that it gives us a misguided picture of when and why we are morally responsible for our attitudes. I argue that we should accept a ‘judgment sensitivity’ condition of moral responsibility rather than a ‘voluntary control’ condition, and defend this account against various objections.     

A critical assessment of Pereboom’s Frankfurt-style example

In this paper, I assess Derk Pereboom’s argument for the thesis that moral responsibility does not require the ability to do otherwise. I argue that the Frankfurt-style example Pereboom develops presupposes a prior act or omission which the agent was able to avoid. This undermines his argument. I propose a way for Pereboom to revise his example and thereby undercut this objection. Along the way, I also argue that Pereboom should supplement his account of what counts as a robust alternative—an alternative of the sort that should matter to those who argue for an ability-to-do-otherwise condition on moral responsibility.     

Choice, Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities

Is choice necessary for moral responsibility? And does choice imply alternative possibilities of some significant sort? This paper will relate these questions to the argument initiated by Harry Frankfurt that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility, and to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's extension of that argument in terms of guidance control in a causally determined world. I argue that attending to Frankfurt's core conceptual distinction between the circumstances that make an action unavoidable and those that bring it about that the action is performed – a distinction emphasised in his recent restatement – provides a new route into an analysis of Frankfurt's argument by showing how it depends on a person's ‘decision to act’ involving the exercise of choice. The implicit reliance of Frankfurt's argument on this notion of choice, however, undermines his claim that the example of the counterfactual intervener strengthens the compatibilist case by providing a counter-example to the principle of alternative possibilities. I also argue that Frankfurt's reliance on the exercise of choice for moral responsibility is also evident in the Fischer/Ravizza argument, and that a close analysis of both arguments shows that such exercise of choice is not available if causal determinism is true.     

Keeping It Simple: Rethinking Abilities and Moral Responsibility

Moral responsibility requires that we are in control of what we do. Many contemporary accounts of responsibility cash out this control in terms of abilities and hold that the relevant abilities are strong abilities, like general abilities. This paper raises a problem for strong abilities views: an agent can plausibly be morally responsible for an action or omission, despite lacking any strong abilities to do the relevant thing. It then offers a way forward for ability-based views, arguing that very weak abilities can form the basis of moral responsibility for both actions and omissions.     

Omissions as possibilities

I present and develop the view that omissions are de re possibilities of actual events. Omissions do not literally fail to occur; rather, they possibly occur. An omission is a tripartite metaphysical entity composed of an actual event, a possible event, and a contextually specified counterpart relation between them. This view resolves ontological, causal, and semantic puzzles about omissions, and also accounts for important data about moral responsibility for outcomes resulting from omissions.     

Reasons-responsiveness,control and the negligence puzzle

A longstanding puzzle about moral responsibility for negligence arises from three plausible yet jointly inconsistent theses: (i) an agent can, in certain circumstances, be morally responsible for some outcome O, even if her behavior with respect to O is negligent (i.e., even if she never adverted to the possibility that the behavior might result in O), (ii) an agent can be morally responsible for O only if she has some control over O, (iii) if an agent acts negligently with respect to O, then she has no control over O. This paper is in two parts. First, I argue that reasons-responsiveness models of moral responsibility can be applied naturally to negligence scenarios; indeed, agents are intuitively responsible for the outcomes of their negligent behavior just when they meet the conditions for responsibility given by the best reason-responsiveness theories. Second, if the reasons-responsiveness conditions are applicable to negligence scenarios then one of two things follows: either agents can have direct control over outcomes they never adverted to, or reasons-responsiveness is not a condition of control but of something else connected to moral responsibility. Each possibility would be important in its own right—and each can solve the negligence puzzle.     

A new solution to the problem of luck

The issue of whether and how we have the control necessary for freedom and moral responsibility is central to all control accounts of freedom and moral responsibility. The problem of luck for libertarians aims to show that indeterministic agents are ill-equipped with the control required for freedom and moral responsibility. In view of this, we must either endorse scepticism about the possibility of free and morally responsible agents, or make some form of, possibly revisionary, compatibilism work. In this paper, I shall offer a new solution to the problem of luck for libertarians. After outlining the problem of luck, I shall argue that, given a particular approach to mental causation, indeterminism can be viewed as an essential requirement of free and morally responsible action. After this, I shall distinguish between different types of inability and show how this provides us with a solution to the problem of luck. Finally, I shall consider some advantages and objections to the proposed solution.     

