Reasonable expectations, moral responsibility, and empirical data

Abstract

Many philosophers think that a necessary condition on moral blameworthiness is that the wrongdoer can reasonably be expected to avoid the action for which she is blamed. Those who think so assume as a matter of course that the expectations at issue here are normative expectations that contrast with the non-normative or predictive expectations we form concerning the probable conduct of others, and they believe, or at least assume, that there is a clear-cut distinction between the two. In this paper I put this widespread assumption under scrutiny and argue that it’s mistaken: although predictive and normative expectations are indeed distinct, there is no sharp separation between them. On the contrary, predictive expectations can have a substantial bearing on normative expectations in two related ways: they can recalibrate what is reasonable to expect of agents when responsibility attributions are at stake and they can help to uncover previously undetected excusing conditions. I illustrate my claims with the famous bystander effect from social psychology and show that it yields predictive expectations that affect normative expectations in these two ways.