In Moral philosophy meets social psychology, Gilbert Harman argues that social psychology can educate folk morality to prevent us from committing the ‘fundamental attribution error,’ i.e. ‘the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent’s distinctive character traits’ (Harman, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 99, 315–331, 1999). An overview of the literature shows that while situationists unanimously agree with Harman on this point, they disagree on whether we also (...) tend to commit a kind of fundamental attribution error with respect to moral responsibility and blame. Do we also tend to ignore situational factors and overconfidently assume that people are morally responsible and blameworthy for their distinctive patterns of wrongful behaviour? Very few scholars have addressed this issue, and none has ever given a comprehensive account of moral responsibility and blame from a situationist perspective. In this paper, I argue that situationist social psychology impugns subjective theories of responsibility and blame which focus on the agent’s inner states and supports an objective theory—namely, the standard of the reasonable person. I defend this standard as a tool for moral appraisal, and then I refute the common misperception that this approach lets most perpetrators off the hook and poses a threat to society. (shrink)

This book develops an intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. It accomplisheses four main goals. First, it outlines a concise list of the main principles of intersectional feminism. Second, it uses these principles to critique prevailing philosophical theories of moral responsibility. Third, it offers an account of moral responsibility that is compatible with the ethos of intersectional feminism. And fourth, it uses intersectional feminist principles to critique culturally normative responsibility practices. -/- This is the first book to provide an explicitly (...) intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. After identifying the five principles central to intersectional feminism, the author demonstrates how influential theories of responsibility are incompatible with these principles. She argues that a normatively adequate theory of blame should not be preoccupied with the agency or traits of wrongdoers; it should instead underscore, and seek to ameliorate, oppression and adversity as experienced by the marginalized. Apt blame and praise, according to her intersectional feminist account, is both communicative and functionalist. The book concludes with an extensive discussion of culturally embedded responsibility practices, including asymmetrically structured conversations and gender- and racially biased social spaces. -/- An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Moral Responsibility presents a sophisticated and original philosophical account of moral responsibility. It will be of interest to philosophers working at the crossroads of moral responsibility, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, queer theory, critical disability studies, and intersectionality theory. (shrink)

When we focus on asymmetries of power in our society, we find that blame and praise are unfairly distributed, partly due to cultural narratives that favour and exonerate the privileged. This paper provides a partial explanation for this skewed distribution of blame and praise. I draw on three analyses of disappearance narratives that erase and exonerate privileged perpetrators and therefore skew the responsibility system in their favour. Then I defend an emancipatory theory of responsibility that treats blame and praise as (...) communicative entities that can, and should, be used to debunk and dismantle these disappearance narratives, along with other oppressive ideologies. Blame and praise, on my emancipatory proposal, serve to identify and take a stand against agents of oppression and to recognize and celebrate resisters. (shrink)

In his influential work on critical argumentation, Douglas Walton explains how to judge whether an argumentum ad verecundiam is fallacious or legitimate. He provides six critical questions and a number of ancillary sub-questions to guide the identification of reasonable appeals to authority. While it is common for informal logicians to acknowledge the role of bias in sampling procedures and hypothesis confirmation , there is a conspicuous lack of discourse on the effect of identity prejudice on judgments of authority, even though (...) this is a well-documented factor in attributing credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and professional competence to oppressed groups. This could result in faulty judgments of ad verecundiam fallacy. Focusing on gender bias, I review recent works in feminist epistemology—particularly those of Miranda Fricker and Helen Longino —to develop three gender-based critical questions to supplement Walton’s original list of six. This addition will help us to identify erroneous dismissals of appeals to authority based on epistemic injustice and epistemic irresponsibility on the part of the speaker or knowledge community. This project promotes the overlapping aims of feminist epistemology and informal logic. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson’s theory of moral responsibility remains eminently influential. However, moral philosophers such as G. Watson and T.M. Scanlon have called into question it explanatory basis, which grounds moral responsibility in human nature and interpersonal relationships. They demand a deeper normative explanation for when it is appropriate to modify or mollify the reactive attitudes. In this paper, following A. Sneddon, I argue that the best interpretation of Strawson is an externalistic one which construes moral responsibility as an interpersonal social competence, (...) as this approach uniquely satisfies Strawson’s demand that we justify the reactive attitudes from within the participant perspective. I then show that this is the only interpretation capable of preserving Strawson’s well-known excuse of being peculiarly unfortunate in one’s formative circumstances. (shrink)

