Structure, choice, and responsibility

Ethics & Behavior ISSN: 1050-8422 (Print) 1532-7019 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hebh20 Structure, choice, and responsibility Johann J. Go To cite this article: Johann J. Go (2019): Structure, choice, and responsibility, Ethics & Behavior, DOI: 10.1080/10508422.2019.1620610 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2019.1620610 Published online: 04 Jun 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 86 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hebh20 ETHICS & BEHAVIOR, 0(00), 1–17 Copyright © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1050-8422 print / 1532-7019 online DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2019.1620610 Structure, choice, and responsibility Johann J. Go Worcester College University of Oxford In a well-known passage from The Red Lily, Anatole France retorts ironically: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread”. The passage highlights the different burdens experienced by different people when deciding to act or not act in certain ways. This paper critically analyzes this problem; specifically, how we ought to allocate personal responsibility for actions performed by agents who each experience different social, economic, political, and internal and external influences. First, the paper outlines some prevailing conceptions of personal responsibility in the literature. Second, it offers a critique of these views, arguing that they each suffer from a variety of conceptual and practical flaws. Third, a basic framework I call the continuumthreshold account of responsibility is proposed. The account distinguishes between responsibility and blameworthiness, addresses many of our objections against other prevailing conceptions of responsibility, and takes into account background structural conditions while retaining the scope for responsibility and moral agency. Keywords: responsibility, behavior, structure versus agency, blameworthiness, justice, continuumthreshold model INTRODUCTION Our decisions and actions are made amidst a backdrop of available information and options, structural pressures, environmental influences, legal constraints, and personal compulsions and beliefs. Different people are influenced differently by these structural forces, each person has certain psychological propensities to act in certain ways over others, and the number of available options vary for different individuals. These disparities pose important questions to the idea of personal responsibility, namely whether those who find it hard(er) to make good choices should be held responsible for their actions.1 Evidently, we do not all choose from identical backgrounds with equal options and equal circumstances. This is the problem of structure and responsibility. Much of the historical and contemporary literature on responsibility has focussed on responsibility at a purely theoretical and abstract level (Feinberg, 1970; Glover, 1970; Shaver, 1985; Strawson, 2008; Wallace, 1994). Comparatively very little attention has been Correspondence should be addressed to Johann Go, Worcester College, Oxford, Walton Street, Oxford OX1 2HB, UK. E-mail: [email protected] 1 I leave open the question of what counts as a “good” choice or act. What counts as a good action is contextual and contingent upon pre-existing normative commitments. This openness, however, will not affect my overall account. 2 GO given to analyzing how these theoretical concepts should be applied to issues of practical significance in our non-ideal real world. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by better linking theoretical discussions of responsibility with the realities of our often unjust and unequal society. The paper’s contribution to this subject will be to synthesize and develop an original account of personal responsibility that draws on philosophically defensible concepts while considering relevant empirical evidence about responsibility from the social sciences and the need for a practically relevant theory. I am concerned primarily with individual/personal responsibility in this paper, rather than other kinds of responsibility such as collective or corporate responsibility.2 All reference to responsibility, hereinafter, refers to personal responsibility. Intuitively, we do not generally accept the view that an individual is absolved of responsibility simply because their background conditions are not as favorable as someone else’s. On the other hand, in certain circumstances of desperation and grave injustice, we may think that holding someone responsible is inappropriate. For example, we may wish to absolve an individual of responsibility for stealing bread to feed his/her starving family. The conventional definition of responsibility is the attribution of an action or omission to an agent, and accompanied by the appropriate moral response such as blame or praise (Eshleman, 2014; Shaver, 1985). To say that a person is responsible for causing their ill health, for example, is to say that certain actions or omissions on their part led to the situation (for example, consuming an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise), and that a certain moral response is justified (for example, expression of disapprobation or denial of healthcare for their self-inflicted condition). I provide this definition as a starting point for discussion but will spend the majority of the paper critiquing the conventional view and developing an alternative model. In recent years, a body of scholarship has emerged that challenges the possibility of responsibility and voluntary choice in an unjust and unequal society. One of the most developed views in this field comes from the field of public health, which challenges the idea that individuals can be held responsible for their health outcomes given the pervasive impact of structural influences and the so-called social determinants of health. Because the public health literature on responsibility and structure is well developed and presents a large body of empirical evidence, I shall use it as a starting point for discussing the relationship between responsibility and structural factors (Marmot, Friel, Bell, Houweling, & Taylor, 2008; Wilkinson & Marmot, 2003).3 I demonstrate, in turn, that these observations apply to actions and situations beyond health. However, I demonstrate that prevailing approaches to responsibility, including the public health approach, are conceptually flawed, and I shall instead offer a novel account of responsibility called the continuum-threshold approach. My strategy for the rest of the paper will be as follows: First, I highlight the problem of responsibility and structure, and survey some prevailing accounts in the literature. Second, I highlight shortcomings with many of the prevalent approaches to this topic. I highlight the distinction between responsibility and blameworthiness and emphasize that the former does not necessarily entail the latter. I argue that responsibility should be understood as a “thin” (morally neutral) concept, while blameworthiness is a “thick” concept (with moral content packed into 2 There may be certain objections to limiting responsibility in this way (i.e. to just the individual), which I will address towards the end of this paper. 