Concept Of Moral Responsibility Research Articles

“Epistemic Frankfurt Cases” Against the Backdrop of the Original Frankfurt Case

Abstract This paper critically examines so-called “epistemic Frankfurt cases” (see e.g., Kelp 2016; Zagzebski 2001) against the backdrop of the original Frankfurt case. A distinction is drawn between two ways of deserving “epistemic credit,” which are subsequently compared to the concept of moral responsibility that is in play within the original Frankfurt case. Based on this analysis, Zagzebski's claim that agents in “epistemic Frankfurt cases” can be considered epistemically credible for the same reason as the agent in the original version is said to be morally responsible is challenged; raising doubts as to whether these cases really are best described as instances of knowledge. The paper concludes with the construction and discussion of a case that is a genuine epistemic analogue to the original Frankfurt case.

The concept of free will

The subject of this research is the concept of free will. The modern philosophical discussions either do not explicate it, or interpret far from the traditional meaning that has been instilled into this term throughout the centuries, The goal of this article lies in the historical-philosophical reconstruction of the concept of free will. However, the interest towards achieving this goal is not limited to the sphere of history of philosophy. Understanding of the key term largely determines the fruitfulness of theoretical constructions aimed at solution of the problem of free will. The article expounds and substantiates the methodological principles the reconstruction concept of free is based upon. It is demonstrated that free will features two characteristics that can be designated as conformity and independence. Therefore, free will can be defined as the will that corresponds to the value system of an individual and is independent of external factors. Such definition summarizes the practice of utilization of this term in history of philosophy. However, since the late XIX century, and namely in the XX century, there has developed a strong tendency towards distortion of the traditional concept of free will, which implies exclusion of the characteristic of independence and defining free will through the concept of moral responsibility.

"КЛЕЩИ УДАЧИ" НИЛА ЛЕВИ ПРОТИВ КОМПАТИБИЛИСТСКИХ ТЕОРИЙ МОРАЛЬНОЙ ОТВЕТСТВЕННОСТИ

The article discusses Neil Levy’s argument against compatibilist theories of moral responsibility based on his concept of luck. The author considers possible ways for criticizing the concept of moral responsibility by undermining the control condition or the epistemic condition. Levi follows the second path. The author analyzes specifics in Levy’s interpretation of the epistemic condition: according to Levy, the epistemic condition is built into the control one; it is considered from an internalist position (from the point of view of availability to an agent of the grounds for his action). Levy analyzes the concept of luck and identifies several types of it: chancy and non-chancy, present and constitutive. Cases of luck are not controlled by an agent, and he or she is not responsible for them. Then the author considers Levy’s argument against compatibilism based on his concept of luck: any compatibilist explanation of an action for which an agent is morally responsible rests either on constitutive luck, or on present luck, or on a combination of them. The substantiation of such a trilemma leads Levy to the concept of intellectual vice. FitzPatrick’s answer to the issue formulated by Levy is analyzed. It is shown that, even though Fitzpatrick’s solution is problematic, his general approach is correct: it is necessary to develop a theory of epistemic responsibility by the means of virtue epistemology and show its connection with moral responsibility.

Building blocks of ‘free will’: In conversation with Dick Swaab

The issue of free will is a complex one that has occupied the minds of many theologians and philosophers through the ages. The two main aspects of free will are the freedom to do otherwise and the power of self-determination. This means that an agent must be able to choose from alternative possibilities and that he or she must be the author or source of that choice. Defined as such, it is clear that the issue of free will is undeniably closely linked with the concept of moral responsibility. However, if we live in a deterministic world, where everything is governed by the laws of nature, including our thoughts and behaviour, does this leave room for free will and moral responsibility? As Dutch neurobiologist and author Dick Swaab argues, the answer is an emphatic ‘no’. In this article, we will look at Swaab’s case against free will. We will also see what modern neuroscience has to say about this hot topic and whether it supports or discredits Swaab’s views. And finally, we will touch on what this all means for moral responsibility. Contribution: This article is part of a special collection that reflects on the evolutionary building blocks of our past, present and future. It is based on historical thought and contemporary research. It fits well with the intersectional and inter-disciplinary nature of this collection and journal.

