Abstracts for Moral Responsibility: Non-Metaphysical Approaches Workshop
Answerability: a condition of autonomy, or moral responsibility, or both?
Natalie Stoljar
McGill University
The concept of answerability has been used to explicate both autonomy and moral responsibility. In this paper I argue that answerability is an appropriate criterion of moral responsibility but not of autonomy. In Section I, I consider Andrea Westland’s conception of answerability. Westlund’s formal yet constitutively relational conception of autonomy and ‘responsibility for self’ – which employs the notion of answerability – was adopted in part to respond to what some feminist theorists call ‘the agency dilemma.’ This is the problem of acknowledging and respecting the agency of those who endorse oppressive or self-subordinating norms while at the arguing that their endorsement of these norms undermines their (full) autonomy. On Westlund’s view, agents who adopt oppressive and self-subordinating norms can be autonomous when they answerable, namely when they hold themselves responsible to answer (legitimate) external demands for justification of their attitudes and activities. Westlund argues that a preparedness to engage in this kind of critical dialogue is evidence of an agent’s ‘authority over her own voice’ and hence her autonomy. In Section 2, I turn to a conception of answerability due to Angela Smith in which answerability is a feature of agents that is attributed in our practices of holding agents morally responsible. On her view, an agent is answerable for her attitudes and activities when those attitudes bear a ‘rational relation’ to the agent’s values and commitments. An agent can be morally responsible if and only if she is answerable in this sense. I argue that Westlund’s conception of answerability is problematic: one can have a disposition or readiness to respond to critical challenges even when moral practices would not deem it appropriate to hold one answerable. I suggest that Westlund’s notion of answerability needs to be supplemented by something like Smith’s ‘rational relations’ condition. In Section 3, I argue that although the notion of answerability developed by Westlund and Smith is helpful to explicate moral responsibility, answerability is not sufficient for autonomy. In other words, agents can be answerable and thus morally responsible even when they are not autonomous. I show this by considering some examples of apparently non-autonomous agents who nevertheless appear to be morally responsible. Moreover, there is a theoretical advantage to allowing that agents can be non-autonomous yet answerable and morally responsible. Keeping these claims (i.e. those of autonomy and answerability/moral responsibility) conceptually distinct provides one solution to the ‘agency dilemma.’
Moral Responsibility, Control and Oppression
Katrina Hutchison (Macquarie University)
In this paper I argue against the widely accepted view that control over actions (in some form) is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. Instead, drawing on recent interlocutive accounts, I argue that the capacities relevant to moral responsibility are the capacity to recognize that one’s actions are subject to particular moral standards, and to be able to answer for them in terms of these standards. This could be referred to as ‘moral answerability’. Here my view is informed by a number of other views, particularly the ‘co-reactive’ approach described by Victoria McGeer.
Having sketched out an interlocutive approach to moral responsibility, I turn to the worry that it is unfair to hold people responsible for actions they cannot control. Here my focus is on the impact of control conditions on the agency of members of oppressed or vulnerable groups. It might seem especially unfair to attribute full moral responsibility to members of certain oppressed or marginalised groups such as addicts, individuals with mental or cognitive impairment, or those who are subject to unfortunate formative or domestic circumstances, especially in domains in which their oppression is perceived to impact upon and diminish their control over their behavior. Nevertheless, I argue that when members of these groups meet the moral answerability conditions described above, exempting them from moral responsibility on the basis of a lack of control is not ‘fair’, but potentially harmful. It silences their moral answers and denies them access to the important social good of being regarded as full moral agents.
What might a feminist theory of moral responsibility look like?
Marina Oshana (UC Davis)
In this paper I suggest that a feminist theory of responsibility would approach questions about moral responsibility, and responsibility more generally, from a holistic vantage point, one that moves the emphasis of responsibility beyond theories about the independence of the actor. Notably, a feminist account would be relational and contextualized in its treatment of the conditions for accountability and answerability, and in its assessment of the responsibilities of responsible agents. I begin by exploring the questions, “What does it take it be a responsible agent?” and “What is involved in holding a person responsible?” I look at accounts that have become classic in the contemporary literature, laying these out as foundational. I then look to see what lessons can be drawn about responsible agency from feminist social epistemology. I conclude with a brief look at some lessons we might draw from legal feminism.
