Responsibility Allocation and Human Rights

How does morality allocate responsibility for what it requires? I am concerned here with one fundamental part of this question, namely, how morality determines responsibility when multiple agents are capable of contributing to or completing a moral task, and special relationships capable of generating duties with respect to the task are non-existent, insufficient as a moral response, or partly indeterminate. On one view, responsibility falls to the agents who can bear it with the least burden. I show why this is initially attractive and mistaken. Instead, I defend an equity-based approach that accommodates the intuitions that both support and trouble the least-cost principle. One upshot is that sometimes we ought prefer a distribution of responsibility that is more expensive and less local than needed to complete the task. I illustrate the practical significance of the argument in terms of the human rights of refugees.     

改造自然界与人的道德责任——论对世界存在和人存在的重新开启

长期以来,人们总是将改造自然界的实践活动理解为满足人的生存需要的手段,在马克思以前从来没有人将改造自然界的实践活动视为一种先行开启世界存在和人存在的本体论的目的性活动。正是对改造自然界实践活动的这一重大误读,导致了现代性的实践活动给自然界带来巨大破坏和对人的存在的严重扭曲。因此,正本清源,还改造自然界实践活动的本来面目,成为摆在理论工作者面前一项迫在眉睫的任务。改造自然界的实践活动是创造世界和创造人的本体,它的先行存在地位决定了它才真正是人们对自然环境负道德责任的形而上学根据,正是通过它才开启出世界的存在和人的存在,因而它才有资格成为道德责任的关怀对象。改造自然界实践活动的先在性,决定了人们怎样进行改造自然界的实践活动,就有怎样的世界存在和怎样的人性。道德上负责任地进行改造自然界的实践活动,意味着人要负责任地创造世界、负责任地创造人的存在。对改造自然界的实践活动负道德责任,就是对自然世界负道德责任、对人本身负道德责任。     

Human Enhancement,Social Solidarity and the Distribution of Responsibility

This paper tries to clarify, strengthen and respond to two prominent objections to the development and use of human enhancement technologies. Both objections express concerns about the link between enhancement and the drive for hyperagency (i.e. the ability to control and manipulate all aspects of one’s agency). The first derives from the work of Sandel and Hauskeller—and is concerned with the negative impact of hyperagency on social solidarity. In responding to their objection, I argue that although social solidarity is valuable, there is a danger in overestimating its value and in neglecting some obvious ways in which the enhancement project can be planned so as to avoid its degradation. The second objection, though common to several writers, has been most directly asserted by Saskia Nagel, and is concerned with the impact of hyperagency on the burden and distribution of responsibility. Though this is an intriguing objection, I argue that not enough has been done to explain why this is morally problematic. I try to correct for this flaw before offering a variety of strategies for dealing with the problems raised.     

Responsibility,Reactive Attitudes and Very General Facts of Human Nature

This paper defends P.F. Strawson's controversial ‘reversal move’, the view that the reactive attitudes determine what it means to be responsible. Many are critical of this account, arguing that it leads to the result that if we were to start to hold very young children responsible, they would be responsible. I argue that it is possible to read Strawson as providing a grammatical analysis of our moral responsibility language‐game by drawing two parallels between Strawson and Wittgenstein. This interpretation shows that the formulation of the problem associated with the ‘reversal move’ rests on a grammatical mistake.     

我国遗体捐献的局限性问题分析

1　我国遗体捐献的开展势在必行通过捐献遗体进行人体解剖,可以帮助我们了解疾病诊治过程中的方法、死亡原因,看到疾病发生发展的过程。另外,医学生入学后第一门医学基础课《人体解剖学》,要求4～6个学生共同解剖一具尸体,如不通过具体尸体解剖,医学生对人体具体结构的认识有很大局限性,只停留在画面上,可以想象,一个外科医生在做手术前如不经过人体解剖的尝试,手术台上的手术能连连成功吗?尸解率的高低,不仅反映了一个国家的医学水平,还在一定程度上反映出一个民族的文化素质,一些医学发达的国家十分重视尸体解剖,有些国家甚至把尸体解剖作…     

责任伦理视角下人类胚胎干细胞研究的法律规制

人类胚胎干细胞技术的迅猛发展对科学研究和医疗有着重大意义,但不可避免带来了一系列的社会、伦理难题.仅靠弹性很大的行业伦理规范不足以防范科技风险,有必要寻求法律制度的回应.责任伦理作为科技时代的伦理,为解决科技发展带来的伦理争议提供了新的纬度和伦理指导.应以责任伦理学为思维框架,在责任监管和制裁机制的构建等方面进行探索.     