Patients, practitioners, and conscience: Why religion should not divide

Summary In this paper, I take up the role of conscience in medical practice. I focus on the role that religious claims play in debates over conscience in medicine, in particular, and in healthcare, more broadly. Much work on conscience and conscientious practice within healthcare is framed in terms of a debate over whether practitioners should be allowed to conscientiously object to specific healthcare practices and, if so, on what grounds. A common instance of this general framing admits of two descriptions: first, that exercising their conscience – i.e., by conscientiously objecting to a particular practice which is viewed by the profession of which the practitioner is a part – is an inappropriate foisting of practitioners’ personal religious values on a patient; second, that exercising their conscience is an appropriate response to disagreement over issues of ultimate concern within a profession or within a society, in light of deeply held religious beliefs. Though what I will call the religious framing of the conscience debate is not the only framing it is a prominent one and one which, I argue, is mistaken. After describing the debate, I argue that the root of disagreement is not religious claims but rather differing conceptions of moral responsibility. If this is correct, then I hope to have refocused attention in a debate that appears intractable to a place where a resolution is possible.

Does It Matter Whether You or Your Brain Did It? An Empirical Investigation of the Influence of the Double Subject Fallacy on Moral Responsibility Judgments.

Despite progress in cognitive neuroscience, we are still far from understanding the relations between the brain and the conscious self. We previously suggested that some neuroscientific texts that attempt to clarify these relations may in fact make them more difficult to understand. Such texts—ranging from popular science to high-impact scientific publications—position the brain and the conscious self as two independent, interacting subjects, capable of possessing opposite psychological states. We termed such writing ‘Double Subject Fallacy’ (DSF). We further suggested that such DSF language, besides being conceptually confusing and reflecting dualistic intuitions, might affect people’s conceptions of moral responsibility, lessening the perception of guilt over actions. Here, we empirically investigated this proposition with a series of three experiments (pilot and two preregistered replications). Subjects were presented with moral scenarios where the defendant was either (1) clearly guilty, (2) ambiguous, or (3) clearly innocent while the accompanying neuroscientific evidence about the defendant was presented using DSF or non-DSF language. Subjects were instructed to rate the defendant’s guilt in all experiments. Subjects rated the defendant in the clearly guilty scenario as guiltier than in the two other scenarios and the defendant in the ambiguously described scenario as guiltier than in the innocent scenario, as expected. In Experiment 1 (N = 609), an effect was further found for DSF language in the expected direction: subjects rated the defendant less guilty when the neuroscientific evidence was described using DSF language, across all levels of culpability. However, this effect did not replicate in Experiment 2 (N = 1794), which focused on different moral scenario, nor in Experiment 3 (N = 1810), which was an exact replication of Experiment 1. Bayesian analyses yielded strong evidence against the existence of an effect of DSF language on the perception of guilt. Our results thus challenge the claim that DSF language affects subjects’ moral judgments. They further demonstrate the importance of good scientific practice, including preregistration and—most critically—replication, to avoid reaching erroneous conclusions based on false-positive results.

Wrongness, Responsibility, and Conscientious Refusals in Health Care.

In this article, I address what kinds of claims are of the right kind to ground conscientious refusals. Specifically, I investigate what conceptions of moral responsibility and moral wrongness can be permissibly presumed by conscientious objectors. I argue that we must permit HCPs to come to their own subjective conclusions about what they take to be morally wrong and what they take themselves to be morally responsible for. However, these subjective assessments of wrongness and responsibility must be constrained in several important ways: they cannot involve empirical falsehoods, objectionably discriminatory attitudes, or unreasonable normative beliefs. I argue that the sources of these constraints are the basic epistemic, relational, and normative competencies needed to function as a minimally decent health-care professional. Finally, I consider practical implications for my framework, and argue that it shows us that the objection raised by the plaintiffs in Zubik v. Burwell is of the wrong sort.

The khat controversy: dark leisure in a liquid modern world

ABSTRACTThis paper examines moral debates surrounding khat-chewing, a favoured pastime woven into the cultural fabric of countries located in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The ensuing discussion focuses on the moral perspectives that surround khat use within the Somali diaspora in the United Kingdom. Central to this debate is the moral implications of the British Government’s ban on khat - implemented in June 2014 - and the bitterness it has caused within the diaspora. These opinions are unpacked to highlight the difficulties of imposing rigid universal ethics, in a globalised world, prone to continuous movements of peoples and cultural practices. Here, Bauman’s (1993, 1995, 1998) concept of moral responsibility is applied to provide an understanding of morality - and dark leisure - that navigates a path in-between the deterministic scientific thought imposed by state administrators and the relativist position championed by postmodernists.

