The Source of Responsibility

Ethics 133 (2):163–188 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Although we are morally responsible for things of various kinds, what we bear direct responsibility for are certain exercises of our agency (and perhaps some omissions of these). Theorists disagree about what kind of agency is in this respect the source of our responsibility. Some hold that it is agency the exercises of which are actions. Others say that it is agency exercised in forming reasons-responsive attitudes on the basis of our take on reasons (or value). With attention to the relation of moral responsibility to moral obligation, I argue for the first of these views.

Similar books and articles

Instrumentalism about Moral Responsibility Revisited.Anneli Jefferson - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (276):555-573.
Agency and Responsibility.Pamela Hieronymi - 2022 - In Luca Ferrero (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Agency. New York, NY: Routledge.
Moral Responsibility.Christopher Cowley - 2013 - Bristol, CT: Routledge.
Responsibility for Acts and Omissions.Randolph Clarke - 2022 - In Dana Kay Nelkin & Derk Pereboom (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 91-110.
Omissions: Agency, Metaphysics, and Responsibility.Randolph K. Clarke - 2014 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Response-Dependence in Moral Responsibility: A Granularity Challenge.Shawn Tinghao Wang - 2022 - American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (3):273–285.
Blame, Reproach, and Responsibility.Jeanette Kennett - 2020 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 27 (4):395-397.
Attributionism and degrees of Praiseworthiness.Daniel J. Miller - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (10):3071-3087.
Worthy of Praise: Better-than-Minimally-Decent Agency.Andrew Eshleman & Andrew S. Eshleman - 2014 - Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility 2:216-241.
Responsibility from the Margins.Stephen Kearns - 2017 - Analysis 77 (4):869-872.
Collective moral agency and self-induced moral incapacity.Niels de Haan - 2023 - Philosophical Explorations 26 (1):1-22.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-07-28

Downloads
169 (#111,055)

6 months
75 (#57,282)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Randolph Clarke
Florida State University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Moral dimensions: permissibility, meaning, blame.Thomas Scanlon - 2008 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
When Beliefs Wrong.Mark Schroeder - 2018 - Philosophical Topics 46 (1):115-127.
Responsibility for believing.Pamela Hieronymi - 2008 - Synthese 161 (3):357-373.
Two Faces of Responsibility.Gary Watson - 1996 - Philosophical Topics 24 (2):227-248.

View all 27 references / Add more references