Moral Responsibility

Is attention both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? Call this central question of this treatise, “Q.” We commonly have the experience of consciously paying attention to something, but is it possible to be conscious of something you are not attending to, or to attend to something of which you are not conscious? Where might we find examples of these?
This treatise is a quest to find an answer to Q in two parts. Part I reviews the foundations upon which the discourse on Q is built. Different inputs to Q produce different answers. After consideration of the many ways “attention” and “consciousness” have been defined, I settle upon phenomenal consciousness and Executive Attention (defined as a suite of strategies for structuring cognition for further processing implemented by the executive of working memory) as the most interesting inputs to Q, and the ones on which Part II focuses.
Attention without consciousness seems relatively easy to establish empirically, but consciousness without attention is much harder. The putative candidates all seem to have major problems, but I build a strong abductive case for the hitherto ignored case of foveal phenomenal overflow. We consciously see far more detail in our foveal fields than we can Executively Attend, although there is a serious obstacle to our ever confirming that empirically—identifying conscious content relies on Executive Attentional report. Triangulating the capacity limitations of attention, consciousness, and working memory strengthens this case for consciousness without attention, and suggests that cognition must work something like my “Witches’ Hat Model,” on which content can become conscious outside of Executive Attention or working memory. I conclude with some reflections on the implications of my arguments for the discourse on Q, and for other discourses such as the ontologies of attention and consciousness, theories of consciousness, some other cognitive concepts, and ethical considerations in humans, animals, and machines. A conclusive answer to Q continues to elude us. It may perhaps be an ultimately insoluble conundrum. But it is the very essence of humanity to seek an answer, and in so doing, to improve our understanding of our own nature:
“The proper study of mankind is man.”

It is a mistake to think that we cannot be morally responsible for forgetting because, as a matter of principle, forgetting is outside of our control. Sometimes we do have control over our forgetting. When forgetting is under our control there is no question that it is the proper object of praise and blame. But we can also be morally responsible for forgetting something when it is beyond our control that we forget that thing. The literature contains three accounts of the blameworthiness of forgetting over which the agent has no control—the tracing account, the liberalized awareness condition, and attributionism. Even though these are competing accounts of the blameworthiness of harmful forgetting they are compatible with one another. In particular, it is possible to come up with a position that endorses the tracing account for certain kinds of harmful forgetting and attributionism for other kinds of harmful forgetting.

It is commonly thought that unconscious processes cannot produce actions deserving praise or blame. I present a thought experiment designed to generate a contradicting intuition: at least in this case, we do give credit for the product of an unconscious process. The target is creativity. Many instances of creative thought begin with a step that unconsciously generates a new idea by combining existing ideas. The resulting ideas are selected and developed by later processing. This first step could be replaced with a simple machine that randomly pairs concepts. Now, imagine a philosopher, Liberty, who gets all of his paper ideas from this machine. Compare him to another philosopher, Libertad, who comes up with all the same papers using her own mind. If you share the intuition that Liberty’s work deserves less credit for creativity, you are giving credit for the product of an unconscious process.

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside of our control (the 'Standard View'), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one's control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in a larger social practice that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View.

This book is an inquiry into particular matters concerning the nature, normativity, and aftermath of evil action. It combines philosophical conceptual analysis with empirical studies in psychology and discussions of historical events to provide an innovative analysis of evil action.

The book considers unresolved questions belonging to metaethical, normative, and practical characteristics of evil action. It begins by asking whether Kant’s historical account of evil is still relevant for contemporary thinkers. Then it addresses features of evil action that distinguish it from mundane wrongdoing, thereby placing it as a proper category of philosophical inquiry. Next, the author inquires into how evil acts affect moral relationships and challenge Strawsonian accounts of moral responsibility. He then draws conceptual and empirical connections between evil acts such as genocide, torture, and slavery and collective agency, and asks why evil acts are often collective acts. Finally, the author questions both the possibility and propriety of forgiveness and vengeance in the aftermath of evil and discusses how individuals ought to cope with the pervasiveness of evil in human interaction.

