In this article I argue that Part II of the Family LawAct 1996 gives expression to a new form ofresponsibility. I begin by suggesting thatresponsible behaviour has shifted from prohibiting orrequiring particular actions: we now exhibitresponsibility by our attitude towards our actions. I then examine where this new conception ofresponsibility has come from. Through an examinationof the work of post-liberal theorists, principallyMichael Sandel, I argue that a changing view ofpersonhood within post-liberal theory has led to aquestioning of the possibility of (...) choice, and that theabsence of choice necessitates a shift in thedefinition of responsible behaviour. If we are createdby our decisions then we cannot be held to account forour decisions, but only for the care we have takenover them. Responsibility is therefore measured notby our level of self-control but by our level ofself-awareness. Finally I examine the consequences ofthis shift in the meaning of responsibility. Withinthis framework autonomy is illusory thereforedecisions do not need to be respected. This explainswhy the implementation of Part II of the Family LawAct 1996 has been called into question. Within thisframework responsibility is relative therefore itextends indefinitely. This enables the Family Law Actto be uniquely intrusive and judgmental: everydivorcing couple, on being held up to scrutiny, isfound lacking. (shrink)

How can we be responsible for our attitudes if we cannot normally choose what we believe, desire, feel, and intend? This problem has received much attention during the last decades, both in epistemology and in ethics. Yet its connections to discussions about reasons and rationality have been largely overlooked. Responsibility for Rationality is the first book that connects recent debates on responsibility and on rationality in a unifying dialectic. It achieves four main goals: first, it reinterprets the problem (...) of responsibility for attitudes as a problem about the normativity of rationality; second, it breaks the stalemate between rationalist and voluntarist accounts of mental responsibility by defending a hybrid view; third, it provides novel support to recent accounts of the normativity of rationality by arguing that epistemic reasons and other ‘right-kind’ reasons are genuine normative reasons; fourth, it sets the foundations and the research agenda for an ‘ethics of mind’, including an illustration of how to approach applied issues in epistemology within the presented framework. After spelling out connections between responsibility and rationality (part I), the book engages in debates in normative epistemology (part II) and brings them to bear on the broader field of an ethics of mind (part III). -/- Full draft of current version available on request, comments welcome! (shrink)

This article offers an account of the responsibility that individuals bear by virtue of their national belonging alone. Via their national pride, the living connect themselves actively with select actions performed by others who might long be dead. They imagine themselves as having won past wars, built ancient empires and the like. This same feat of their imagination imposes on them a responsibility for the bad outcomes that were brought about through their imagined exploits. Their national responsibility (...) for the "sins of the fathers" however lends itself only to the kinds of responses that these living agents can demand of themselves. While their national responsibility can be captured by either the vocabulary of guilt or that of shame, the latter turns out to be more promising as it better accounts for the strong hold that the national idea has on contemporary political thinking. (shrink)

This article offers an account of the responsibility that individuals bear by virtue of their national belonging alone. Via their national pride, the living connect themselves actively with select actions performed by others who might long be dead. They imagine themselves as having won past wars, built ancient empires and the like. This same feat of their imagination imposes on them a responsibility for the bad outcomes that were brought about through their imagined exploits. Their national responsibility (...) for the “sins of the fathers” however lends itself only to the kinds of responses that these living agents can demand of themselves. While their national responsibility can be captured by either the vocabulary of guilt or that of shame, the latter turns out to be more promising as it better accounts for the strong hold that the national idea has on contemporary political thinking. (shrink)

This article explains how we ordinary subjects of a state who are neither political leaders nor functionaries are responsible for outcomes that are properly attributed to that state and that took place during our adult lifetime. Its focus is on the connection we forge to those outcomes via our obedience alone. If our responsibility as subjects is justified, it would apply under all regime types including oppressive and authoritarian ones. The argument is that this responsibility can only be (...) justified within a minimal account of agency and a bare-bones account of responsibility. Thus, while we incur a burden of responsibility for the state via our obedience alone, that burden does not suffice to either blame us or extract remedies from us for state injustices. For us obedient subjects, however, it is important that we be cognizant of this burden as it marks the most minimal agency we exercise in the state. (shrink)