Free Will Skepticism and the Question of Creativity: Creativity, Desert, and Self-Creation

Free will skepticism maintains that what we do, and the way we are, is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the basic desert sense—the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame. In recent years, a number of contemporary philosophers have advanced and defended versions of free will skepticism, including Derk Pereboom (2001, 2014), Galen Strawson (2010), Neil Levy (2011), Bruce Waller (2011, 2015), and myself (Caruso 2012, 2013, forthcoming). Critics, however, often complain that adopting such views would have dire consequences for ourselves, society, morality, meaning, and the law. They fear, for instance, that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert moral responsibility would leave us unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior, increase anti-social conduct, and undermine meaning in life. In response, free will skeptics argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe (see, e.g., Pereboom 2001, 2014; Waller 2011, 2015; Caruso 2016, forthcoming). According to optimistic skeptics, prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be threatened. And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, incapacitation and rehabilitation programs would still be justified (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014; Levy 2012; Caruso 2016; Pereboom and Caruso, forthcoming). In this paper, I attempt to extend this general optimism about the practical implications of free will skepticism to the question of creativity. In Section I, I spell out the question of creativity and explain why it’s relevant to the problem of free will. In Section II, I identify three different conceptions of creativity and explain the practical concerns critics have with free will skepticism. In Section III, I distinguish between three different conceptions of moral responsibility and argue that at least two of them are consistent with free will skepticism. I further contend that forward-looking accounts of moral responsibility, which are perfectly consistent with free will skepticism, can justify calling agents to account for immoral behavior as well as providing encouragement for creative activities since these are important for moral and creative formation and development. I conclude in Section IV by arguing that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert would not mean the death of creativity or our sense of achievement since important and realistic conceptions of both remain in place.

Free Will Skepticism and the Question of Creativity: Creativity, Desert, and Self-Creation

Free will skepticism maintains that what we do, and the way we are, is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the basic desert sense—the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame. In recent years, a number of contemporary philosophers have advanced and defended versions of free will skepticism, including Derk Pereboom (2001, 2014), Galen Strawson (2010), Neil Levy (2011), Bruce Waller (2011, 2015), and myself (Caruso 2012, 2013, forthcoming). Critics, however, often complain that adopting such views would have dire consequences for ourselves, society, morality, meaning, and the law. They fear, for instance, that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert moral responsibility would leave us unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior, increase anti-social conduct, and undermine meaning in life. In response, free will skeptics argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe (see, e.g., Pereboom 2001, 2014; Waller 2011, 2015; Caruso 2016, forthcoming). According to optimistic skeptics, prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be threatened. And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, incapacitation and rehabilitation programs would still be justified (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014; Levy 2012; Caruso 2016; Pereboom and Caruso, forthcoming). In this paper, I attempt to extend this general optimism about the practical implications of free will skepticism to the question of creativity. In Section I, I spell out the question of creativity and explain why it’s relevant to the problem of free will. In Section II, I identify three different conceptions of creativity and explain the practical concerns critics have with free will skepticism. In Section III, I distinguish between three different conceptions of moral responsibility and argue that at least two of them are consistent with free will skepticism. I further contend that forward-looking accounts of moral responsibility, which are perfectly consistent with free will skepticism, can justify calling agents to account for immoral behavior as well as providing encouragement for creative activities since these are important for moral and creative formation and development. I conclude in Section IV by arguing that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert would not mean the death of creativity or our sense of achievement since important and realistic conceptions of both remain in place.

Looking for Moral Responsibility in Ownership: A Way to Deal with Hazards of GMOs

Until now, the debates around genetically modified seeds in agriculture have converged towards two main issues. The first is about hazards that this new technology brings about, and the second is about the ownership of seeds and the distribution of their economic benefits. In this paper, I explore an underdeveloped topic by linking these two issues: how ownership shapes the distribution of moral responsibility for the potential hazards of genetically modified seeds. Indeed, while ownership is debated in terms of economic rights and hazards in terms of “good” or “bad” science, no one has looked at whether or not we could and should ascribe and distribute moral responsibility for hazards based on ownership of genetically modified seeds. I argue that we should. Using the notion of ownership as a bundle of rights, I argue that from a moral perspective, the genetically modified seed has several owners at the same time. Although different owners may not have the same economic rights over the seed, they all have a moral responsibility, possibly to varying degrees, for the potential hazards brought about by the seed. Secondly, I argue that, as long as a seed carries the character trait that was intentionally modified, then it calls for moral responsibility. All in all, I formulate a way for linking issues of ownership and hazards of genetically modified seeds in agriculture through the concept of moral responsibility.