3 The “public health account of responsibility” I present this paper cites some influential and well-known theorists, but it is obviously not an account everyone in public health subscribes to. STRUCTURE, CHOICE, AND RESPONSIBILITY 3 it).4 I discuss the implications of this distinction, showing that it addresses many of our objections about holding responsible certain people in light of our concerns about social injustice. Third, I present my continuum-threshold account of responsibility, which acknowledges simultaneously the pervasive impact of structural influences, while not sacrificing our philosophical and intuitive views about agency and responsibility. The continuum-threshold account of responsibility I intend to develop separates the concept of responsibility from blameworthiness. The account conceptualizes responsibility as a thin concept. That is, responsibility is normatively neutral and focussed on theoretical attributability along a continuum rather than moralized or reactive attitudes. This is in contrast to blameworthiness, which is a thick concept. A person can be responsible without being blameworthy. The concepts are related but independent. To paraphrase Isaiah Berlin: everything is what it is; responsibility is responsibility, not injustice or blameworthiness or anything else. We should resist the temptation to deny responsibility as a universal strategy for objecting to background or structural injustice, just like Berlin warns against classifying all injustices under the concept of unfreedom (Berlin, 2006). There may be strong reasons to not blame an individual for their conduct under certain conditions of structural influence or desperation, but such an evaluation is independent of whether or not we can attribute the action to an agent (i.e., whether or not they are responsible for the act). I demonstrate that such an approach is conceptually defensible, practically desirable, aligns with everyday conceptions of responsibility, and addresses many of our intuitions against holding responsible certain people. THE PROBLEM OF STRUCTURE AND RESPONSIBILITY Prevailing discussions around structure and responsibility are characterized by a tangle of competing intuitions and a jumble of poorly defined concepts. Before addressing the existing debates in the literature, I shall clarify what I mean by a number of concepts. Structure and structural forces relate broadly to the social, political, economic, and cultural influences in society. These include the dominant political system and institutions, the economic system, prevailing cultural norms, societal attitudes, laws, and policies, to name a few. The social determinants of health refer to the conditions in which we live, work and play, and how they determine our health outcomes (Marmot et al., 2008). These include factors as broad as education, age, socio-economic status, culture, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, housing, social capital, and working conditions (Wilkinson & Marmot, 2003). The social determinants of health may also fit broadly within the idea of structural forces. The issue of responsibility in health, as it relates to structural influences, is well-developed (Wilkinson & Marmot, 2003). I therefore use the example of responsibility for health as a springboard in several parts of my discussion. The statistics surrounding the distribution of 4 There are multiple ways in which the distinction between thick and thin concepts is used, as an anonymous reviewer for this journal kindly pointed out. My use of the thick and thin distinction is inspired primarily from the philosophy of law literature, where a thick account of law entails moral and normative status (a law must be just/“an unjust law is no law”), while a thin account is primarily procedural and does not pre-suppose the morality of that account (a law is merely a rule which provides guidance, regardless of its morality). In a similar vein, a thin account of responsibility is concerned primarily with the procedural aspects (i.e., causation/attributability) of an act, while a thick account of responsibility entails moral judgment (positive or negative) about an act. 4 GO ill health outcomes in modern developed countries are characterized by rampant disparities (Drewnowski et al., 2014; Marmot et al., 2008). The strongest axis along which these disparities are demonstrated is through socio-economic status and ethnicity. Consider the case of obesity, where indigenous people and members of other ethnic minority groups such as Maori in New Zealand and African Americans in the United States of America have significantly higher prevalence rates (Ministry of Health, 2016; National Institutes of Health, 2017). Those from lower socioeconomic positions and those residing in deprived neighborhoods also demonstrate prevalence rates many times above those who come from higher socioeconomic classes and live in affluent neighborhoods (Marmot et al., 2008; Singh, Siahpush, & Kogan, 2010). The statistics across other high-income countries paint a similar picture and have done so for several years, with certain ethnic groups and lower socioeconomic status groups generally having a higher prevalence of obesity compared with the general population (King, Kavanagh, Jolly, Turrell, & Crawford, 2006; Tremblay, Perez, Ardern, Bryan, & Katzmaryzk, 2005). The incidence and prevalence of other health conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease mirror closely these statistics, with people who from ethnic minority groups and people who are poor generally having higher rates of ill health (Booth & Hux, 2003; Havranek et al., 2015; Menke, Casagrande, Geiss, & Cowie, 2015). These systematic disparities in health outcomes pose an important challenge to the concept of responsibility because of the varying impact of structure on different people’s abilities to make healthy lifestyle decisions. To this extent, there is the question of whether those who experience greater barriers to make healthy decisions should be held as responsible as those who do not have such barriers. The poor generally have increased exposure to tobacco and fastfood advertisements, have lower social capital and resistance to unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, cannot afford healthy food as easily as the rich, and tend to live in more deprived neighborhoods (Kawachi & Duncan, 2018; Wilkinson & Marmot, 2003). These structural influences are said to impede their ability to make competent decisions and, to this extent, are said to not be responsible for the resultant poor health outcomes (Brown, 2013; Marmot & Bell, 2011). The problem of structure and responsibility, then, is to what extent we should hold responsible different groups and individuals, given the differential impact of structural influences. Recall Anatole France’s ironic adage from The Red Lily: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” (France, 1914, C7). From France’s quote, one can extract the point that those who need to steal (the poor) are under a different set of structural influences and pressures than those who do not need to steal (the rich), and it may therefore be unfair to hold them equally responsible. It is this problem of structure and responsibility that I intend to evaluate and propose a solution to in this paper. CONCEPTIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY Approaches to the concept of responsibility typically encompass one of two main approaches, which are not necessarily opposite accounts: (1) responsibility as theoretical, causal attributability, and (2) responsibility as accountability or culpability. (1) is a normatively thin approach, and focussed on empirical attribution rather than normative judgments, while (2) is a thick concept, incorporating some kind of moral judgment. They are not necessarily opposing theories of understanding responsibility, as accounts may incorporate the two, such that causal STRUCTURE, CHOICE, AND RESPONSIBILITY 5 attribution is necessary before judgments of accountability. How a theory of responsibility incorporates the thick and/or thin aspects of responsibility determines, in part, the nature of that particular account. One of the most influential views of responsibility in the philosophical literature is what we might call the moral ledger view of responsibility. The moral ledger view fits with the second conception of responsibility, namely as a model of accountability or culpability. This view of responsibility is concerned with how certain acts or omissions can generate moral sentiments, such as praise or blame. If an agent’s act generates praise or blame, we evaluate this by putting a mark on her hypothetical “moral ledger”. Notable theorists who support a broadly moral ledger view of responsibility, whereby responsibility necessarily entails moral judgment and evaluation, include Peter Strawson (2008), R. Jay Wallace (1994), Joel Feinberg (1970) and Jonathan Glover (1970). Another common view of responsibility is what we may call a minimalist account of personal responsibility. On this view, as long as a minimal set of conditions are met, a person is said to be responsible (and generally blameworthy) for their action, regardless of the background social factors (Pickard, 2011; Woolfolk, Doris, & Darley, 2006). According to the minimalist account of responsibility, as long as coercion, force and manipulation are absent, and a certain minimum level of autonomy and competence is met, the action can be rightly attributed to the person, who is then considered responsible for it (Pickard, 2011; Scheffler, 1992). The account is minimalist in the sense that it does not take into account other countervailing structural or environmental factors that led to a certain action. The minimalist account of responsibility is also adopted, for the most part, in the criminal law system and in many common-sense accounts of responsibility (Scheffler, 1992; Woolfolk et al., 2006). In contrast to the philosophical minimalist position, the prevailing view of responsibility in the public health literature holds that responsibility is a product of structural influences, and is attributable more to the environment and society than to the individual directly (Brown, 2013; Marmot & Bell, 2011; Swinburn et al., 2011). This view is aptly expressed by Boyd Swinburn and colleagues in their influential work on the so-called “obesogenic environment” (Swinburn et al., 2011). The obesogenic environment refers to the structural factors that cause obesity, such as public transport design, urban built environment, fast food prices and outlet density, and government policies (Swinburn et al., 2011). The obesogenic environment is used firstly, as a causal, epidemiological explanation for the prevalence of obesity, and secondly, as an excusatory condition for suggesting that the individual is not responsible for bringing about their obese state. Rather, it is the obesogenic environment that has caused them to partake in the risk factors that led to obesity (Swinburn et al., 2011). Questions of responsibility for obesity are thus transferred from the individual onto the structural factors in the obesogenic environment. Michael Marmot, in his very influential work on the social determinants of health, advances a similar view to Swinburn. While Marmot and his colleagues leave open the concept of personal responsibility for health, they state that it is primarily structural factors and the social determinants of health that drive choices which lead to poor health (Marmot & Bell, 2011). In this context, responsibility for health is similar to the thesis of Swinburn’s obesogenic environment explanation: responsibility for health is meaningless on its own, and attribution and accountability should be transferred onto society rather than the individual. One influential philosophical account which has attempted to bridge the gap between the minimalist position and the public health/structural view is John Roemer’s concept of 6 GO responsibility (Roemer, 1993). Roemer introduces the idea of a median standard for evaluating the responsibility of an individual within a given group. Consider, for example, the act of smoking. For us to evaluate the level of responsibility, Roemer proposes that we classify people into groups with similar circumstances (Roemer, 1993). For example, individuals are placed into groups with others of a similar upbringing, education level, and socioeconomic class (Roemer, 1993). The average smoking rates for each of these groups are taken, with a median level identified. If a person within a given group (i.e., those with similar circumstances) smokes far more than the median level of smoking expected within the group with a similar circumstance, then this may be considered unreasonable, and they may be required to bear more responsibility for their action (Roemer, 1993). If they smoke merely at the median level expected of their particular group, their action is considered reasonable, and they are not deserving of any moral censure (Roemer, 1993). Another influential account of responsibility in the philosophical literature, which has attempted to put social injustice at the forefront of its considerations, is Iris Marion Young’s concept of structural injustice (Young, 2011). While Young’s account has undoubtedly had a lot of influence and generated a host of secondary literature, I must emphasize that my account is not concerned with the same problem of responsibility.5 Young is primarily concerned with how to allocate responsibility for addressing injustice when each person, acting as individuals, cannot be held responsible for the cumulative effect of their specific actions (Young, 2011). Young presents the hypothetical case of Sandy, a single mother who is about to be evicted from her place of residence because it has been sold to be turned into condominiums. Sandy struggles to find a new place due to expensive rent, the need for a high security deposit, high transportation costs, and a low-wage labor market. Young states that “Sandy’s story illustrates a specific kind of moral wrong, structural injustice, which is distinct from wrongs traceable