Virtually everyone believes that we have a duty to rescue fellow human-beings from serious danger when we can do so at small cost to ourselves-and this often forms the starting point for arguments in moral and political philosophy on topics such as global poverty, state legitimacy, refugees, and the donation of body parts. But how are we to explain this duty, and within what limits does it apply? It cannot be subsumed under a wider consequentialist requirement to prevent harm. Nor can it be understood as a duty of social justice that citizens owe to one another under a social contract for mutual protection. Instead it is a sui generis duty of justice that arises from the direct physical encounter between rescuer and victim, and is accordingly limited in scope. However the simplicity of the duty evaporates when multiple potential rescuers are present. Here responsibility lies with the collective as a whole until it is assigned by a fair procedure to individual members. Each individual is required as a matter of justice to discharge that share, but not more, though in the case that others do not comply, he will have a reason, and sometimes a humanitarian duty, to take up the slack.

Starting from Karl Löwith’s Mitanthropologie, my paper aims to put forward a principle disappointability conceived as a “trust gradient” for the interhuman dimension.
Löwith’s Mitanthropologie develops a taxonomy of the different binary
bonds, at the top of which emerges the “absolute relationship between an I self and a you self”. The peculiarity of this bond is based on trust and responsibility. In order to prove the responsible and trust-based intentionality of the two relata, I propose the principle disappointability, inspired by Popper’s principle of falsification. The authenticity of a relationship depends on the fact that each relatum responds entirely for itself within the space of Miteinandersein. In other words, I can show my trust (in my co-relatum) only if I en-trust (to it). Such a total entrusting can be attested only by the fact that I am “falsifiable”, namely “disappointable”. The principle disappointability emerges therefore as a natural “trust gradient”.

In large, impersonal moral orders many of us wish to maintain good will towards our fellow citizens only if we are reasonably sure they will maintain good will towards us. The mutual maintaining of good will, then, requires we somehow communicate our intentions to one another. But how do we actually do this? The current paper argues that when we engage in moral responsibility practices-that is, when we express our reactive attitudes by blaming, praising, and resenting-we communicate a desire to maintain good will to those in the community we are imbedded in. Participating in such practices alone won't get the job done, though, for expressions of our reactive attitudes are often what economists call cheap talk. But, when we praise and blame in cases of moral diversity, expressions of our reactive attitudes act as costly signals capable of solving our social dilemma.

There have been several recent lawsuits in which problem gamblers (or those affected by problem gambling) have sued casinos or other gaming companies for damages relating to bankruptcies, suicides, and other negative consequences of compulsive gambling. Although the legal cases have been decided in favor of the gaming companies, it can seem as though there is a moral residue in some of these cases: perhaps some of the actions of the gaming companies, though legal, have been morally problematic. This case invites students to explore this possibility by introducing them to the facts surrounding the lawsuits and highlighting some of the most salient moral considerations. Students will also be asked to reflect on the public policy implications, if any, of their findings.