The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom by James Laidlaw (review)

Reviewed by: The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom by James Laidlaw Heleana Theixos The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom. James Laidlaw. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. viii + 258. $29.99 (paper). James Laidlaw is currently Head of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College. His regional interests cover South and East Asia (India, Bhutan, Inner Mongolia, and Taiwan). The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom (2014) springs from Laidlaw’s participation in “Ethics at the intersection of moral philosophy and anthropology,” a seminar at the Cambridge University Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, where he was a fellow. Anthropologists tend not to engage with the ethical components of a culture, in large part because their aim is to focus on social relations, and ethical concepts operate at the level of the individual. Moral philosophers work at this level of the individual, with special interest in motivations, judgments, dispositions, moral intuitions, and actions. Explicating these aspects of the individual is one challenge moral philosophers face in the absence of a full theory of autonomy, freedom, and thus responsibility. Laidlaw’s project is to work within the gaps between these two disciplines. He aims to show how a moral philosophy that is enriched by anthropology can work, and how an anthropology that is enriched by moral philosophy is a viable and important aim. Thus Laidlaw’s work belongs [End Page 565] in the discipline of moral anthropology, an emerging field that can benefit from the frameworks available in both disciplines, so that an anthropology of ethics emerges. The Current Landscape Moral philosophers aim at clearly considering ethical aspects in conjunction with thinking about moral responsibility, agency, perceptions and dispositions—good, bad, right, wrong, and moral intuitions and ideas. Cultural anthropologists aim to explicate the interactive social processes that create and remake conceptions of persons, kinship, and social values. Both disciplines engage with the “personal responsibility problem,” wherein ethical judgments run up against determinism, cultural relativism, and our conceptions of moral responsibility. The emerging subgenre of anthropology, moral anthropology, is a discipline which bridges a dialogue in both anthropology and moral philosophy by taking on, as its major challenge, the issue of personal responsibility. This subgenre can both bridge and enliven under-examined topics like feminist moral philosophy, feminist anthropology and the anthropology of gender, as well as some more philosophically mainstream topics like personal responsibility, autonomy, freedom, and well-being. The Premise Gains in the social sciences, specifically anthropology, can be of benefit to thinking about ethics at the level of the individual. The social sciences have uniformity in the terms and meanings they use, they have standards of excellence in their analysis of empirical data, and their inclusion of comparative dimensions of social analysis grounds their ethnographies. Laidlaw argues that these tools of anthropology can thus be used to illuminate ethical dimensions of human conduct and thinking, and to provide a way to create ethical theory that can benefit from scientific rigor. Laidlaw investigates certain tensions, some of which Bernard Williams also explored in Shame and Necessity (1993): for example, the question of how to talk about moral responsibility in an intellectual environment wherein we are, as investigators, conflicted about what personal and moral responsibility consists of. Laidlaw’s premise is that, if ethical concepts like freedom, autonomy, responsibility, and character can be organized and analyzed through anthropological analysis, then moral philosophers who are aiming to inform their work with the psychological and the social aspects of ethical decision-making have more resources than they may know. Laidlaw’s project is to describe how these resources can invigorate the philosophical approach to ethics, thus widening and enhancing the discipline. Anthropology and Moral Philosophy Laidlaw opens with an overview of anthropological approaches to social morality, noting how many of the important anthropological ethnographies have historically been very interested in moral concepts. Several generations of ethnographies have sections on the prevalent moral attitudes of people and social processes, and also the limitations in talking about human moral concepts within the confines of cultural instances. What is evident in all...

Beyond Verbal Disputes: The Compatibilism Debate Revisited

The compatibilism debate revolves around the question whether moral responsibility and free will are compatible with determinism. Prima facie, this seems to be a substantial issue. But according to the triviality objection, the disagreement is merely verbal: compatibilists and incompatibilists, it is maintained, are talking past each other, since they use the terms “free will” and “moral responsibility” in different senses. In this paper I argue, first, that the triviality objection is indeed a formidable one and that the standard replies to it are unconvincing. This, however, does not mean that the objection succeeds. Starting with the debate about moral responsibility, I attempt to show that there is an account of moral responsibility which enables us to defend the compatibilism debate against the charge of triviality—namely, the normative conception of moral responsibility. If “moral responsibility” is defined in normative terms, then we cannot distinguish between a compatibilist and an incompatibilist sense of “moral responsibility”, because such a disambiguation would be inconsistent with the essential action-guiding force of normative expressions. Finally, I examine how the normative conception of moral responsibility can help us to defend the free will debate against the triviality objection and draw some general conclusions.