to specific individual actions or policies” (Young, 2011, p. 44). In the case of Sandy, Young argues that no one person can be blamed for the social structures which constrain her options. Her account, therefore, is an attempt to delineate people’s collective responsibilities to address social injustice in circumstances like Sandy’s. This is notably distinct from my own aim in this paper, on the other hand, which is to elucidate how we ought to analyze individual responsibility and blame for people like Sandy, who may be constrained by various structural forces given the state of our non-ideal, unjust world. It is not primarily concerned with collective responsibility or responsibility for structural injustice more generally. PROBLEMS WITH PREVAILING CONCEPTIONS In what follows, I will show that none of the prevailing conceptions of responsibility are satisfactory, on their own, for evaluating the problem of structure and responsibility. First, the moral ledger account of responsibility, I think, misconstrues the nature of responsibility. It sacrifices too much of our considered judgments about responsibility and agency by conflating responsibility with moral judgment and, relatedly, by making responsibility contingent on the arousal of moral attitudes such as praise and blame. The moral ledger view of responsibility 5 I am grateful to an anonymous referee from this journal for encouraging me to clarify how my account is distinct from Young’s. STRUCTURE, CHOICE, AND RESPONSIBILITY 7 raises a number of practical issues: first, it becomes impossible for the moral ledger account to attribute responsibility for a whole class of acts that do not arouse any sort of moral judgments; and second, it conflates responsibility with blameworthiness, by presenting the former as sufficient for the latter, or essentially denying the existence of such a distinction. Because the moral ledger account treats responsibility as a matter of moral judgment and sentiments rather than attribution or causation, it seems unable to attribute responsibility for normatively neutral acts. Many actions, such as going for a walk or deciding to wear a blue shirt, do not necessarily arouse reactive attitudes. Our reasonable idea of personal responsibility posits that it can also be applied to normatively neutral acts or omissions, where we can attribute an act or omission to an agent without bringing in the language of blame or praise. A person who decides voluntarily to go for a leisurely walk down the street is evidently responsible for this act, yet we do not feel that she is blameworthy or that her act warrants reactive attitudes.6 The action is normatively neutral and does not arouse any moral judgment of blame and praise or other reactive attitudes within us, but it nonetheless seems perfectly reasonable to say that she was responsible (in some causal sense) for her act of walking leisurely. The moral ledger view also conflates responsibility with blameworthiness. We must distinguish between responsibility and blameworthiness, as I shall argue in more detail in the subsequent section. One can be responsible for an act but not be blameworthy, such as in cases of normatively neutral acts, or in the presence of excusing or justificatory conditions for the otherwise blameworthy conduct. To be blameworthy, one must be responsible for some action or state of affairs but being responsible does not necessarily entail blameworthiness. Responsibility, then, is a necessary but not a sufficient component of blameworthiness. Second, the minimalist account risks over-simplifying the issue of responsibility and falls into the trap of assuming that it is a binary concept. It is possible to consider responsibility as being a matter of degree, alongside a practical threshold when we may consider it appropriate for a person to be held responsible. I develop such a model in the subsequent section, incorporating the responsibility-blameworthiness distinction. There is no reason to think that responsibility must be a binary concept. The minimalist account also fails to take seriously the growing evidence in psychology and health about the pervasive influence of structural influences on people’s health decisions. It risks over-simplifying the issue of responsibility, by assuming that actions and decisions take place in some kind of social vacuum, or by assuming that external influences are not strong enough to sway people’s autonomous decisions. The evidence about the influence of structure on decision-making gives us reason to doubt these simple assumptions (Marmot et al., 2008; Wilkinson & Marmot, 2003). Third, the public health view suffers from the opposite problem to the minimalist conception of responsibility: it sacrifices too much of our existing views about human agency, freedom, and what it means to be a rational agent. One aspect of being a moral agent is that we are able to navigate the influences of social structures and make a rational decision (Kant & Gregor, 1785/2012, G4:433–434). The public health approach implicitly, and often explicitly, denies responsibility in favor of transferring causal attribution and moral culpability to social structures. While there may be circumstances where structural factors do in fact erode totally our ability to be held responsible, this is likely to be in the minority rather than the majority of 6 Assuming a simple normative scenario where she is not harming anyone, is obeying legitimate laws, is not violating any competing moral commitments, etc. 8 GO cases. It is likely to be a matter of degree, rather than as clear-cut as some public health theorists present. Denying responsibility may also be problematic from a health delivery standpoint, as patients may then feel it is not within their capacity to change. People must have the self-belief that they are responsible for, and in control of, their behavior if they are to work on changing these to be more conducive to good health (Bandura, 2004). For example, if obese persons are told they are not causally or morally responsible for their own health state, they may experience an eroded ability to partake in lifestyle changes. Fourth, while Roemer’s account may seem plausible and contextually sensitive, it results in many unacceptable implications once we evaluate it carefully. Consider the case of the Nazi soldiers who, as a group with similar circumstances, carried out Hitler’s orders. Holding them responsible may be unreasonable according to Roemer’s account, given the norms and median behavior of the type group they fell into (Phillips, 2006). That is, when we compare the Nazi soldiers to the median behavior of their type, their actions do not diverge much from the group average. This view may diverge with our considered judgments about responsibility, as we may think the Nazi soldiers are responsible for their heinous deeds regardless of what everyone around them was doing. There are also other general issues with Roemer’s account including a lack of clarity around the moral significance of the median behavior, and the conflation of responsibility with blameworthiness. TOWARDS A NEW MODEL OF RESPONSIBILITY Given the shortcomings