Abstract

This thesis addresses the question whether, and if so in what way, we are responsible for our desires, emotions, beliefs, and other attitudes. Its central claim is that we are responsible for our attitudes for the same reason that we are responsible for our actions: namely, because they reflect and are in principle responsive to our judgments about reasons. ;This view of the matter runs against the grain of most traditional theorizing about questions of responsibility. It is commonly thought that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of responsibility, and therefore that we are responsible for our attitudes only insofar as they can be traced in some way to our own volitional activity. In Chapter One, I examine and reject this commonly held view. In Chapter Two, I present an alternative to this volitionalist conception of responsibility, which I call the rational relations view. According to this view, what makes a mental state "ours" in the sense relevant to questions of responsibility and moral assessment is that it is normatively connected to our underlying judgments and evaluative commitments in such a way that we can, in principle, be called upon to defend it with reasons. ;The remaining three chapters are devoted to the further clarification and defense of the rational relations view, which I provide in the course of examining three natural objections to it. In Chapter Three, I consider the objection that the kinds of assessments we are open to in virtue of our desires, emotions, and other attitudes are not distinctively moral assessments. In response, I explain what I take to be distinctive about moral appraisal, and argue that our attitudes fall within the scope of this form of assessment. In Chapter Four, I explain how the rational relations view can accommodate cases of attitudinal conflict and recalcitrance. Finally, in Chapter Five, I examine some practical implications of accepting the rational relations view, and address the worry that this view would encourage a censorious attitude toward the mental lives of others or a psychologically unhealthy preoccupation with our own mental shortcomings