Omissions, Moral Luck, and Minding the (Epistemic) Gap

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-314
Author(s):  
Joseph Metz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Holding Responsible ◽  
Epistemic Gap

AbstractThis paper warns of two threats to moral responsibility that arise when accounting for omissions, given some plausible assumptions about how abilities are related to responsibility. The first problem threatens the legitimacy of our being responsible by expanding the preexisting tension that luck famously raises for moral responsibility. The second threat to moral responsibility challenges the legitimacy of our practices of holding responsible. Holding others responsible for their omissions requires us to bridge an epistemic gap that does not arise when holding others responsible for their actions—one that we might often fail to cross.

scholarly journals Indirectly Free Actions, Libertarianism, and Resultant Moral Luck

Erkenntnis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 85 (6) ◽  
pp. 1417-1436
Author(s):  
Robert J. Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Free Action ◽  
Alternative Possibilities ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Free Actions

Abstract Martin Luther affirms his theological position by saying “Here I stand. I can do no other.” Supposing that Luther’s claim is true, he lacks alternative possibilities at the moment of choice. Even so, many libertarians have the intuition that he is morally responsible for his action. One way to make sense of this intuition is to assert that Luther’s action is indirectly free, because his action inherits its freedom and moral responsibility from earlier actions when he had alternative possibilities and those earlier directly free actions formed him into the kind of person who must refrain from recanting. Surprisingly, libertarians have not developed a full account of indirectly free actions. I provide a more developed account. First, I explain the metaphysical nature of indirectly free actions such as Luther’s. Second, I examine the kind of metaphysical and epistemic connections that must occur between past directly free actions and the indirectly free action. Third, I argue that an attractive way to understand the kind of derivative moral responsibility at issue involves affirming the existence of resultant moral luck.

Excusing Perpetrators

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Talbert ◽  
Jessica Wolfendale
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Military Personnel ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Situational Pressures ◽  
Moral Blame

Chapter 4 turns to the issue of perpetrators’ moral responsibility. We consider various arguments for the conclusion that perpetrators have access to excuses allowing them to avoid moral blame for their actions. For example, some philosophers have argued that, as a result of situational pressures, it is often unreasonable to expect military personnel to accurately assess the moral status of their behavior and so it is often unfair to blame perpetrators for their wrongdoing. Concerns about moral luck might also suggest that perpetrators are not open to moral blame: if it is a matter of bad luck that military personnel are exposed to pressures that lead them to act as they do, then perhaps it is unfair to blame them for their actions.

Consequentialism, Blame, and Moral Responsibility

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-178
Author(s):  
Elinor Mason
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Holding Responsible ◽  
Blameless Wrongdoing

In this chapter I examine various accounts of the relationship between consequentialism and moral responsibility. The first idea is that the only reason we have for praising and blaming, for holding responsible, is that it will produce good consequences. This view is widely derided, but a descendant, the view that our responsibility practices as a whole can be defended on consequentialist grounds, has been gaining popularity in recent years. I go on to look at the idea of blameless wrongdoing and give an account of how that might fit into to a consequentialist picture. Finally, I discuss the possibility that the direction of influence is the other way: that consequentialist ethical theories are constrained by theories of moral responsibility, and I discuss possible upshots of a responsibility constrained account of consequentialism.

Reply to Rosebury

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Silcox
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Present Issue ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Moral Responsibilities ◽  
Epistemic Obligations ◽  
Commonsense Morality

AbstractIn his paper 'Moral Responsibility and Moral Luck,' Brian Rosebury argues that believers in moral luck ignore the fact that an agent's moral responsibilities often encompass certain epistemic obligations not usually recognized by commonsense morality. I have suggested in my article 'Virtue Epistemology and Moral Luck' that the plausibility of Rosebury's position depends upon a philosophically dubious account of the relation between first- and third-person perspectives on ethically significant events. Rosebury has defended himself against this charge in the present issue of this Journal; here, I develop my criticism at greater length.

scholarly journals Wybrane konsekwencje trafu moralnego dla etyki, koncepcji społecznych i religijnych

1970 ◽  
Vol 14 (2(26)) ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Przemysław Strzyżyński
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In ◽  
Will Of God

The article presents the issue of moral luck and some of its consequences for the philosophy of law, social justice, political responsibility and some religious concepts. Recognition of the role of moral luck undermines the use of the concept of moral responsibility, guilt and merit. The consequences of recognizing that this challenge is justifi ed, reach those areas. They postulate, for example, the need to compensate social or property inequalities, insofar as they depend on the luck. Similarly, in the Christian concept of salvation as dependent off the will of God and man, there is the problem of the impact of luck. Release from moral responsibility for actions under the infl uence of luck, also puts into question the responsibility of politicians, whose decisions are often made in the absence of certainty.