with the prevailing approaches to responsibility for health in the literature, the remainder of this paper aims to elucidate a new model of responsibility. The model is characterized by a number of features. First, it incorporates a continuum-view of responsibility, allowing people to be judged more or less responsible in accordance with a wide range of internal and external factors. Second, it incorporates a “threshold of responsibility” – a point along the continuum when an agent may be held responsible for their act/omission. When the threshold is met, an agent can be held responsible for their action. The benefit of this approach is that is challenges the over-simplicity of the minimalist conception by introducing a continuum instead of a simple binary, but at the same time not falling into the trap of the public health approach of denying responsibility altogether. Third, the model distinguishes responsibility from blameworthiness, where the former is a “thin” concept while the latter is a “thick” one. Responsibility is concerned merely with attribution and causality, namely that an action can be reasonably attributed to a rational, competent agent. It is not concerned with moral judgements about the agent or the act. Once the threshold of responsibility is met, a secondary evaluation can take place on whether or not blame is warranted, where blame is an action or expression of disapproval such as punishment or stigmatization. The method for assigning blame, therefore, is a two-step process. Responsibility is merely necessary but not sufficient for blameworthiness. The responsibility-blameworthiness distinction posits that there is a difference between being responsible and being worthy of blame (or, in the case of positive acts, praise). Related concepts have been given various names in the literature, including the difference between being responsible and holding responsible (Smith, 2007), responsibility versus blameworthiness (Pickard, 2011), and causal-responsibility versus liability-responsibility (Dworkin, 1981). On STRUCTURE, CHOICE, AND RESPONSIBILITY 9 my model, assigning blame is a two-step process. If an act is normatively neutral, responsibility as a method of causal attributability is the only concept engaged. Neither blame nor praise is warranted. If, and only if, an agent successfully meets the criteria for responsibility, may we proceed to deciding whether they are blameworthy and thus whether blaming attitudes or actions are justified. There are three important reasons to support such a distinction between responsibility and blame. First, the responsibility-blameworthiness distinction accords with our ordinary conception of responsibility. Because responsibility is such a pervasive and ubiquitous concept in everyday moral discourse, for our theorizing to have any impact and plausibility, it must at least acknowledge how it is used in ordinary conceptions. Our ordinary conceptions of responsibility distinguish between acts that are simply attributable to an agent (responsibility), and acts which warrant further reactive attitudes, punishment, praise, blame or other actions (blameworthiness or praiseworthiness). To say that we are responsible only for acts which arouse moral reactions would be to miss out a very important part of what it means to be responsible for an action as an agent. Responsibility, then, is a morally neutral or “thin” concept that does not have moral judgments entailed by it. To be responsible is an empirical or factual claim that does not necessarily have normative connotations. Blameworthiness serves as the “thick” concept, where its use entails normative judgment. The concept of blameworthiness itself contains moral judgments. Second, the responsibility-blameworthiness may address much of the intuitive objections we have for holding responsible certain people for their actions. Consider the situation of a man stealing bread to feed his starving family. We may intuitively want to deny him being responsible for stealing the bread because of our objections against the injustice of him having to steal to feed his family. We do not want him punished or held to account, so we deny his responsibility in the first place. The responsibility-blameworthiness distinction makes possible the idea that he is responsible but that his conduct is excused from blame due to structural factors, or that some other reason justifies him not being blamed. Recall Isaiah Berlin cautioning against conflating all bad things under some specific concept, for example, conflating all bad things with “unfreedom” or denying responsibility as a means to object to injustice. The responsibility-blameworthiness distinction should be particularly appealing to those sympathetic to the underlying intuition in the public health approach to responsibility, namely that a person should not be punished or blamed for an action they otherwise would not have done were it not for their grave desperation or grossly unjust circumstances. I suspect that few would object to a billionaire being held responsible for stealing money to buy food, in contrast to the intuitions some may have about holding responsible a struggling laborer who commits the same act. The intuition at play, therefore, may not be about people experiencing differential levels of structural influences in their lives so much as our objection to them experiencing injustice. Blameworthiness is a secondary evaluation and is not necessarily entailed by being responsible for an otherwise morally bad act. Consider another case where this intuition is at play: Sandy, from Young’s thought experiment, decides to shoplift some essential toiletries from a convenience store as a result of her desperate circumstances. Alan, a well-paid professional, also decides to shoplift his toiletries because he is impatient and does not wish to line up at the counter. Many will want to argue that Sandy was not responsible for her action, while Alan was. The intuition of wanting to deny Sandy’s responsibility may stem from the view that she is experiencing injustice, and that her being “responsible” will mean that she is blameworthy and will therefore be punished. The 10 GO intuition of wanting to deny responsibility is not present in the case of Alan, because we do not see him as the victim of injustice. This example, again, shows that our intuition of wanting to deny responsibility may be driven by an opposition to injustice, such that we do not want to punish those who we see as victims of it. The responsibility-blameworthiness distinction sidesteps this problem by highlighting that being responsible for an act does not entail that one is thereby worthy of blame or punishment. Third, there are important social benefits to holding people responsible for their lifestyle choices without blaming or stigmatizing them. Consider, again, the case of health: A certain threshold of self-efficacy and belief about responsibility is necessary for the people to make healthy lifestyle changes (Bandura, 2004). Employing the distinction between responsibility and blameworthiness enables us to use the language of responsibility without stigmatizing the