A person can appropriately manifest respect toward a world heritage ruin by developing a sensitive understanding of the ruin’s cultural and historical context and significance. In this paper, we link such respectful understanding to the question of the aesthetic appreciation of world heritage ruins. Our claim is that an aesthetic appreciation of a world heritage ruin qua world heritage ruin typically involves two things: first, the responsibility not to neglect the individuality of the object, and, second, a commitment to (...) the idea that it is the object—respectfully conceived—which must be the focus of our appreciation. (shrink)

I am much indebted to Jacob McNulty, Allegra de Laurentiis and Tony Smith for their generous attention to my book and their insightful remarks. Since I could not possibly do justice to all their concerns, I have unfortunately had to be selective. The issues discussed in this response are organized thematically. In the first section, I discuss why Hegel's logic of essence has to be understood historically; which is to say that the logic of essence provides an ontology that is (...) specific to capitalism. Then, in the second section, I discuss the nature of holism in the logic of essence, and correspondingly, the nature of social holism specific to capitalism. Finally, in the third section, I answer the question: if both Marx's critique of political economy and Hegel's own economic theory in the Philosophy of Right are based on the same logic of essence, why they are so divergent from, and indeed incompatible with, each other. (shrink)

Carolina Sartorio has criticized the reasons-responsiveness theory of freedom for being inconsistent with the actual-sequence view motivated by the Frankfurt-style cases. Specifically, reasons-responsiveness conceived as a modal property does not pertain to the actual sequence of the agent's action and thereby it is irrelevant to the agent's freedom and moral responsibility. Call this the challenge of irrelevance. In this article, I present this challenge in a new way that overcomes certain limitations of Sartorio's argument. I argue that the root (...) of the challenge is that reasons-responsiveness as an unmanifested modal property seems to be nonexplanatory for the agent's action. I show that reasons-responsiveness theorists will confront this challenge even if they do not endorse the actual-sequence view. Finally, I deflate this challenge with David Lewis's model of causal explanation, showing that reasons-responsiveness is explanatory in virtue of providing information about the causal history of the agent's action. (shrink)

This response to a commentary on “Allocation of scarce resources, disability, and parity” considers whether a difference that would be morally relevant when choosing which of two people to save retains its relevance if this would affect other people’s chances of being saved.

Over the course of his career, Gianni Vattimo has assumed a number of public and private identities and has pursued multiple intellectual paths. He seems to embody several contradictions, at once defending and questioning religion and critiquing and serving the state. Yet the diversity of his life and thought form the very essence of, as he sees it, the vocation and responsibility of the philosopher. In a world that desires quantifiable results and ideological expediency, the philosopher becomes the vital (...) interpreter of the endlessly complex. As he outlines his ideas about the philosopher's role, Vattimo builds an important companion to his life's work. He confronts questions of science, religion, logic, literature, and truth, and passionately defends the power of hermeneutics to engage with life's conundrums. Vattimo conjures a clear vision of philosophy as something separate from the sciences and the humanities but also intimately connected to their processes, and he explicates a conception of truth that emphasizes fidelity and participation through dialogue. (shrink)

Technological innovations, despite their several benefits, may have drawbacks, thus, they need a control mechanism or directional channel. Responsible innovation (RI) has gained popularity in technology-intensive countries as a way to regulate otherwise uncontrollable and radical technological innovations. However, existing RI research lacks a clear theoretical foundation and has not adequately addressed the commercial and performance aspects of innovative products and firms. The current research proposes an empirically testable model for RI by conducting a structured literature review, focusing on the (...) commercial aspect of innovative products and firms’ sustainability performance in the financial, social, and environmental dimensions. The study suggests a link between RI and the resource-based theory of the firm and proposes that RI can be seen as a distinctive competency developed through the firm’s resources and capabilities. The model would help enterprises achieve ethical and social acceptability and improve sustainability performance. Metadata examination of 98 articles yielded insights. The findings and future research directions of this study provide new insights for business strategy and policy. (shrink)