Cordula Brand, Personale Identität oder menschliche Persistenz? Ein naturalistisches Kriterium, Paderborn: Mentis 2010, 375 S., 978 -3 -89785 -708 -7. Schon häufiger ist der Verdacht geäußert worden, in der von John Locke angestoßenen und bis heute andauernden Debatte um Personen und ihre transtemporale Identität würden verschiedene Themen und Fragestellungen miteinander vermengt, die eigentlich gar nichts oder nur wenig miteinander zu tun hätten. 1 Cordula Brand teilt diesen Eindruck (vgl. z.B. 24 ff. u. 31 ff.) und möchte mit ihrem Buch Personale Identität oder menschliche Persistenz? Ein naturalistisches Kriterium Klarheit in die verworrene Diskussion bringen. Wie der Titel der Tübinger Dissertation bereits verrät, bedeutet dies für sie in erster Linie, zwischen ‚menschlicher Persistenz' und ‚personaler Identität' zu unterscheiden. Brands Entwurf eines ‚naturalistischen Kriteriums' reagiert nicht nur auf die, wie sie meint, aus ‚Expertensicht' unleugbare Extensionsdifferenz der Begriffe ‚Mensch' und ‚Person' (vgl. insbes. 27 f.), sondern stellt überdies den Versuch dar, mit der von ‚Laien' und ‚Experten' 2 gleichermaßen vernachlässigten fundamentalen Differenz zwischen deskriptiven und normativen Fragen ‚unserer' ‚Identität' philosophisch Ernst zu machen (vgl. z.B. 25 f., 245 u. 306). Wenn ‚Person' eigentlich "ein moralisches Konzept" ist (30; vgl. auch 211 u. 306), das bestimmten Wesen "auf der Basis des Vorhandenseins bestimmter Eigenschaften bzw. Fähigkeiten" einen bestimmten "moralische[n] Status" verleiht (353), dann kann eine widerspruchsfreie Rede von ‚personaler Identität' sich nur auf die Identität des mit Personalität verknüpften moralischen Status beziehen (vgl. 320 ff.). Dagegen bleibt es dem naturalistischen Kriterium vorbehalten, die Bedingungen der synchronen wie diachronen Identität desjenigen Wesens zu spezifizieren, dem wir diesen Status im Kontext unserer Lebenswelt zunächst und zumeist zuschreiben: die Individuations-und Persistenzbedingungen des Menschen (vgl. 31 ff. sowie zusammenfassend 304). Allein ein solcher doppelter Problemzugang stellt nach Ansicht der Autorin einen Theorierahmen bereit, innerhalb dessen philosophische ‚Experteneinsichten' zur Lösung konkreter bioethischer Probleme beitragen können (vgl. 41, 324 ff., 355 f. u. den Klappentext). Wer mit der jüngeren Entwicklung der ‚Personal-identity'-Debatte ein wenig vertraut ist, wird sich unweigerlich an den Theorieentwurf von Michael Quante erinnert fühlen: Auch Quante plädiert für eine strikte Trennung normativer und deskriptiver Fragen, 3 woraus vermittelt über die Annahme, der Begriff ‚Person' sei ein nichtkonstitutives Phasensortal (also 1 Vgl. v.a. Quante (2007), zuerst 6 ff., und (2002), 17 ff. 2 Brand übernimmt diese Unterscheidung von Putnam, vgl. 12 ff. 3 Vgl. Quante (2007), 18 ff.

This study examined the role of pro-victim attitudes, personal responsibility, coping responses to observations of bullying, and perceived peer normative pressure in explaining defending the victim and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. A total of 462 Italian early adolescents (mean age = 13.4 years, SD = 9 months) participated in the study. The behaviors were measured through two informants: each individual student and the teachers. The findings of a series of hierarchical regressions showed that, regardless of the informant, problem solving coping strategies and perceived peer normative pressure for intervention were positively associated with active help towards a bullied peer and negatively related to passivity. In contrast, distancing strategies were positively associated with passive bystanding, whereas they were negatively associated with teacher-reported defending behavior. Moreover, self-reported defending behavior was positively associated with personal responsibility for intervention, but only under conditions of low perceived peer pressure. Finally, the perception of peer pressure for intervention buffered the negative influence of distancing on passive bystanding tendencies. Future directions are discussed.

This study examined the role of pro-victim attitudes, personal responsibility, coping responses to observations of bullying, and perceived peer normative pressure in explaining defending the victim and passive bystanding behavior in bullying. A total of 462 Italian early adolescents (mean age= 13.4 years, SD=9 months) participated in the study. The behaviors were measured through two informants: each individual student and the teachers. The findings of a series of hierarchical regressions showed that, regardless of the informant, problem solving coping strategies and perceived peer normative pressure for intervention were positively associated with active help towards a bullied peer and negatively related to passivity. In contrast, distancing strategies were positively associated with passive bystanding, whereas they were negatively associated with teacher-reported defending behavior. Moreover, self-reported defending behavior was positively associated with personal responsibility for intervention, but only under conditions of low perceived peer pressure. Finally, the perception of peer pressure for intervention buffered the negative influence of distancing on passive bystanding tendencies. Future directions are discussed.