Reasons-Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility: The Case of Autism

In this paper, I consider a novel challenge to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s reasons-responsiveness theory of moral responsibility. According to their view, agents possess the control necessary for moral responsibility if their actions proceed from a mechanism that is moderately reasons-responsive. I argue that their account of moderate reasons-responsiveness fails to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for moral responsibility since it cannot give an adequate account of the responsibility of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Empirical evidence suggests that autistic individuals demonstrate impairments in counterfactual thinking, and these impairments, I argue, are such that they cast doubt on Fischer and Ravizza’s construal of moderate reasons-responsiveness. I then argue that modifying the view in order to accommodate individuals with ASD forces them to defend a strong reasons-responsive account despite the fact that they explicitly deny that such an account can adequately characterize what it is to be morally responsible for one’s actions.     

On a neglected feature of moral agency

Two conditions have been thought necessary and sufficient for a person to be morally responsible. The first is a control condition: an agent must control the actions for which she is held responsible. The second is an epistemic condition: an agent must know, or have the right kind of cognitive relationship to, the relevant features of what she is doing. Debate about moral responsibility among contemporary philosophers can be neatly divided into two circles, with each circle attending narrowly to one of these two conditions. I argue that these separate debates should not be had so separately. The two conditions on moral responsibility interact in a way that has been neglected. An agent's possession of knowledge, and her capacity to attain knowledge, increase that agent's control in a sense relevant to the control condition on moral responsibility. Conversely, an agent's control of her actions can be used to acquire knowledge in a sense relevant to the epistemic condition on moral responsibility. It is in this way that a sort of feedback loop arises between the epistemic condition and the control condition—each is capable of augmenting the degree to which their possessor satisfies the other. I argue that this interaction has important implications for each debate.     

Direct Versus Indirect: Control,Moral Responsibility,and Free Action

This article has two primary aims. The first is to identify relationships among direct control, direct moral responsibility for an action, and directly free action. The second is to provide a partial map depicting the bearing of some familiar competing views about moral responsibility and free action – traditional compatibilism, semicompatibilism, and event-causal libertarianism – on differences in conceptions of direct and indirect species of moral responsibility and free action.     

Responsibility as Answerability

ABSTRACT

It has recently become fashionable among those who write on questions of moral responsibility to distinguish two different concepts, or senses, of moral responsibility via the labels ‘responsibility as attributability’ and ‘responsibility as accountability’. Gary Watson was perhaps the first to introduce this distinction in his influential 1996 article ‘Two Faces of Responsibility’ (in Agency and Answerability, 260–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), but it has since been taken up by many other philosophers. My aim in this study is to raise some questions and doubts about this distinction and to argue that it has led to confusion rather than clarification in debates over moral responsibility. In place of the attributability/accountability distinction, I propose that there is a single (and unified) concept of moral responsibility underlying our actual moral practices. This core notion of moral responsibility, which I call ‘responsibility as answerability’, is well positioned to explain those aspects of our moral practice that Watson associates with the ‘attributability’ face of moral responsibility as well as those aspects of our moral practice he associates with the ‘accountability’ face. But it does so in a way that does not require us to multiply senses of moral responsibility and that allows us to continue to have meaningful disagreements over the basic conditions of moral responsibility.     

Phenomenal consciousness,collective mentality,and collective moral responsibility

Are corporations and other complex groups ever morally responsible in ways that do not reduce to the moral responsibility of their members? Christian List, Phillip Pettit, Kendy Hess, and David Copp have recently defended the idea that they can be. For them, complex groups (sometimes called collectives) can be irreducibly morally responsible because they satisfy the conditions for morally responsible agency; and this view is made more plausible by the claim (made by Theiner) that collectives can have minds. In this paper I give a new argument that they are wrong. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of mind (what Uriah Kriegel calls “the phenomenal intentionality research program”) and moral theory (David Shoemaker’s tripartite theory of moral responsibility), I argue that for something to have a mind, it must be phenomenally conscious, and that the fact that collectives lack phenomenal consciousness implies that they are incapable of accountability, an important form of moral responsibility.     