Philosophers have long agreed that moral responsibility might not only have a freedom condition, but also an epistemic condition. Moral responsibility and knowledge interact, but the question is exactly how. Ignorance might constitute an excuse, but the question is exactly when. Surprisingly enough, the epistemic condition has only recently attracted the attention of scholars, and it is high time for a full volume on the topic. The chapters in this volume address the following central questions. Does the epistemic (...) condition require akrasia? Why does blameless ignorance excuse? Does moral ignorance sustained by one’s culture excuse? Does the epistemic condition involve knowledge of the wrongness or wrongmaking features of one’s action? Is the epistemic condition an independent condition, or is it derivative from one’s quality of will or intentions? Is the epistemic condition sensitive to degrees of difficulty? Are there different kinds of moral responsibility and thus multiple epistemic conditions? Is the epistemic condition revisionary? What is the basic structure of the epistemic condition? (shrink)

When a collective is blamed, the responsibility does not escape individuals. Spheres of influence are designed to determine the scale of blame; namely, by proximity and ability to influence a different result. Agents in the respective role types will be responsible upon our examining their extent of influence. Although you may be inclined to say that the responsibility lies with those who have access to policy-making, this doesn't allow for the deviants we expect at appropriate times. Here we (...) are compelled to seek a new moral outlook that maintains our perception of ourself: “what is not worthy of me must not be confused with special requirements of my ‘station and its duties’.”This essay offers a direction to assuage Lewis's fears toward collective responsibility. The challenges to individual responsibility behind such an ascription is complex but need not obliterate it. The delineation of roles by spheres of influence and activity gives some markers to the culpable agents. (shrink)

David Shoemaker presents a new pluralistic theory of responsibility, based on the idea of quality of will. His approach is motivated by our ambivalence to real-life cases of marginal agency, such as those caused by clinical depression, dementia, scrupulosity, psychopathy, autism, intellectual disability, and poor formative circumstances. Our ambivalent responses suggest that such agents are responsible in some ways but not others. Shoemaker develops a theory to account for our ambivalence, via close examination of several categories of pancultural emotional (...) responsibility responses and their appropriateness conditions. The result is three distinct types of responsibility, each with its own set of required capacities: attributability, answerability, and accountability. Attributability is about the having and expressing of various traits of character, and it is the target of a range of aretaic sentiments and emotional practices organized around disdain and admiration. Answerability is about one’s capacity to govern one’s actions and attitudes by one’s evaluative judgments about the worth of various practical reasons, and it is the target of a range of sentiments and emotional practices organized around regret and pride. Accountability is about one’s ability to regard others, both evaluatively and emotionally, and it is the target of a range of sentiments and emotional practices organized around anger and gratitude. In Part One of the book, this tripartite theory is developed and defended. In Part Two of the book, the tripartite theory’s predictions about specific marginal cases are tested, once certain empirical details about the nature of those agents have been filled in and discussed. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive, systematic theory of moral responsibility. The authors explore the conditions under which individuals are morally responsible for actions, omissions, consequences, and emotions. The leading idea in the book is that moral responsibility is based on 'guidance control'. This control has two components: the mechanism that issues in the relevant behavior must be the agent's own mechanism, and it must be appropriately responsive to reasons. The book develops an account of both components. The authors (...) go on to offer a sustained defense of the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism. (shrink)

R. Jay Wallace argues in this book that moral accountability hinges on questions of fairness: When is it fair to hold people morally responsible for what they do? Would it be fair to do so even in a deterministic world? To answer these questions, we need to understand what we are doing when we hold people morally responsible, a stance that Wallace connects with a central class of moral sentiments, those of resentment, indignation, and guilt. To hold someone responsible, he (...) argues, is to be subject to these reactive emotions in one's dealings with that person. Developing this theme with unusual sophistication, he offers a new interpretation of the reactive emotions and traces their role in our practices of blame and moral sanction. With this account in place, Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for responsibility. Rigorously argued, eminently readable, this book touches on issues of broad concern to philosophers, legal theorists, political scientists, and anyone with an interest in the nature and limits of responsibility. (shrink)

In her long-awaited Responsibility for Justice, Young discusses our responsibilities to address "structural" injustices in which we among many are implicated, often by virtue of participating in a market, such as buying goods produced in sweatshops, or participating in booming housing markets that leave many homeless.