Aims: The purpose of this paper is to argue that it is important to recognize that addicts are morally accountable even for their addictive action, as moral agency is more generally an important factor in full-blown human agency. The challenge is to identify the problems that addicts have in their agency without discarding their potentially full-blown agency. Design: In philosophy of agency, moral responsibility and accountability, in particular, may refer to control over one’s action. I discuss this control as reason-responsiveness and, on a more general level, illustrate the importance of moral agency to human agency with a contrasting example of psychopaths and addicts as agents. Measures: A philosophical analysis is carried out in order to argue for the relevance and importance of moral accountability in therapeutic models of addiction. Findings: The example of psychopaths and addicts illustrates that moral agency is part of full-blown human agency, as psychopaths are generally ...

La crisis de la covid-19 ha sacudido, sin duda, los cimientos de las sociedades del mundo, y especialmente de las del hemisferio norte del planeta. La prime-ra oleada de la pandemia ha cuestionado la eficiencia de algunos gobiernos y sistemas de salud que gozaban de consideración como los más eficientes. En el momento de la redacción de estas líneas, la pandemia parece todavía lejos de poder declararse superada. Por ello, cualquier conclusión sobre sus efectos es prematura, aunque haya transcurrido el tiempo suficiente para extraer unas primeras valoraciones. Las reflexiones que propongo a continuación se sitúan en el ámbito de la filo-sofía social. Tomaré como referencia algunas valoraciones del sociólogo polaco Zygmunt Bauman porque ha sido, a mi entender, uno de los mejores analistas de la crisis moral de las sociedades capitalistas, al menos, desde la publicación, entre 1987 y 1991, de la llamada "trilogía de la modernidad". Ampliaré sus aportaciones con otras de los filósofos Emmanuel Levinas y Hans Jonas, porque han analizado con detenimiento el concepto de vulnerabilidad y su importancia para el desarrollo del principio de responsabilidad, que ambos sitúan en la base de la moral contemporánea. El propio Bauman es deudor de ambos autores, especialmente de Levinas. A mi modo de ver, la presente crisis ha traído al primer plano un sentimien-to fundamental en la experiencia humana, que es el de la propia e inevitable vulnerabilidad. Desde hacía años, los análisis sociales señalaban que la cultura consumista en la que nos veíamos inmersos estaba llevando a otorgar primacía al sentimiento de satisfacción, que permitía la obtención de placeres inmediatos e individuales; pero que favorecía también la indiferencia hacia el sufrimiento ajeno. La crisis de la covid-19, inevitablemente, ha traído mucho sufrimiento in-esperado, pero, como toda crisis, puede convertirse también en un revulsivo que haga a nuestras sociedades reaccionar y redescubrir los fundamentos morales.

In March of 2020, Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women. He has yet to stand trial for sexual harassment charges made against him by over 100 women. Is Harvey Weinstein blameworthy? Some philosophical theories would say that he’s not, and others would say that he is, but for uncompelling reasons. I say that this is true of the reasons-responsiveness theory, and a specific version of that theory, the guilt theory. I critique these theories and then offer a feminist model of blame that gives uptake to the reasons offered by Weinstein’s victims, and other survivors of sexual violence. This theory rectifies the imbalance of epistemic power that enables people like Weinstein to oppress so many women.

This paper reflects on the articles submitted for the Symposium Confronting the Internet's Dark Side. I discuss some of the criticisms of the book's theory and my treatment of hate speech. The responsibilities of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Web-Hosting Services (WHSs) are in the fore, arguing that as they are the gatekeepers, they need to be proactive far more than they are now. This paper, like my book, strives to suggest an approach that harnesses the strengths and capabilities of the public and the private sectors in offering practical solutions to pressing problems.

