Moral Responsibility for Unwitting Omissions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Kay Nelkin ◽  
Samuel C. Rickless
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Common Sense Morality ◽  
And Control

Unwitting omissions pose a challenge for theories of moral responsibility. For common-sense morality holds many unwitting omitters morally responsible for their omissions, even though they appear to lack both awareness and control. People who leave dogs in their car on a hot day or forget to pick something up from the store as they promised seem to be blameworthy. If moral responsibility requires awareness of one’s omission and its moral significance, it appears that the protagonists of these cases are not morally responsible. This chapter considers and rejects a number of influential views on this problem, including a view that grounds responsibility for such omissions in previous exercises of conscious agency, and “Attributionist” views that ground responsibility for such omissions in the value judgments or other aspects of the agents’ selves. The chapter proposes a new tracing view that grounds responsibility for unwitting omissions in past opportunities to avoid them.

Omission and Attribution Error

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Talbert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
Attribution Error ◽  
Common Sense Morality

Attributionists believe that moral responsibility has mainly to do with how a person is, and with what can be attributed to her for the purposes of moral assessment. Critics of the view have tended to charge that it proposes a standard for blameworthiness that is too easily satisfied. This chapter defends Attributionism from an opposing criticism—one that notes that many agents who are judged blameworthy by common-sense morality do not fulfill the necessary conditions on blameworthiness that Attributionism proposes. In this context, the chapter pays particular attention to cases in which agents commit apparently blameworthy unwitting omissions. It argues that such agents are often not blameworthy and offers an explanation as to why common-sense morality delivers a contrary judgment.

Spinoza’s Ethical Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Philosophical Naturalism ◽  
History Of Ethics ◽  
Virtuous Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good And Evil

This chapter analyzes Spinoza’s ethical theory in the context of his philosophical naturalism, his doctrine that the actual essence of each thing is its striving for self-preservation (conatus), and his psychology of the emotions as it concerns both “bondage to the passions” and the active emotions such as intellectual joy. It explains how Spinoza’s ethical precepts are expressed chiefly through demonstrated propositions about good and evil, virtue, the guidance of reason, and “the free man.” Particular attention is given to questions about (1) the meaning of ethical language, (2) the nature of the good, (3) the practicality of reason, (4) the role of virtuous character, (5) the requirements for freedom and moral responsibility (especially in light of his necessitarianism), and (6) the possibility and moral significance of altruism. The chapter concludes by briefly assessing the significance of Spinoza’s ethical theory and its place in the history of ethics.

Act Consequentialism and Common Sense Morality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Parfit
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Act Consequentialism ◽  
Common Sense Morality

This chapter reveals some insights into act consequentialism. It begins with the claim that it would often be wrong to treat people in certain ways, such as deceiving or coercing them, or breaking our promises to them, even when such acts would make things go better. The chapter then turns to deontic and non-deontic badness. These are different kinds of badness, as is shown by cases in which such acts are not wrong, because their non-deontic badness is outweighed by the goodness of their effects. Since these acts would have this intrinsic badness, though they would not be wrong, it could not be their wrongness that made them intrinsically bad.

Common-Sense Morality and Consequentialism. Michael Slote

Ethics ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-172
Author(s):  
Dale Jamieson
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Michael Slote ◽  
Common Sense Morality

scholarly journals For whom does determinism undermine moral responsibility? Surveying the conditions for free will across cultures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivar Hannikainen ◽  
Edouard Machery ◽  
David Rose ◽  
Paulo Sousa ◽  
Florian Cova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
And Control ◽  
Alternate Possibilities

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions.

On The Threshold of Democratic Fragility

2016 ◽  
pp. 328-348
Author(s):  
Asiru Hameed Tunde ◽  
Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Media Representation ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
News Reports ◽  
A Value ◽  
Political Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
Election News

The recent events in the Nigerian political space are clear indications of a match towards the ‘unwanted'. These political events, such as the 2011 presidential elections resulted into the most violent post-elections killings in the history of Nigeria. In the light of this, media representation of that election may not be a value-free exercise but one imbued with value judgments or opinions which conveyed certain ideological leanings. It is against this background that the author examines the macrospeech acts which characterize the discourse of the 2011 post-presidential election news reports with a view to identifying and interpreting the prominent acts and their ideological imports. The study is situated within the broad frame of pragmatics and operationalises Searle Speech Act model in order to uncover the macrospeech acts in the news reports and how the acts covertly convey instances of prejudice and control.

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