patient. This gives some control back to the patient so they can aim to correct modifiable lifestyle factors such as exercise and diet. A prerequisite of behavioral change is having the belief that one has at least a degree of control and choice over the behavior (Bandura, 2004). Conversely, informing the patient that they are not responsible for their obesity may lead to a feeling of helplessness and lack of motivation to engage in healthy lifestyle practices. Discussions of responsibility without blame, contrary to merely promoting stigma, can actually be used to promote better health outcomes within individuals and populations (Pickard, 2011). Beyond health, this can be applied to the positive and empowering effect of taking responsibility for one’s education and employment, for example, even in the presence of structural influences that cause inequitable outcomes in those two areas. THE “CONTINUUM-THRESHOLD” MODEL OF RESPONSIBILITY The continuum of responsibility is an important feature of the continuum-threshold model, and is an idea that accords with much of our everyday discourse around responsibility. Recall the public health approach to responsibility: a person is responsible for her action if, and only if, the act is fully voluntary, she is in possession of full information, and she is free from any structural influences. Recall, also, the philosophical minimalist conception of responsibility: a person is responsible for her action if she acts voluntarily in some minimalist sense, namely that she is free from gross interference (external and internal) and has access to at least a minimal set of relevant information. On my model of responsibility and blameworthiness, responsibility can take many forms and be a matter of degree, from the minimalist conception at one end of the continuum, through to the comprehensive and perfectionist public health account at the other end. The continuum of responsibility starts when a person meets the minimalist condition of responsibility. The start of the continuum is referred to as the threshold of responsibility. At this threshold, we may say “X is/was responsible for doing/not doing Y”, where X is a rational agent and Y is an action. The threshold of responsibility is concerned primarily with reasonable attributability to the agent: namely, when it is considered reasonable for an act or omission to be attributed causally to an agent. This distinguishes responsible acts from those performed under significant coercion, manipulation or force, as a result of strong internal compulsions, and as distinct from mere bodily reflexes and involuntary movements (Pickard, 2011). This is distinct from the public STRUCTURE, CHOICE, AND RESPONSIBILITY 11 health approach, which is concerned with comprehensive attributability: namely, that an act be comprehensively and fully attributable to an agent who is free from any external or internal influences. The threshold of responsibility provides a reference point at which we may practically and reasonably say that a person is responsible for an action. There is also a kind of sufficientarian intuition at play in setting this threshold. We do not seem to mind that people make their decisions from unequal positions. We generally would not object to the differential levels of structural influences at play between a billionaire and a millionaire, when the latter has fewer resources and options, compared to the former. What seems to matter is that people make their decisions from a good enough and reasonable threshold. This reasonable point can be set at the threshold of responsibility. The threshold of responsibility, however, does not necessarily have to be universally fixed. Even if we accept the minimalist conception of responsibility as the location of the threshold, it can be subject to change depending on the social context and empirical evidence. My account is not committed, necessarily, to some fixed threshold. My aim is merely to elucidate a basic framework for theorizing about responsibility and structure. This should, again, be appealing to those who are sympathetic to the concerns of the public health approach to responsibility. Because of growing empirical evidence about the influence of the social determinants of health, for example, it may mean that people are not as responsible for their health outcomes and lifestyle choices as we previously thought. This does not have to collapse into the idea of responsibility being a binary concept, or that we have to reject the possibility of responsibility altogether, but it may show that agency is not as powerful as once thought and, in some cases, may not be sufficient to overcome the influence of the structural factors present within society. The continuum account of responsibility allows comparisons to be made about who is “more responsible”. If two people are at or above the threshold of responsibility, a person lower on the continuum of responsibility can be considered less responsible than someone higher up. This can address much of our objections against holding equally responsible two people who have vastly different resources and capabilities. It also addresses the public health approach’s concern with holding equally accountable people whose background and experience of structural influences are different. Even if a rich person and a poor person both meet the threshold for responsibility (independently of blameworthiness), we may make a qualified judgment that the rich person, all things considered, is more responsible than the poor person for a particular action. This enables us to respond better to the debate around responsibility and equality of choices. There is a view implicit within the public health approach that it is wrong to hold responsible poorer people because they have fewer options at their disposal than richer people. Some argue, for instance, that disparities in income mean poorer people have fewer health-promoting options available to them, such as the ability to purchase healthy foods, pay for a gym membership, find time for exercising because of low-wage shift work, and residing in neighborhoods with higher levels of pollution (Brown, 2013). Consider a version of G. A. Cohen’s well-known example about money and freedom (Cohen, 1995, 2011). In this case, a poor woman does not have enough disposable income to pay for a gym membership. The poor woman therefore does not have the money that would give her permission to use the gym. Partly because of this, she becomes obese.7 A relevant question, then, is to what degree we should consider (if at all) the variation in options between 12 GO different persons when discussing responsibility. A potential solution could be to propose some kind of sufficientarian account of options. It could turn out that what matters is not whether we have equality of options or choices between individuals, but rather that some threshold of sufficiency of options is reached. The poor woman who is unable to afford a gym membership has the option to exercise at a nearby park or run around her neighborhood block instead. Thus, as long as a sufficient number of reasonable options and alternatives are