Fischer-style Compatibilism

John Martin Fischer’s new collection of essays, Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value, constitutes a trenchant defence of his well-known compatibilist approach to moral responsibility (Fischer 1994, 2006; Fischer and Ravizza 1998).1 Predominantly a collection of detailed responses to recent critics, this is not a book for beginners. It is, however, essential reading for specialists, as well as useful reading for non-specialists seeking a snapshot of the current state of the debate. Fischer’s papers are dense with argument and alive with original and productive ideas. As is customary, however, I here focus only on lines of thought that failed to convince. In particular, I discuss two arguments: one aimed at vindicating Frankfurt-style counterexamples in deterministic contexts and one aimed at undermining the ‘source’ incompatibilist’s conception of moral responsibility.

RESPONSIBILITY AND MORAL BRICOLAGE

Na longa disputa sobre o tipo de liberdade requerida para a responsabilidade, os participantes tenderam a assumir que estavam concernidos com um conceito de responsabilidade moral compartilhado. Esta assunção foi questionada recentemente. Uma visível divisão entre ‘Lumpers’ e ‘Splitters’ surgiu. Os Lumpers defendem a suposição tradicional que há um conceito unificado de responsabilidade, enquanto os Splitters sustentam que há dois ou mais conceitos de responsabilidade moral. Aqui, eu ofereço um argumento em nome dos Splitters que conecta um tipo de pluralismo de valor na ética normativa, teorizando com a contenda dos Splitters de que há múltiplas formas de responsabilidade moral. Minha tese é condicional. Na medida em que alguém crê plausível um quadro fragmentado da paisagem na teorização normativa – que eu referirei como ‘bricolagem moral’ – então alguém tem razão em juntar-se aos Splitters pensando que o conceito de responsabilidade moral é igualmente fragmentado.

Going the (Ethical) Distance

Nearly every day we participate in the vast, interconnected global economy. In doing so, we engage in chains of transactions that ultimately result in our benefiting from, or enabling, wrongdoing by others. In some cases this seems to be in itself wrong, but in many cases it seems unproblematic. I develop a concept of ‘ethical distance’ and argue that our responsibility for the wrongdoing of others is a function of our ethical distance from it. Furthermore, I argue that the concept of moral responsibility is vague, but that when we become clearly responsible for wrongdoing by others, we ought to sever our connection to it.

Corporate Responsibility in the Collective Age: Toward a Conception of Collaborative Responsibility

ABSTRACTIn this article, I will argue that it is time to rethink and reconfigure some of the established assumptions underlying our conception of moral responsibility. Specifically, there is a mismatch between the individualism of our common sense morality and the imperative for collaborative responses to global problems in what I will call the “collective age.” This must have an impact also on the way we think about the responsibility of corporations. I will argue that most plausibly we ought to reframe corporate responsibility as a conception of collaborative responsibility. Such a conception of collaborative responsibility is characterized by five key elements: first, it is based on the moral imperative for collaboration. Second, it shifts emphasis from commission to omission. Third, it is not only negative but also, and perhaps essentially, positive responsibility. Fourth, it is political responsibility. And finally, it is, most basically, human rights responsibility.

Attributability, Answerability, and Accountability: In Defense of a Unified Account

In his recent article “Attributability, Answerability, and Accountability: Toward a Wider Theory of Moral Responsibility,” David Shoemaker argues that our actual moral practices embody three distinct conceptions of responsibility and that some recent accounts of moral responsibility that draw their inspiration from the work of T. M. Scanlon fail to capture these distinct conceptions. My aim in this essay is to argue that our moral practices do not, in fact, embody three different conceptions of moral responsibility and that what Shoemaker aptly calls “responsibility as answerability” is indeed the only kind of moral responsibility there is.

Revenge without responsibility? Judgments about collective punishment in baseball

Many cultures practice collective punishment; that is, they will punish one person for another's transgression, based solely on shared group membership. This practice is difficult to reconcile with the theories of moral responsibility that dominate in contemporary Western psychology, philosophy and law. Yet, we demonstrate a context in which many American participants do endorse collective punishment: retaliatory “beaning” in baseball. Notably, individuals who endorse this form of collective punishment tend not to hold the target of retaliation to be morally responsible. In other words, the psychological mechanisms underlying such “vicarious” forms of collective punishment appear to be distinct from the evaluation of moral responsibility. Consequently, the observation of collective punishment in non-Western cultures may not indicate the operation of fundamentally different conceptions of moral responsibility.

Experimental Philosophy and the Concept of Moral Responsibility

Experimental Philosophy and the Concept of Moral Responsibility