Reactive Attitudes, reasons and Responsibility
Jeanette Kennett (Macquarie University)
In Freedom and Resentment Strawson says: “It is one thing to ask about the general causes of these reactive attitudes I have alluded to; it is another to ask about the variations to which they are subject, the particular conditions in which they do or do not seem natural or reasonable or appropriate; and it is a third thing to ask what it would be like, what it is like, not to suffer them.” In this paper I focus on the question he neglects and explore the causes of the reactive attitudes. I place them in the context of the folk psychological project of interpretation and prediction and argue that they have no particular role to play in responsibility assessments. Responsibility (should) track facts about capacity; the reactive attitudes of resentment and blame arise in response to negative perceptions of our own social standing and signals about the likely behaviour of others.
Towards An Ameliorative Account of Responsibility
Jules Holroyd (Nottingham)
In this paper I take Vargas’s recent revisionary conception of responsibility as a springboard for developing a new, ameliorative, analysis of moral responsibility. Such an analysis departs from conceptual analysis of our existing concept, and asks instead what concept we should use, given our legitimate purposes (Haslanger, 2012).
Vargas’s revisionism (2013) claims that the justification of our responsibility related practices lies in their potential to foster agency that is sensitive to moral considerations. Vargas develops an understanding of moral agency, and an account of the norms that regulate judgements of blameworthiness, which serve this justificatory goal.
I consider Vargas’s revisionism in light of two phenomena, much discussed by feminist philosophers: implicitly biased actions (Saul, 2013), and cases of moral ignorance due to cultural context (Fricker 2010). I argue that the application of Vargas’s account of moral agency to these cases generates scepticism about moral agency, that we should seek to avoid. Further, the application of Vargas’s norms (which regulate blameworthiness) indicates that his specification of such norms unduly restricts our repertoire of moral engagement.
Having opened the door to revisionism, Vargas's approach encourages us to consider a more thoroughly ameliorative analysis: what concept should we use, given the purpose of fostering sensitivity to moral considerations? I develop three desiderata for an amelioriative analysis of responsibility. This ameliorative analysis sets out the concept we ought to be working with: one that is better suited to engaging the moral agency involved (inter alia) in implicit bias and moral ignorance.
The meaning of ‘responsibility’
Daniel Cohen (Charles Sturt University)
It is typically assumed that 'responsible' is multiply ambiguous. I will carefully examine this assumption, and will argue that all responsibility talk can be explained in virtue of just two primary senses, one normative and the other causal. I will go on to suggest that even these two senses have a common core.
Why Mental Capacity Matters
Nicole A Vincent
GSU & TU Delft
A shift of focus from metaphysics to psychology is the most distinctive feature of the compatibilist defense of responsibility from the threat of determinism. Specifically, on the compatibilist account, responsible agents are those whose mental capacities enable them to recognize and respond appropriately to reasons, not those who (e.g.) are free from the laws of nature. On John Fischer’s prominent account, responsible agents are those whose actions issue from moderately reasons-responsive mechanisms.
However, in my view this broad compatibilist strategy merely substitutes one set of modal notions (e.g. alternative possibilities, could have done otherwise, etc) for another set of equally modal notions (e.g. mental capacities, moderately reasons-responsive mechanisms, etc). But if in a deterministic universe nobody would actually have any real alternative possibilities, then how can the possession of mental capacities – ones that can only be exercised in a given way given the facts at a given moment in time – possibly address this problem?
On my account, as compatibilists we should stop attempting to find the justification for responsibility practices like retributive punishment within moments of perception, judgment, decision, and action – assuming, for the sake of argument, that any of these things even happen in moments rather than being processes – and focus instead on the fairness of whole systems of responsibility. In particular, on what kinds of punishments those systems mete out for what kinds of transgressions to what kinds of agents.