The author’s intention is to justify the idea that corporations are institutional, ethical, and shared megasubjects and therefore their responsibility is shared and distributive, and not collective and non-distributive. This responsibility is also transindividual and transcontributive. „Transindividual” means that general share isn’t a sum of individual shares, because there are no absolute borders between individuals and the groups to which they belong. The borders are fuzzy and changeable. „Transcontributive” means that corporations are responsible not only for real results of their activity and passivity, but for probable results too. Main responsibility lies with corporate centres of power. It’s impossible to ascribe the same responsibility to every memeber of an organization. That is why popular, legal notion of the responsibility of corporations is ethically flawed — it demands punishment for corporations as strange kinds of individual subjects or collective subjects. Corporations are shared megasubjects and punishment must be assessed in proportion to every subject’s contribution, otherwise innocents will be punished and culprits will be awarded.

This essay argues that moral accountability depends upon having a shared system of social norms. In particular, it argues that the Strawsonian reactive attitude of resentment is only fitting when people can reasonably expect a mutual recognition of the justified demands to which they are being held. Though such recognition should not typically be expected of moral demands that are thought to be independent of any social practice, social norms can ground such mutual recognition. On this account, a significant part of a society's social norms are also properly seen as moral norms. The essay defends this overlap of social and moral norms in contrast to views on which moral norms and social norms are sharply distinguished. Lastly, the essay concludes by addressing challenges for accountability in circumstances of norm change.

In this essay, I ask what the precise relation is between Laudato si’s theology and its claims about our individual and corporate responsibility for the environment and the plight of the poor. To do so, I first clarify the relationship between the theological claims and its account of moral norms, situating the text within the history of western ethical theory. I then turn to reconstruct the submerged theology of the encyclical, focusing on Pope Francis’s accounts of the techno-economic paradigm and the possibility of an “integral ecology” paradigm. I end by assessing the text in terms of the coherence and plausibility of its argument as an ethical and theological statement.


KEYWORDS: techno-economic paradigm, integral ecology, Laudato si’, moral theory, Catholic Social Thought, Catholic Social Teaching

Against its prominent compatiblist and libertarian opponents, I defend Galen Strawson’s Basic Argument for the impossibility of moral responsibility. Against John Martin Fischer, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that an agent can be responsible for an action only if he is responsible for every factor contributing to that action. Against Alfred Mele and Randolph Clarke, I argue that it is absurd to believe that an agent can be responsible for an action when no factor contributing to that action is up to that agent. Against Derk Pereboom and Clarke, I argue that the versions of agent-causal libertarianism they claim can immunize the agent to the Basic Argument actually fail to do so. Against Robert Kane, I argue that the Basic Argument does not rely on the premise that simply the presence of indeterministic factors in the process of bringing an action about is itself what rules out the agent’s chance for being responsible for that action.

Moral responsibility is related to attitudes of blame, praise, anger, reward, regret, and punishment which people attribute to agents for their actions. Both collective and individual human agents may qualify as responsible moral agents to whom ascriptions of praise and blame apply. This essay begins by laying out the collective moral responsibility in the general context, and then it investigates argument against group responsibility.

'Frankfurt-style cases' (FSCs) are widely considered as having refuted the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) by presenting cases in which an agent is morally responsible even if he could not have done otherwise. However, Neil Levy (2008) has recently argued that FSCs fail because we are not entitled to suppose that the agent is morally responsible, given that the mere presence of a counterfactual intervener is enough to make an agent lose responsibility-grounding abilities. Here, I distinguish two kinds of Frankfurt counter-arguments against the PAP: the direct and the indirect counter-arguments. I then argue that Levy's argument, if valid, can shed doubt on the indirect argument but leaves the direct argument untouched. I conclude that FSCs can still do their job, even if we grant that the mere presence of a counterfactual intervener can modify an agent's abilities.