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, outrage, and (...) misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

Within the last two decades, a philosophical field of individual climate ethics has taken off. This subdiscipline interrogates the individual’s moral responsibility in causing and preventing climate harm. On the one hand, environmental movements have long emphasized the importance of individual lifestyle changes in solving collective action problems like air pollution. In this tradition, personal obligations to reduce carbon emissions are well-founded. This is the climate individualist view. Against this thinking, skeptics of climate individualism argue that unilateral emissions reductions (...) will not make a difference to climate harms and insist that individuals instead have moral obligations to promote effective institutions through collective action. This is the climate collectivist camp. Climate individualists have replied to the climate collectivist’s charge in two ways. First, they have denied the description by arguing that individual emitting behaviors do cause harm or otherwise might make a difference. Second, they have denied the prescription by arguing that individual emissions reductions are required even if they do not make a difference. This chapter critically summarizes the arguments that have arisen in this debate, including the problem of inconsequentialism, the moral grounds of collective responsibility, and noncausal accounts of individual responsibility for climate harms. Ultimately, this chapter identifies a consensus in the literature that climate individualism is correct. It then turns to the emerging and contested discussion regarding the extent of individual obligations to minimize contribution to climate harms. (shrink)

Ian Phillips and Chaz Firestone have written a wonderful article on the rationale for adaptation as an indicator of perception, and more generally, on the purpo.

Response to Don Baxter, Don Garrett and Jennifer Marusic regarding my book Imagined Causes: Hume's Conception of Objects; initially delivered at the 2016 Hume Conference in Sydney, Australia as part of the Author Meets Critics session.

Many philosophers endorse the idea that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and thus hold that such responsibility is essentially interpersonal. In this paper, various interpretations of this idea are distinguished, and it is argued that no interpretation of it captures a significant truth. The popular view that moral responsibility consists in answerability is discussed and dismissed. The even more popular view that such responsibility consists in susceptibility to the reactive attitudes is (...) also discussed, and it is argued that this view at best supports only an etiolated interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. (shrink)

Many writers accept the following thesis about responsibility: (R) For one to be responsible for something is for one to be such that it is fitting that one be the object of some reactive attitude with respect to that thing. This thesis bears a striking resemblance to a thesis about value that is also accepted by many writers: (V) For something to be good (or neutral, or bad) is for it to be such that it is fitting that it (...) be the object of some pro-attitude (or indifference, or some contra-attitude). V has been the subject of intense debate in recent years, in part because of its incorporation into what has come to be called the “buck-passing” account of value. In particular, V is open to three challenges: that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is good is the fitting object of a pro-attitude; that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is the fitting object of a pro-attitude is good; and that, even if there is a strict equivalence between what is good and what is the fitting object of a pro-attitude, still the former is not to be analyzed in terms of the latter. The resemblance between V and R has not been previously commented on, but, once it is recognized, it is clear that R is open to challenges that resemble those to which V is vulnerable. This paper explores both the challenges to V and the parallel challenges to R and discusses responses that may be given to these challenges. The interrelation between V and R is then examined, and a general lesson is drawn concerning how to adjudicate disputes about the nature of moral responsibility. (shrink)

In this book Michael McKenna advances a new theory of moral responsibility, one that builds upon the work of P.F. Strawson.