Control,responsibility, and moral assessment

Recently, a number of philosophers have begun to question the commonly held view that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of moral responsibility. According to these philosophers, what really matters in determining a person’s responsibility for some thing is whether that thing can be seen as indicative or expressive of her judgments, values, or normative commitments. Such accounts might therefore be understood as updated versions of what Susan Wolf has called “real self views,” insofar as they attempt to ground an agent’s responsibility for her actions and attitudes in the fact (when it is a fact) that they express who she is as a moral agent. As such, they seem to be open to some of the same objections Wolf originally raised to such accounts, and in particular to the objection that they cannot license the sorts of robust moral assessments involved in our current practices of moral responsibility. My aim in this paper is to try to respond to this challenge, by clarifying the kind of robust moral assessments I take to be licensed by (at least some) non-volitional accounts of responsibility and by explaining why these assessments do not in general require the agent to have voluntary control over everything for which she is held responsible. I also argue that the limited applicability of the distinction between “bad agents” and “blameworthy agents” on these accounts is in fact a mark in their favor.

A Capacitarian Account of Culpable Ignorance

Ignorance usually excuses from responsibility, unless the person is culpable for the ignorance itself. Since a lot of wrongdoing occurs in ignorance, the question of what makes ignorance culpable is central for a theory of moral responsibility. In this article I examine a prominent answer, which I call the ‘volitionalist tracing account,’ and criticize it on the grounds that it relies on an overly restrictive conception of responsibility‐relevant control. I then propose an alternative, which I call the ‘capacitarian conception of control,’ and on the basis of it I advance an account of culpable ignorance that avoids the skeptical upshots of the volitionalist proposal. If correct, my account establishes three important truths: agents can be directly in control of their ignorance, they can be directly responsible for more than actions and omissions, and their moral obligations extend beyond the performance of intentional actions and omissions.     

Harm: The counterfactual comparative account,the omission and pre-emption problems,and well-being

The concept of “harm” is ubiquitous in moral theorising, and yet remains poorly defined. Bradley suggests that the counterfactual comparative account of harm is the most plausible account currently available, but also argues that it is fatally flawed, since it falters on the omission and pre-emption problems. Hanna attempts to defend the counterfactual comparative account of harm against both problems. In this paper, I argue that Hanna’s defence fails. I also show how his defence highlights the fact that both the omission and the pre-emption problems have the same root cause – the inability of the counterfactual comparative account of harm to allow for our implicit considerations regarding well-being when assessing harm. While its purported neutrality with regard to substantive theories of well-being is one of the reasons that this account is considered to be the most plausible on offer, I will argue that this neutrality is illusory.     

Primordial Moral Awareness: Levinas,Conscience, and the Unavoidable Call to Responsibility

The phenomenon of conscience as articulated in Roman Catholic moral theology has at least three dimensions: a fundamental and universal call to moral goodness; the search for moral truth; and a commitment to act in a particular way. Recent moral theology has tended to focus on the latter two dimensions, but there has been a strong call from Thomas Ryan for attention to the first dimension of conscience, especially its constitution in ‘horizontal relationality’. In this article I respond to Ryan's call, and demonstrate that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas can show how the experience of conscience is constituted in horizontal relationality, as well as that it supports an understanding of conscience as a universal call to responsibility. Correlatively, and perhaps more significantly, the introduction of Levinas’ philosophy into the discussion of conscience sheds light on a significant aspect of this call to moral responsibility. This highlights that the Roman Catholic understanding of conscience has ethical consequences for theology more broadly considered (as well as the other academic disciplines) in terms of understanding why it is impossible to set aside considerations of responsibility in the search for truth.     

Moral Responsibility,Voluntary Control,and Intentional Action

Many theorists writing about moral responsibility accept that voluntary control is necessary for responsibility. Call such theorists volitionists. Recently, volitionism has been called into question by theorists I call nonvolitionists. Yet neither volitionists nor nonvolitionists have carefully articulated a clear volitionist thesis, nor have they sufficiently explained the concept of voluntary control that somehow seems connected to volitionism. I argue that attempts to explain the volitionist thesis, voluntary control, and their relation are more problematic than have previously been recognized. Instead, I recommend understanding volitionism in terms of intentional actions and omissions. This understanding has several benefits. It clarifies the debate and its parameters, it avoids the problematic notion of voluntary control while relying on the clearer notion of intentional action, and it highlights that the debate between volitionists and nonvolitionists essentially concerns the nature and scope of obligations. As a result, understanding volitionism in terms of intentional actions and omissions can help breathe new life into the volitionist debate.