La autonomía tiene bastante influencia de la heteronomía aún. La heteronomía moldea a la autonomía. No es posible situarlas en esferas de injerencia del todo separadas, más bien se asemejan a un diagrama de Venn, en el cual se intersectan ambos conjuntos, generando un híbrido o área gris que manifiesta ambigüedad y vaguedad desde un punto de vista fáctico a través de las corrientes filosóficas relevantes, de las consecuencias de sus postulados y de sus interpretaciones.

Traditionally, the manufacturer/operator of a machine is held (morally and legally) responsible for the consequences of its operation. Autonomous, learning machines, based on neural networks, genetic algorithms and agent architectures, create a new situation, where the manufacturer/operator of the machine is in principle not capable of predicting the future machine behaviour any more, and thus cannot be held morally responsible or liable for it. The society must decide between not using this kind of machine any more (which is not a realistic option), or facing a responsibility gap, which cannot be bridged by traditional concepts of responsibility ascription.

Tackling climate change has often been considered the responsibility of national governments. But do individuals also have a duty to act in the face of this problem? In particular, do they have a duty to adopt a greener lifestyle or to press their government to act? This review critically examines the arguments provided for and against such duties in the relevant philosophic literature. It first discusses the problem of causal inefficacy – namely the fact that individual GHG emissions seem to make no difference to the harmful consequences of climate change – and whether it clears individuals from any moral obligations related to climate change. Then, it considers various other arguments for the existence of such duties, including integrity, fairness, universalizability or virtue. Finally, it assesses the existence of a duty to promote collective action through active citizenship. The conclusion emphasizes that most writers agree on the fact that individuals have at least some duties to take action against climate change, but that disagreement remains about the exact nature and, above all, the extent of these duties.

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

While retributivism provides one of the main sources of justification for punishment within the criminal justice system, there are good philosophical and practical reasons for rejecting it. One such reason is that it is unclear that agents truly deserve to suffer for the wrongs they have done in the sense required by retributivism. In Section 1 of this paper, I explore the retributivist justification of punishment and explain why it is inconsistent with free will skepticism. In Section 2, I then argue that even if one is not convinced by the arguments for free will skepticism, there remains a strong epistemic argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that undermines both libertarian and compatibilist attempts to justify it. I maintain that this argument provides sufficient reason for rejecting the retributive justification of legal punishment. I conclude in Section 3 by briefly sketching my public health-quarantine model, a non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behavior that draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice [12-15]. I argue that the model is not only consistent with free will skepticism and the epistemic argument against retributivism, it also provides the most justified, humane, and effective way of dealing with criminal behavior.

This chapter begins with an overview of Levinas’s ethics of difference and singularity and then explores a Levinasian approach to the ethical dimension of climate change.  Dale Jamieson argues that climate change and other collective action environmental problems pose a challenge to our traditional conceptions of moral responsibility.  But Levinas’s account of responsibility, because it is not grounded in intention or causal relations, suggests that I am indeed responsible for those who suffer from a changing climate.  Indeed, their vulnerability and suffering disclose my own resources to work for mitigation and adaptation, and my complicity in their situation.  Moreover, Levinas’s understanding of the work of ethics as a service for a time in which I do not benefit, provides a framework for conceptualizing my responsibility to future generations.  And grounding justice in the ethical relation, as Levinas does, motivates collective agreements aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change while simultaneously resisting the ways in which these agreement inevitably justify present and future suffering.  Thus, I argue, Levinas’s work provides an apt description of ethical life in the Anthropocene: I have inescapable responsibilities that increase with my awareness and attention and are always beyond my capacities to meet.

Philosophical problems of freedom and responsibility are among the most recalcitrant philosophical problems that we have, and are connected to a range of important issues in our understanding of agency, autonomy, blame, and the grounds of moral assessment. Freedom, Fairness and Responsibility argues for a 'Hybrid View' on these issues: that is, a view that combines the insights of more traditional compatibilist and incompatibilist theories into a unified solution to this set of closely connected philosophical problems.