This paper argues that "moral luck", understood as a susceptibility of moral desert to lucky or unlucky outcomes, does not exist. The argument turns on the claim that epistemic inquiry is an indissoluble part of moral responsibility, and that judgment on the moral decision making of others should and can adjust for this fact; test cases which aim to isolate moral dilemmas from epistemic consideration misrepresent our moral experience. If the phenomena believed by some philosophers to exemplify the need (...) to admit moral luck as part of their explanation are analysed in the light of this insight, the case for "moral luck" dissolves. (shrink)

We understand responsible leadership as a social-relational and ethical phenomenon, which occurs in social processes of interaction. While the prevailing leadership literature has for the most part focussed on the relationship between leaders and followers in the organization and defined followers as subordinates, we show in this article that leadership takes place in interaction with a multitude of followers as stakeholders inside and outside the corporation. Using an ethical lens, we discuss leadership responsibilities in a stakeholder society, thereby following Bass (...) and Steidelmeier’s suggestion to discuss “leadership in the context of contemporary stakeholder theory” (1999: 200). Moreover, from a relational and stakeholder perspective we approach the questions: What is responsible leadership? What makes a responsible leader? What qualities are needed? Finally, we propose a so-called “roles model” of responsible leadership, which gives a gestalt to a responsible leader and describes the different roles he or she takes in leading stakeholders and business in society. (shrink)

Recently, a number of philosophers have begun to question the commonly held view that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of moral responsibility. According to these philosophers, what really matters in determining a person’s responsibility for some thing is whether that thing can be seen as indicative or expressive of her judgments, values, or normative commitments. Such accounts might therefore be understood as updated versions of what Susan Wolf has called “real self views,” insofar as they attempt (...) to ground an agent’s responsibility for her actions and attitudes in the fact (when it is a fact) that they express who she is as a moral agent. As such, they seem to be open to some of the same objections Wolf originally raised to such accounts, and in particular to the objection that they cannot license the sorts of robust moral assessments involved in our current practices of moral responsibility. My aim in this paper is to try to respond to this challenge, by clarifying the kind of robust moral assessments I take to be licensed by (at least some) non-volitional accounts of responsibility and by explaining why these assessments do not in general require the agent to have voluntary control over everything for which she is held responsible. I also argue that the limited applicability of the distinction between “bad agents” and “blameworthy agents” on these accounts is in fact a mark in their favor. (shrink)

Intentional collective action -- Collective moral responsibility -- Collective guilt -- Individual responsibility for (and in) collective wrongs -- Collective obligation, individual obligation, and individual moral responsibility -- Individual moral responsibility in wrongful social practice.

According to Glannon and Ross, for an act to be considered altruistic, it cannot be obligatory nor motivated by expectation of self-reward. Given that parents are obligated to help their children and stand to benefit greatly from donating, the authors conclude that parent to child organ donation is not altruistic. Are they correct? I am not sure. In my view, this is a semantic question and the answer depends upon how one defines altruism. Altruism is a complex subject that means (...) different things to different people. If we say that an altruistic act is one that is performed voluntarily, is risky or costly to the actor, and is designed only to benefit others with no expectation of self-reward, then it may be difficult or impossible to identify any such acts. When one risks her own life to save a stranger, others may ask: “Did she really act solely to benefit another or was she motivated, at least in part, by a need to satisfy her conscience or a desire to feel good about herself?” This question is relevant to the motivation of living organ donors. In contrast to the authors' answer that strangers who donate organs do so only out of concern for other people, Carl Fellner argued that many living organ donors, even those who are not related to their recipients, act to benefit themselves. If Fellner is correct, and if organ donation by parents is not altruistic because of the possibility of self-reward, perhaps the same is true of organ donation by strangers. (shrink)

Drug use and drug addiction are severely stigmatised around the world. Marc Lewis does not frame his learning model of addiction as a choice model out of concern that to do so further encourages stigma and blame. Yet the evidence in support of a choice model is increasingly strong as well as consonant with core elements of his learning model. I offer a responsibility without blame framework that derives from reflection on forms of clinical practice that support change and (...) recovery in patients who cause harm to themselves and others. This framework can be used to interrogate our own attitudes and responses, so that we can better see how to acknowledge the truth about choice and agency in addiction, while avoiding stigma and blame, and instead maintaining care and compassion alongside a commitment to working for social justice and good. (shrink)

