Responsibility and the Condition of Moral Sense

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Russell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Responsible Agent ◽  
Reasons Responsiveness ◽  
Moral Capacity

This chapter presents a thesis about necessary conditions of responsible agency that arise at the interface between (compatibilist) reason-responsive theories and Strawsonian naturalistic approaches. A number of contemporary compatibilists who accept broadly Strawsonian accounts of holding responsible, as understood in terms of moral sentiments or reactive attitudes, have also advanced accounts of moral capacity and moral agency in terms of powers of rational self-control or reasons responsiveness. These accounts do not, however, involve any reference to moral sentiments and our ability to hold agents responsible. The central thesis of this chapter is that the responsible agent (i.e. one who is capable of being responsible) must also be one who is capable of holding herself responsible. Where moral sense is lacking, rational self-control is seriously impaired or compromised.

Moral sentiments

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Jay Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Enlightenment

Moral sentiments are those feelings or emotions central to moral agency. Aristotle treated sentiments as nonrational conditions, capable of being moulded into virtues through habituation. The moral sense theorists of the Enlightenment took sentiments to provide the psychological basis for our common moral life. Kantian approaches deny the primacy of sentiments in moral personality, and treat moral sentiments as conditioned by our rational grasp of moral principles. A central issue is whether moral sentiments incorporate moral beliefs. Accounts which affirm a connection with moral beliefs point to the complex intentionality (object-directedness) of such states as resentment or indignation. Against this, some observe that moral emotions may be felt inappropriately. Of special interest are the sentiments of guilt and shame. These seem to reflect different orientations towards moral norms, and questions arise about the degree to which these different orientations are culturally local, and whether either orientation is superior to the other.

Moral Sense and the Foundations of Responsibility

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Russell
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Important Class ◽  
Reactive Attitude ◽  
Moral Capacity

This chapter discusses an important class of new compatibilist theories of agency and responsibility, frequently referred to as reactive attitude theories. Such theories have their roots in another seminal essay of modern free will debates, P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” (1962). This chapter disentangles three strands of Strawson’s argument—rationalist, naturalist, and pragmatic. It also considers other recent reactive attitude views that have attempted to remedy flaws in Strawson’s view, focusing particularly on the view of R. Jay Wallace. Wallace supplies an account of moral capacity, which is missing in Strawson’s view, in terms of an account of what Wallace calls “reflective self-control.” The chapter concludes with suggestions of how a reactive attitude approach to moral responsibility that builds on the work of Strawson, Wallace, and others might be successfully developed.

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 6

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. The papers were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of resentment and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; the role and conditions of shame in theories of attributability; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; how to build a theory of attributabiity that captures all the relevant cases; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

Appreciating Responsible Persons

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Cheshire Calhoun
Keyword(s):  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Responsible Agent ◽  
The Future

Given how central feeling, expressing, and receiving tokens of appreciation are in our everyday lives with others, one might wonder why these are important. Are these just instrumentally valuable because they make us happier, more satisfied with our lives, and more motivated to do good things in the future? Strawson suggested that “reactive attitudes” like resentment and gratitude are valuable because they are central to regarding others as responsible agents. This chapter takes this thought seriously and argues that if gratitude and appreciation are reactive attitudes, we will need to reconceive what it means to regard someone as a responsible agent. To be a responsible agent is not just to be someone who can be held accountable for failures, but also someone who has the capacity to take responsibility in a variety of ways. The chapter concludes with remarks about why expressing appreciation and feeling appreciated matter.

The Punishment of the Insane

1883 ◽  
Vol 29 (125) ◽  
pp. 93-97 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Sense

Punishment is the positive infliction of suffering as a righteous result of wrong-doing, and as a deterrent from its repetition. But the wrong-doing of the insane is the result of their malady, which produces it either directly through delusion, or indirectly by perverting their moral sense and relaxing their self-control.

Psychopathic Resentment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Deigh
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Reactive Attitudes

Recent philosophical accounts of resentment make being a moral agent, that is, being someone who has a conscience, a condition for being liable to resentment. The argument of this essay opposes these accounts. The essay describes characters from two Hitchcock films, Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train, to illustrate the problem of taking moral agency or having a conscience as a condition for being liable to resentment. Both are psychopathic killers who are resentful of people they perceive as having mistreated them. The essay then uses the account of reactive attitudes and their role in interpersonal relations that P. F. Strawson offered in his “Freedom and Resentment” to explain the liability to resentment of psychopaths despite their lacking a conscience.

Introduction to OSAR 6

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
David Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This introduction to the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility briefly discusses each of the new essays being published. They were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of moral emotions like shame, resentment, and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

Rational Feelings and Moral Agency

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ido Geiger
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Effective Force ◽  
Moral Feeling

AbstractKant's conception of moral agency is often charged with attributing no role to feelings. I suggest that respect is the effective force driving moral action. I then argue that four additional types of rational feelings are necessary conditions of moral agency: (1) The affective inner life of moral agents deliberating how to act and reflecting on their deeds is rich and complex (conscience). To act morally we must turn our affective moral perception towards the ends of moral action: (2) the welfare of others (love of others); and (3) our own moral being (self-respect). (4) Feelings shape our particular moral acts (moral feeling). I tentatively suggest that the diversity of moral feelings might be as great as the range of our duties.

Corporate Speech as Commercial Speech: A Response to Mayer's Nike V. Kasky Analysis

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Nesteruk
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Human Speech ◽  
Commercial Speech ◽  
Corporate Speech ◽  
Corporate Entity ◽  
Corporate Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Capacity ◽  
Core Role

ABSTRACT:Raising the issue of corporate moral agency in our examination of the morality of corporate speech is important for two fundamental reasons. Each reason suggests we exercise caution in conflating corporations and individuals as the law often does. First, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important to the aim of providing a framework for ethically evaluating corporate speech. It is tempting to proceed as if the nature of corporate speech is self-evident. But this is hardly the case. Corporations are not natural persons, and we mustn't assume corporate speech is indistinguishable from human speech. Before we can ethically evaluate corporate speech, we must first clarify what corporate speech is. This requires an understanding of the fundamental nature of the corporate entity, including its moral status. Second, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important if we wish to promote morally responsible corporate speech. Any diminished moral capacity on the corporation's part would suggest a core role for the strong legal reinforcement of any ethical aspirations here. In promoting morally responsible corporate speech, ethical injunctions uncoupled from an effective legal regime may hold only limited promise.

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