available, we can continue to hold people responsible for their acts or omissions. Whether or not they are blameworthy is, of course, another issue to be subjected to a secondary evaluation. I cannot commit myself to a view at this stage on where we should set the threshold of sufficiency of options. In theorizing where such a threshold should be set, one must be aware of the empirical evidence around what it means to be able to exercise agency and meaningful decision-making. The solution to this issue is likely to be complex. I can, however, make a few initial comments vis-à-vis disparities and responsibility. Consider the case of obesity and the obesogenic environment: First, it is unlikely that mere inequality can absolve an individual of personal responsibility for becoming obese. If this were the case, millionaires who are obese may be considered not responsible for their health outcomes compared to billionaires who are obese, due to the vast disparities between them. Second, while it may be true that people who are poor have fewer options to buy healthy food such as fruit and vegetables due to these food often being more expensive than snacks or other unhealthy food, I am not convinced that this would bring them below the threshold of sufficiency of options. The mere fact that an action or omission places a higher burden on some people compared with others is not itself reason to withhold the assignment of responsibility. The fact that a psychopath finds it harder to resist torturing someone compared with a saintly person does not itself give reason to conclude that they are not responsible for an act of torture. Despite being at or above the threshold of responsibility, we may be prepared to grant that certain groups of people or individuals who occupy a lower level of responsibility on the continuum may be less responsible than others. This, again, demonstrates an important advantage of the continuum-threshold model of responsibility: it allows comparative judgments of responsibility, independently of blameworthiness, even amongst two people are who already past the threshold of responsibility. Discussions of the structure and responsibility problem that deny individuals’ agency also have the danger of supporting overly paternalistic policies and being too intrusive on individual liberty (Berlin, 2006). By denying individuals’ voluntariness and competence to make their own choices, it gives the state increased justification to interfere involuntarily with people’s liberty for the supposed promotion of their own good and liberty (Berlin, 2006). This may be defended by the state on the grounds that individuals are not really responsible for their nonhealthy lifestyle choices due to mis-information or irrational means-end reasoning, and that such weak paternalism is therefore appropriate (Dworkin, 1972). The continuum-threshold model of responsibility is a powerful tool to resist such state interference, as it challenges the idea that individuals are not responsible for their choices and actions. 7 This is, of course, a gross simplification of the etiological factors that lead to obesity. I use it merely as a simple thought experiment. STRUCTURE, CHOICE, AND RESPONSIBILITY 13 BLAMEWORTHINESS: A TWO-STEP PROCESS Blameworthiness refers to the condition of deserving blaming attitudes or actions, such as disapprobation, stigma, censure, or punishment (Pickard, 2011). Responsibility is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being blameworthy. That is, one must be responsible for an action if one is to be blamed for it, but one being responsible for an action does not entail that one is thereby blameworthy. Once a person passes the threshold of responsibility, we may turn to evaluating whether or not they are blameworthy. The identification of blameworthiness and the assignment of blame is a two-step process. In the first step, we evaluate the agent’s responsibility, namely that they meet the threshold of responsibility, identified in the previous section. If, and only if, they successfully meet the threshold of responsibility, we may proceed to deciding whether they are blameworthy and thus whether blaming attitudes or actions are justified. In the second step, three key considerations should be taken into account: (i) whether the agent’s personally responsible act or omission actually necessitates any moral evaluation or if it is in fact normatively neutral; (ii) the presence of justification or excuse for the agent’s conduct (if, and only if, the act/omission is judged in (i) to be morally wrong), and (iii) the implications of blaming the agent based on the consideration of any other morally relevant principles, and an evaluation of potential consequences. The first condition of determining blameworthiness is that the act for which the agent is responsible must be one that necessitates normative evaluation. It should not be one that is normatively neutral. There is no perfect formula to determine which exact actions fit this condition, as it likely depends on a multiplicity of factors including context and intention. This step is merely concerned with whether there are sufficient normative questions and moral issues at stake to warrant further evaluation. To better highlight the nature of normatively neutral actions, consider a hypothetical case of a person, running from the house to her car. Whether or not this act is normatively neutral requires more information about the context. If she is running to her car to escape the Police after a house burglary, we would regard the act of “running” as something worthy of further evaluation for blameworthiness. If, on the other hand, she is simply running from the house to her car because she is running late for work, we may regard this act as normatively neutral and not worthy of further evaluation. If the act does not warrant any further moral evaluation, there is no need to proceed further in the judgment of blameworthiness. The person will then be considered responsible but not blameworthy. The second consideration evaluates the presence and force of any excuses or justifications for the person’s otherwise blameworthy conduct. If there are excusing or justificatory factors, the agent may be absolved of blame for their conduct. For example, the starving man who steals bread to feed his family may be responsible for his actions, but can nonetheless offer an excuse and justification for his otherwise morally objectionable conduct. He is therefore absolved of blame for his actions, and we may consider him responsible but not blameworthy. I deliberately leave open the sorts of reasons we would accept as justifications and excuses, as it is likely to vary across situations, be contextually dependent, and predicated on empirical evidence. A watertight formula for what counts as justification or excuse is not necessary for accepting my general account.8 Finally, the third consideration requires the evaluation of other morally relevant principles, and to consider the potential consequences of blaming the agent. To prevent a mere collapse 14 GO into consequentialism, the third step only considers consequences as one factor among