Constitutive Moral Luck and Strawson's Argument for the Impossibility of Moral Responsibility

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT J. HARTMAN
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
The Self ◽  
Basic Argument ◽  
Constitutive Luck

AbstractGalen Strawson's Basic Argument is that because self-creation is required to be truly morally responsible and self-creation is impossible, it is impossible to be truly morally responsible for anything. I contend that the Basic Argument is unpersuasive and unsound. First, I argue that the moral luck debate shows that the self-creation requirement appears to be contradicted and supported by various parts of our commonsense ideas about true moral responsibility, and that this ambivalence undermines the only reason that Strawson gives for the self-creation requirement. Second, I argue that the self-creation requirement is so demanding that either it is an implausible requirement for a species of true moral responsibility that we take ourselves to have or it is a plausible requirement of a species of true moral responsibility that we have never taken ourselves to have. Third, I explain that Strawson overgeneralizes from instances of constitutive luck that obviously undermine true moral responsibility to all kinds of constitutive luck.

Moral Responsibility

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrath Williams
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Causal Order ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peter Strawson ◽  
The World ◽  
Holding Responsible

This article focuses on compatibilist approaches to moral responsibility—that is, approaches that see moral responsibility as compatible with the causal order of the world. A separate Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy article considers “Free Will” and incompatibilist perspectives. Those approaches tend to give less attention to the forms of interaction involved in holding responsible and to the position of those who suffer wrongdoing. However, as Peter Strawson pointed out in a seminal essay (see Responsibility and the Reactive Sentiments), moral responsibility is intimately related to our reactions to one another. Similarly, consequentialist thinkers stress the social effects of holding people responsible for their actions, and these approaches have seen a marked revival in recent years (see Utilitarian and Consequentialist Approaches). This reflects a wider trend to consider the practices by which we hold people responsible and how these bear on relationships and wider social and political structures. Moral responsibility also bears on other topics of great practical importance, only briefly mentioned here. These include responsibility under the law (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy article on “Punishment”), the responsibilities of groups and organizations, accountability within organizations, and how distributive justice and individual responsibility are related.

Contextualism

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-152
Author(s):  
Alastair Norcross
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Discourse ◽  
Identity Problem ◽  
Conversational Context ◽  
Contextualist Approach ◽  
Holding Responsible ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Apparent Problem

The threat of determinism suggests that every action, including the action of holding morally responsible, is both the best and worst of all possible alternatives. This seems to pose a problem for consequentialist approaches to determinism, and moral responsibility. The solution is to appeal to the conversational context of praising, blaming, judging right and wrong, holding responsible, and the like. Even if, strictly speaking, an agent couldn’t have done otherwise, conversational context may select certain counterpossible alternatives as the relevant ones with which to compare the action. The non-identity “problem,” popularized by Parfit, suggests that the existential dependence of people on our actions creates puzzles, problems even, for some common approaches to ethics. A scalar version of consequentialism, combined with a contextualist semantics for some moral terms, dissolves the apparent problem. The scalar contextualist approach has practical implications for our moral discourse.

Moral Responsibility—and Luck?—in International Politics

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-142
Author(s):  
Toni Erskine
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Vulnerable Populations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Agency And Structure

Unlike considerations of agency and structure, the role of luck in attributions of moral responsibility in international politics has been sorely neglected. This chapter aims to redress this neglect by exploring the idea of “moral luck,” a purposely paradoxical concept introduced by Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, in relation to institutional agents as the objects of moral responsibility judgements. Specifically, this chapter suggests that luck can affect the nature of agents’ choices, the consequences of their actions, and, perhaps most profoundly, their very character and the way they define themselves, thereby infusing our ethical analyses of practical problems ranging from climate change to protecting vulnerable populations from mass atrocity. The crucial question that accompanies this proposal is whether acknowledging the influence of luck threatens to shift the ground upon which our evaluations of moral responsibility rest, or, instead, simply affords a more nuanced and accurate account of the existing landscape.

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