Concurrent Session 5b: Revisiting Scanlon
 

Chair: xxx(University)

Attributability and the Hierarchical Self

Anna Réz
Department of Philosophy
Central European University
Budapest, Hungary

Hierarchical accounts hold people morally responsible for such actions and attitudes with which the agent is identified, i.e., is governed by a privileged part of her psychology (higherorder volitions, evaluational system). But, I will argue, no matter which version of hierarchical accounts we accept, there will be clear counterexamples, such as, for instance, culpable ignorance and negligence, when people are held responsible exactly because they did not take certain considerations into account, thus there was no way for them to be either identified or disidentified with their actions or attitudes. Then I will present the basic ideas of attributionist accounts offered by Thomas Scanlon and Angela Smith, and argue that, contrary to hierarchical accounts, these can handle cases of carelessness and lack of concern. However, accepting attributionism coerce us to give up such insights of hierarchical accounts, which seem to be crucial to our practice of responsibility-attribution.

(edited abstract)

Moral Responsibility as Appraisability

Randolph Clarke
Department of Philosophy
Florida State University
Tallahassee, USA

Several writers have identified an aspect of moral responsibility that we may call moral appraisability. An individual is morally responsible for something, in this sense, just in case it is appropriate to take that thing as a basis of moral appraisal of that person. However, the several views of moral appraisability differ significantly along several dimensions: regarding the distinctive moral focus of the relevant appraisals, what agents can properly be appraised for, how such appraisal is connected to reactive attitudes, and how it is connected to moral accountability, to being an appropriate target of overt treatment in response to what one has done. Accounts of appraisability advanced by T. M. Scanlon, Gary Watson, and Michael Zimmerman are examined and compared along these lines.

One response to our recognition of these differences might be to judge at least some of the views in question to be mistaken about what moral responsibility is. This paper takes a different approach. We can take each of these accounts to correctly characterize some kind of moral appraisability and then ask how what is characterized is related to certain other aspects of our practice of finding and holding people responsible. On the assumption that holding agents accountable is fairly central to this practice, I argue that what is characterized by some of the accounts of moral appraisability is quite peripheral.

Two Common Mistakes about Responsibility and Blame

Guy Sela
Faculty of Law - University college
Oxford University
Oxford, UK

Someone (culpably) killed your brother; someone else (culpably) killed a stranger whom, it is said, was very similar to your brother in many relevant respects. Many people will intuitively feel that it would be appropriate for you to treat these two murderers very differently. But why? Haven’t they both violated the same moral norm? Aren’t they both blameworthy to the same extent? Aren’t they responsible for the same wrongdoing?

I begin this paper by providing an account of moral responsibility, which underlies the dilemma. I suggest that when we blame someone (when we hold them responsible for some wrongdoing) we are evaluating the manner in which they responded to moral reasons. This account is widely shared and helps to explain the connections between different kinds of moral evaluations (like praise and blame). It is because of this, that we think that the murderers should be treated similarly; the flaw in their reasoning process was identical.

I suggest that while this account of blame is conceptually plausible, it does not lead to the wrong conclusion that the two murderers should be treated similarly. This conclusion follows only if we make two false assumptions. The first is that blame is discrete. If one thinks that blame comes in something similar to numeric units then, presumably, the murder of X and the murder of Y should both warrant the same number of units. But this thought is false. Blame does not come in numeric units and it is not the case that a dozen thefts are similar to one physical assault. The second mistake is about practical reasoning. The claim that both murderers have flouted the same moral reason implies that the reason not to kill X and the reason not to kill Y are two instances of one reason not to kill. I dispute this claim and try to show that the reasons we have are highly specific. Thus I have a reason not to kill X now and a reason not to kill Y now and a reason n not to kill Y tomorrow and so on. This helps to understand why although both murderers are blameworthy, they are not equally blameworthy.

Time permitting, I will try to suggest how the view of responsibility and practical reasoning which I advocate helps to solve the problem of moral luck.