many others. Consider, again, the context of responsibility and blame for health. Potential implications of blaming the agent for their unhealthy choices include inflicting further mental health problems, such as increasing the risk of the person self-harming or committing suicide (Hatzenbuehler, Phelan, & Link, 2013). The known negative health impacts of stigma, as well as it being counter-productive to health behavior change, is a strong consequencesensitive reason to be cautious about assigning blame to people for their health choices or health status (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2013). Because blaming is a practical action with tangible impacts, it should be proportional to the transgression and consideration should be given to its effects and consequences. Other morally relevant considerations in the case of determining blameworthiness include issues of procedural fairness and accountability (Daniels & Sabin, 1997). If blame and punishment are to be assigned, the institutions and processes should be governed by some principle of procedural fairness. For example, the courts have a system that is intended to safeguard against abuse. In some cases, it may not be appropriate to assign blame if the processes and institutions governing it are not procedurally fair. There may also be concerns of invasive monitoring and breach of privacy if the notion of desert as an allocation criterion for distributive justice is adopted (Harris, 1995). There may also be practical and economic concerns about the costs of monitoring, administration, and enforcement, especially if blameworthiness is targeted at trivial cases. Another morally relevant factor to consider is the level of responsibility involved, along the continuum. This is unlikely to be a perfect judgment, but the appropriate blaming responses could be different for someone lower down on the continuum compared with someone higher up. If any single factor, or a sum total of different factors, is sufficient to withhold the judgment and/or action of blaming, the person is to be considered responsible but not blameworthy. Because blameworthiness depends on an independent evaluation from the attribution responsibility, there are fewer objections to us holding responsible people we do not wish to blame. The two-step process in the continuum-threshold model accords better with our conception of moral agency and responsibility, acknowledges the complexity of determining responsibility and blameworthiness, and recognizes structural impacts on action and the significance of justice. INDIVIDUALS VERSUS STRUCTURES One possible objection against my account is that it diverts attention from addressing structural factors and the immense influence they exert over individuals’ choices and actions. The language of personal responsibility, it could be argued, means we focus on the individual agent rather than dealing with the perpetrator of such influences, and that such an approach may place undue burden on individuals. I am not convinced that this is entailed by my account. The intention of this paper is to present a conceptual discussion of how we ought to attribute responsibility and blameworthiness in our non-ideal world, given its social imperfections and structural influences. It does not follow from my account of responsibility that we ought to 8 For an influential account of excuses and justifications, including the distinction between them, see Greenawalt (1986). STRUCTURE, CHOICE, AND RESPONSIBILITY 15 tolerate the status quo or resist changing it. Whether we ought to reform structural factors, be they corporations, political institutions or economic systems, is a separate issue from how we ought to attribute responsibility to individuals for actions exercised in that particular context. To take an example from the public health context, stating that a person is responsible (in a causal sense) for drinking sugary drinks has no bearing on whether or not we ought to regulate sugary drinks as a matter of social policy. It is clear that many kinds of structural reforms should take place, but it is not clear at all that we must suspend the reasonable attribution of responsibility until we reach a utopian state of affairs. CONCLUSION This paper has presented a simple but novel approach for conceptualizing the link between structure and responsibility. The continuum-threshold model of responsibility distinguishes between responsibility and blameworthiness, where the former is a thin concept concerned with reasonable causal attributability, while the latter is a thick concept involving normative judgment. The determination of blameworthiness is a two-step process, where responsibility is a necessary but not sufficient condition for blame. The determination of blameworthiness is subject to further conditions, namely, that the act in question be one that warrants normative evaluation, that relevant excuses or justifications have been evaluated and dismissed, and that the consideration of consequences and other morally relevant factors supports the ascription of blame. If, and only if, these conditions are met can an agent be blamed. If an agent is causally responsible for an act but does not meet the criteria for blame, he/she is said to be responsible but not blameworthy. The model, in its present form, is not intended to be a comprehensive or complete account of responsibility. My aim was merely to conceptualize a basic framework which untangles a host of often confused intuitions to show that we need not abandon the discourse of responsibility and moral agency when taking into account the pervasive impacts of structural influences on actions. The continuum-threshold model accords with our ordinary understanding of responsibility, acknowledges the influence of structural factors, dis-entangles our intuitions about injustice, and retains the importance of what it means to be a moral agent. The model is conceptually and practically defensible, and has the potential to open a new direction of theorizing about structure and responsibility. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Early parts of this research came out of work I did in New Zealand as the 2016/2017 Summer Research Scholar in Ethics with the Health Research Council. I thank the Health Research Council of New Zealand for their financial support. I am grateful to Martin Wilkinson for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, Michael Drolet for lucid and critical comments on later drafts, and two anonymous referees from this journal for their constructive feedback. 16 GO DISCLOSURE STATEMENT No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. FUNDING This work was supported by the Health Research Council of New Zealand [Summer Research Scholarship, 2016/17]. ORCID Johann J. Go http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0293-095X REFERENCES Bandura, A. (2004). Health promotion by social cognitive means. Health Education and Behaviour, 31(2), 143–164. doi:10.1177/1090198104263660 Berlin, I. (2006). Two concepts of liberty. In D. Miller (Ed.), The liberty reader (pp. 33–57). 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