In their contribution to the Review of philosophy and psychology (19 March 2010), David Faraci and David Shoemaker object to Susan Wolf’s sane deep self view of moral responsibility, which is supposed to accord with our pretheoretical intuitions about deprived childhood victims better than the plain deep-self view. Wolf’s account hinges on the intuitiveness of a particular example, which asks us to consider JoJo, the son of an evil dictator of a small, undeveloped country who grows up to adopt his (...) father’s sadistic values. Faraci and Shoemaker conduct a survey to test naïve reasoners’ intuitions on this case. From the study results, they draw three general conclusions: (i) that Wolf’s view is false, (ii) that DSV is basically adequate, subject to the addition of a scalar dimension which measures degrees of responsibility, and (iii) that JoJo is partially excused by naïve moral reasoners because he is seen as suffering from a rare and peculiar form of moral ignorance, “different in kind from the moral ignorance people usually experience” (p. 327). I dispute these conclusions and present an alternative interpretation of the study, which defends an externalist, Strawsonian account of moral responsibility, and I use this approach to show that JoJo’s circumstances are inherently extenuating (at least to a significant degree). Unlike Wolf’s view and DSV, my preferred account is capable of accommodating the fact that JoJo’s formative circumstances were the only factor that made a statistically significant difference to the subjects’ moral judgments. This is because it is the only view capable of according any degree of intrinsic relevance to such external factors. (shrink)

In a well-known paper, John Doris argues that situationist psychology impugns Aristotelian virtue ethics, which presupposes the existence of stable, situation-independent virtues. Maria Merritt responds that a Humean conception of virtue, which is situation-dependent, is immune to this criticism. However, she does not directly address two of Doris’ more trenchant objections, which he presents in the form of a dilemma. In this paper, I respond to Doris’ dilemma, using recent research in psychology and cognitive science to show that virtue ethics, (...) as a dispositionalist, non-codifiable theory, represents a more empirically adequate moral psychology than the leading alternatives.Dans un célèbre article de 1998, John Doris avance que la psychologie situationniste remet en question l’éthique de la vertu aristotélicienne, laquelle présuppose l’existence de vertus qui sont à la fois fixes et indépendantes d’une situation. Son argument prend la forme d’un dilemme. Le présent article, qui a pour but de répondre à ce dilemme, s’appuie sur des recherches récentes menées dans les domaines de la psychologie et des sciences cognitives afin de démontrer que l’éthique de la vertu, en tant que théorie dispositionnaliste et non-codifiable, constitue une psychologie morale plus adéquate au plan empirique que les autres approches reconnues. (shrink)

In the Journal of Moral Education, 39(2), Brenda Almond and Lawrence Blum debate the importance of tolerance versus acceptance in sex education. Blum defines acceptance as ?positive regard?, in contradistinction to mere tolerance, ?a live and let live attitude toward others, an acceptance of coexistence, but with a disapproval of that ?other??. Employing consequentialist and definitional arguments, he defends an acceptant educational policy. I shore up this defence by addressing the issue of autonomy: specifically, I refute the claim that acceptance (...) undermines parental autonomy in a morally unacceptable fashion. Drawing on Philip Pettit and Michael Smith?s defence of the idea of ?orthonomy? or right-rule, I argue that orthonomy, rather than autonomy, should guide educational policy-making. I then show that the principle of orthonomy, together with teachers? professional responsibilities to ensure a safe and prejudice-free learning environment, entails that teachers have an inalienable responsibility to promote homophilic (gay-positive) values, regardless of whether they or their students? parents agree. (shrink)

It is a common assumption that lack of autonomy is incompatible with decisional capacity and mental health. However, there are two general conceptions of autonomy, one value-neutral and the other value-laden, which imply different notions of mental health. I argue that the value-neutral notion of autonomy is independently inadequate and that it also provides an inadequate foundation for judging whether someone is decisionally incapable or mentally disordered. I propose an alternative, value-laden account which posits ten capabilities required for basic human (...) functioning. I then defend this account against objections and highlight its practical utility in designing optimal treatment. (shrink)

This paper is about the meaning of situationism. Philosophers have drawn various conclusions about situationism, some more favourable than others. Moreover, there is a difference between public reception of situationism, which has been very enthusiastic, and scholarly reception, which has been more cynical. In this paper, I outline what I take to be four key implications of situationism, based on careful scrutiny of the literature. Some situationist accounts, it turns out, are inconsistent with others, or incongruous with the logic of (...) situationist psychology. If we are to teach students about situationism, we must first strive for relative consensus amongst experts, and then disseminate the results to philosophical educators in various fields. (shrink)

In A New Form of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics , Daniel Doviak develops a novel agent-based theory of right action that treats the rightness (or deontic status) of an action as a matter of the action’s net intrinsic virtue value (net-IVV)—that is, its balance of virtue over vice. This view is designed to accommodate three basic tenets of commonsense morality: (i) the maxim that “ought” implies “can,” (ii) the idea that a person can do the right thing for the wrong reason, (...) and (iii) the idea that a virtuous person can have “mixed motives.” In this paper, I argue that Doviak’s account makes an important contribution to agent-based virtue ethics, but it needs to be supplemented with a consequentialist account of the efficacy of well-motivated actions—that is, it should be transformed into a mixed (motives-consequences) account, while retaining its net-IVV calculus. This is because I believe that there are right-making properties external to an agent’s psychology which it is important to take into account, especially when an agent’s actions negatively affect other people. To incorporate this intuition, I add to Doviak’s net-IVV calculus a scale for outcomes . The result is a mixed view which accommodates tenets (ii) and (iii) above, but allows for (i) to fail in certain cases. I argue that, rather than being a defect, this allowance is an asset because our intuitions about ought-implies-can break down in cases where an agent is grossly misguided, and our theory should track these intuitions. (shrink)