Many assume that we can be responsible only what is voluntary. This leads to puzzlement about our responsibility for our beliefs, since beliefs seem not to be voluntary. I argue against the initial assumption, presenting an account of responsibility and of voluntariness according to which, not only is voluntariness not required for responsibility, but the feature which renders an attitude a fundamental object of responsibility (that the attitude embodies one’s take on the world and one’s place (...) in it) also guarantees that it could not be voluntary. It turns out, then, that, for failing to be voluntary, beliefs are a central example of the sort of thing for which we are most fundamentally responsible. (shrink)

In this encyclopedia entry I sketch the way contemporary theorists understand moral responsibility -- its varieties, its requirements, and its puzzles.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) reflects an innovation paradigm that acknowledges that market innovations do not automatically deliver on socially desirable objectives, and requires a broad governance of knowledge coalitions of governmental bodies as well as industrial and societal actors to address market deficits. Responsible Innovation should be understood as a new paradigm for innovation which requires institutional changes in the research and innovation system and the public governance of the economy. It also requires the institutionalisation of an ethics of (...) co-responsibility as well as the introduction of new standards and certification processes for products. Dr. Dr. phil. von Schomberg will introduce Responsible Innovation against the background of 6 deficits of the (global) research and innovation system. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide and defend what may be the first actual argument in support of P. F. Strawson's merely stated vision of a response-dependent theory of moral responsibility. It does so by way of an extended analogy with the funny. In part 1, it makes the easier and less controversial case for response-dependence about the funny. In part 2, it shows the tight analogy between anger and amusement in developing the harder and more controversial case for response-dependence (...) about a kind of blameworthiness. It then defends the view from three serious skeptical challenges. (shrink)

In this work, Jamie Mayerfeld undertakes a careful inquiry into the meaning and moral significance of suffering. Understanding suffering in hedonistic terms as an affliction of feeling, he claims that it is an objective psychological condition, amenable to measurement and interpersonal comparison, although its accurate assessment is never easy. Mayerfeld goes on to examine the content of the duty to prevent suffering and the weight it has relative to other moral considerations. He argues that the prevention of suffering is morally (...) more important than the promotion of happiness, and that the duty to relieve suffering is much stronger than most of us acknowledge. (shrink)

This article argues that businesses are morally responsible for compensating the people harmed by their activities even if they were not negligent, i.e., the businesses took reasonable precautions. Critics of this position maintain that responsibility requires choice, and by taking precautions, businesses choose not to harm others. This article accepts their argument’s first premise but rejects the second premise. It contends that businesses often seek risky or innovative activities to increase profits, and the essence of innovative activities is that (...) precautions cannot sufficiently reduce their foreseeable harmful consequences. The correct understanding of businesses’ decision-making enables us to appreciate that businesses choose to undertake risky activities while knowing that they can harm others despite preventive measures. It follows that preventive measures should not serve as an excuse against liability for harm. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national (...) responsibility is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ‘political’ theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worldwide, and fair terms of interaction between independent political communities. (shrink)

No one has done more than John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza to advance our understanding of the important dispute in the theory of responsibility between structuralists and historicists. This makes it all the more important to take the measure of Responsibility and Control, their most recent contribution to the historicist side of the discussion. In this paper I examine some novel features of their most recent version of responsiblity-historicism, especially their new notions of "moderate reasons-responsiveness" and "ownership-of-agency." (...) Fischer and Ravizza intend these new elements to solve two problems untouched by earlier versions of their theory: the "problem of strange preference patterns" and the "reasons-responsiveness problem of induction." I argue that they cannot solve these problems within the theoretical strictures they place upon themselves, namely a minimalist meta-ethics of value and practical reason, and attention only to certain formal features of preference-acquisition. I conclude that historicist compatibilists cannot hope to meet the challenge of structuralist compatibilism, from the one side, and of incompatibilism, from the other, unless they take on the full task of accounting for the difference between the child's acquisition of autonomous substantive preferences and values and her acquisition of heteronomous ones. (shrink)