Michael S. Moore: Mechanical Choices. The Responsibility of the Human Machine

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

Responsibility and Reciprocity

Discussions of responsibility typically focus on the person who is held responsible: what are the conditions or criteria of responsibility; what can be done to or demanded of a person who is responsible? This paper shifts focus onto those who hold, rather than those who are held, responsible: what do we owe to those whom we hold responsible? After distinguishing responsibility as answerability from responsibility as liability, it attends mainly to the former, and points out the ways in which it is multiply relational: I am responsible for something to someone who has the standing to call me to account for it, under the norms of some particular practice. Responsibility as thus understood is also reciprocal: if you are to be answerable to me, I must treat you with a certain respect, attend seriously to your answer, and be ready to answer to you myself. The paper explores some of the implications of this point both for our moral dealings with each other, and for criminal law and the criminal trial.     

Responsibility and Manipulation

I address various critiques of the approach to moral responsibility sketched in previous work by Ravizza and Fischer. I especially focus on the key issues pertaining to manipulation. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Blame and Responsibility

This paper looks at judgments of guilt in the face of alleged wrong-doing, be it in public or in private discourse. Its concern is not the truth of such judgments, although the complexity and contestability of such claims will be stressed. The topic, instead, is what sort of activities we are engaged in, when we make our judgments on others' conduct. To examine judging as an activity it focuses on a series of problems that can occur when we blame others. On analysis, we see that these problems take the form of performative contradictions, so that the ostensible purposes of assigning guilt to others are undermined.There is clear evidence from social psychology that blame is especially frequently and inappropriately attributed to individuals in modern Western societies. On the other hand, it has often been observed how suspicious we are about the activity of judging – thus a widespread perception that a refusal to judge is somehow virtuous. My suggestion is that the sheer difficulty of attributions of responsibility, in the face of a complex and often arbitrary moral reality, frequently defeats us. This leads to a characteristic set of distortions when we blame, so that it is no surprise that we have become suspicious of all blaming activities.Yet, the paper argues, these problems need not arise when we hold others responsible. This paper therefore investigates what, exactly, can be questionable about attempts to assign guilt, and the structural logic that lies behind these problems – what will be called, adapting a term from social psychology, a belief in a just world. Such a belief takes for granted what needs to be worked for through human activity, and therefore tends to be counter-productive in dealing with misdeeds and adverse outcomes.     

Egalitarianism and Responsibility

This essay examines several possible rationales for the egalitarian judgment that justice requires better-off individuals to help those who are worse off even in the absence of social interaction. These rationales include equality (everyone should enjoy the same level of benefits), moral meritocracy (each should get benefits according to her responsibility or deservingness), the threshold of sufficiency (each should be assured a minimally decent quality of life), prioritarianism (a function of benefits to individuals should be maximized that gives priority to the worse off), and mixed views. A case is made for adopting either prioritarianism or a mixed view that gives priority both to the worse off and to the more responsible and deserving.     

Responsibility and Judgment

I focus on the type of responsibility that an agent has for actions that express his practical identity, making it appropriate to evaluate him on the basis of those actions. This kind of responsibility is often called attributability. In this paper, I argue for a novel view of attributability—the Judgment Responsiveness View (JRV). According to the JRV, an agent is attributability responsible for an action A if and only if A results from either 1) his responding to his judgments about the (normative) reasons that he has in favor of doing A by doing A or 2) his failing to exercise his capacity to respond to his judgments about the (normative) reasons that he has against doing A by not doing A. The JRV diverges from other views of attributability for actions in two significant respects. First, it is not reasonably thought of as a “deep self view.” According to deep self views, attributable actions are actions that express deep features of the agent, such as his fundamental values, cares, or commitments. As I show, thinking in terms of the deep self is too narrow for attributability. Second, unlike other views, the JRV claims—via condition 2)—that we can be attributionally responsible for actions that result from failing to exercise the attributability‐relevant capacity to avoid them. My argument for the JRV thus shows that attributability is a broader and richer conception of responsibility than has been previously thought.