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It is contested whether and to what extent moral responsibility can be ascribed to persons with mental health disabilities. Will Cartwright (2006) evaluates two prevalent theories of responsibility in terms of their suitability for morally appraising sociopathic personality disorder, particularly as embodied in the famous homicidal bank robber Robert Harris. Cartwright argues that our intuitions about Harris conflict because we are instantly horrified by Harris’ actions, but we are forced to reconsider our initial moral reaction when we reflect on Harris’ (...) history of extreme abuse and neglect. After considering both candidate theories—the reflective-self view and the reasons view—Cartwright decides that neither is .. (shrink)

In Complicity and the Rwandan Genocide ( 2010b ), Larry May argues that complicity can be the basis for criminal liability if two conditions are met: First, the person’s actions or inactions must contribute to the harm in question, and secondly, the person must know that his actions or inactions risk contributing to this harm. May also states that the threshold for guilt for criminal liability is higher than for moral responsibility. I agree with this latter claim, but I think (...) that it casts doubt on May’s account of criminal liability, particular in so-called performance cases in which low-level participants merely fail to help. This is because it is far from clear that passive non-helpers are morally responsible for their participation in widespread harms. Situationism purports to show that passive bystanders typically are not morally responsible for their role in such harms, because they were behaving reasonably subject to the constraints they faced. In this paper, I assess this claim, and defend it on the basis of O. W. Holmes’ standard of the reasonable person as a guide to judging criminal complicity. Finally, I provide a situationist account of the Rwandan genocide, which focuses on the systemic causes and primary perpetrators of the genocide, rather than low-level participants. (shrink)

In traditional analytic philosophy, critical thinking is defined along Cartesian lines as rational and linear reasoning preclusive of intuitions, emotions and lived experience. According to Michael Gilbert, this view – which he calls the Natural Light Theory (NLT) – fails because it arbitrarily excludes standard feminist forms of argumentation and neglects the essentially social nature of argumentation. In this paper, I argue that while Gilbert’s criticism is correct for argumentation in general, NLT fails in a distinctive and particularly problematic manner (...) in moral argumentation contexts. This is because NLT calls for disputants to adopt an impartial attitude, which overlooks the fact that moral disputants qua moral agents are necessarily partial to their own values and interests. Adopting the impartial perspective would therefore alienate them from their values and interests, causing a kind of “moral schizophrenia.” Finally, I urge a re-valuation of epistemic virtue in argumentation. (shrink)

In my paper on moral responsibility and mental health disabilities, I defended the use of the standard of the reasonable person (SRP), adapted from W.O. Holmes’ famous account of responsibility in The Common Law (1881). This theory is meant to be applicable to all cases of moral responsibility assessment, but it is particularly apt for ascribing moral responsibility in cases of mental illness on a realist basis. This is because it has three distinctive advantages over the alternatives, that is, the (...) reasons view and the reflective-self view. Namely, (i) it avoids reliance on subjective data, which research in situationist psychology and neuroethics has shown to be elusive, unreliable, and relatively epistemically .. (shrink)

This paper argues that diversity and uptake are required for objectivity. In philosophy, women are underrepresented with respect to teaching, publishing, and citations. This undermines the objectivity of our research output. To improve women’s representation and objectivity in philosophy, we should take steps to increase women’s numbers and institute uptake-conducive conditions. In concrete terms, this means fostering an appreciation for diversity, diversifying evaluators, integrating women’s contributions into mainstream discourse, and reducing implicit bias.

Do we have a duty to use moral neurointerventions to correct deficits in our moral psychology? On their surface, these technologies appear to pose worrisome risks to valuable dimensions of the self, and these risks could conceivably weigh against any prima facie moral duty we have to use these technologies. Focquaert and Schermer :139–151, 2015) argue that neurointerventions pose special risks to the self because they operate passively on the subject’s brain, without her active participation, unlike ‘active’ interventions. Some neurointerventions, (...) however, appear to be relatively unproblematic, and some appear to preserve the agent’s sense of self precisely because they operate passively. In this paper, I propose three conditions that need to be met for a medical intervention to be considered low-risk, and I say that these conditions cut across the active/passive divide. A low-risk intervention must: pass pre-clinical and clinical trials, fare well in post-clinical studies, and be subject to regulations protecting informed consent. If an intervention passes these tests, its risks do not provide strong countervailing reasons against our prima facie duty to undergo the intervention. (shrink)