When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the ‘problem of many hands.’ This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of (...) moral responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking and forward-looking. Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings. (shrink)

What is a fair distribution of resources and other goods when individuals are partly responsible for their achievements? This book develops a theory of fairness incorporating a concern for personal responsibility, opportunities and freedom. With a critical perspective, it makes accessible the recent developments in economics and philosophy that define social justice in terms of equal opportunities. It also proposes new perspectives and original ideas. The book separates mathematical sections from the rest of the text, so that the main (...) concepts and ideas are easily accessible to non-technical readers. -/- It is often thought that responsibility is a complex notion, but this monograph proposes a simple analytical framework that makes it possible to disentangle the different concepts of fairness that deal with neutralizing inequalities for which the individuals are not held responsible, rewarding their effort, respecting their choices, or staying neutral with respect to their responsibility sphere. It dwells on paradoxes and impossibilities only as a way to highlight important ethical options and always proposes solutions and reasonable compromises among the conflicting values surrounding equality and responsibility. -/- The theory is able to incorporate disincentive problems and is illustrated in the examination of applied policy issues such as: income redistribution when individuals may be held responsible for their choices of labor supply or education; social and private insurance when individuals may be held responsible for their risky lifestyle; second chance policies; the measurement of inequality of opportunities and social mobility. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine whether agents who commit testimonial injustice are morally responsible for their wrongdoing, given that they are ignorant of their wrongdoing. Fricker (2007) argues that agents whose social setting lacks the concepts or reasons necessary for them to correct for testimonial injustice are excused. I argue that agents whose social settings have these concepts or reasons available are also typically excused, because they lack the capacity to recognise those concepts or reasons. Attempts to trace this lack (...) of capacity back to an earlier culpable wrongdoing will often fail, due to there being no point at which these perpetrators knowingly chose to develop their prejudices. Attempts to ground culpability under Talbert’s (2008) Attributionist account of moral responsibility will also fail. This is because perpetrators’ lack of awareness of what they are doing makes it the case that they are not expressing objectionable evaluative judgments in the way required for blameworthiness. Finally, I argue that our temptation to blame agents who commit testimonial injustice is not completely unfounded. Appealing to Watson’s (1996) attributability/accountability distinction allows us to make sense of how some responses to the jurors are appropriate, despite their being excused. (shrink)

I THEORIES OF RESPONSIBILITY This book is concerned with attitudes to people and to what they do. In particular it concerns questions about when it is right ...

How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). (...) We review the main theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national (...) responsibility is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ?political? theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worldwide, and fair terms of interaction between independent political communities. (shrink)

I argue in this article that responsible leadership (Maak and Pless, 2006) contributes to building social capital and ultimately to both a sustainable business and the common good. I show, first, that responsible leadership in a global stakeholder society is a relational and inherently moral phenomenon that cannot be captured in traditional dyadic leader–follower relationships (e.g., to subordinates) or by simply focusing on questions of leadership effectiveness. Business leaders have to deal with moral complexity resulting from a multitude of stakeholder (...) claims and have to build enduring and mutually beneficial relationships with all relevant stakeholders. I contend, second, that in doing so leaders bundle the energy of␣different constituencies and enable social capital building. Social capital can be understood as actual or potential resources inherent to more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual recognition (Bourdieu 1980). By drawing on network analysis I suggest, third, that responsible leaders weave durable relational structures and ultimately networks of relationships which are rich in ties to otherwise unconnected individuals or groups. Against this background I argue, fourth, that responsible leadership may result in the creation of value networks (Lord and Brown, 2001) of multiple stakeholders, which enhance social capital and thereby contribute to both a sustainable business and the common good. (shrink)