Respect and the Reactive Attitudes

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bennett W. Helm
Keyword(s):  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Reactive Attitude ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Recognition Respect

The nature of both respect and the reactive attitudes is illuminated by understanding the reactive attitudes to be a class of emotions distinguished by their forming a distinctively interpersonal pattern of rationality. In feeling a reactive attitude such as resentment, one holds the wrongdoer responsible by “calling on” him to feel guilt and on witnesses to feel disapprobation or indignation; other things being equal, one’s resentment is unwarranted if that “call” is not taken up by others. This call and its uptake are made intelligible through the community members’ joint background commitment to the value of the community and its norms, and to the dignity of its members as members—a commitment undertaken and reaffirmed in their reactive attitudes. The resulting interpersonal rational patterns of reactive attitudes constitute their joint recognition respect for its norms and for each other as a part of their joint reverence for the community.

Responsibility, Authority, and the Bindingness of Norms

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bennett W. Helm
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Joint Commitment ◽  
Recognition Respect

In having reactive attitudes, we hold each other responsible to the norms of a community. Doing so appropriately presupposes both that one has the requisite authority and that the other is bound by that norm. We can understand this by turning to communities of respect and the patterns of reactive attitudes discussed in Chapter 3. As a member of a community of respect, one is party to a joint commitment, constituted by interpersonal rational patterns of reactive attitudes, to the import of that community and thereby to the import of its members and norms. This joint commitment binds one to those norms and makes one be responsible to them. Likewise, to have authority is to have dignity as a member of such a community and so be a fit object of recognition respect by others who thereby normally ought to respond to the “call” of one’s reactive attitudes.

Robots to Blame?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Babushkina
Keyword(s):  
Social Robots ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Reactive Attitude ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Attitudes And Practices

My concern is the preservation of rationally justifiable moral practices, which face challenges because of the increasing integration of social robots into roles previously occupied exclusively by persons. I will focus on the attribution of responsibility and blaming as examples of such practices. I will argue that blaming robots (a) does not satisfy the rational constraints on the reactive attitude of blame and other related reactive attitudes and practices such as resentment, forgiving, and punishment, and (b) is by itself morally wrong.

Persons in the First-Person Plural

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bennett W. Helm
Keyword(s):  
Personal Values ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
First Person ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Recognition Respect ◽  
Partial Form ◽  
First Person Plural

Individualist conceptions of persons, grounded in individualist understandings of responsibility, rationality, and identity, must be rejected. Preceding chapters developed an account of communities of respect via an essentially interpersonal type of practical rationality in terms of which we can understand responsibility to be essentially social. In addition, there are two senses in which individuals are identified with the communities of respect of which they are members. First, norms of character are, in effect, communal values, defining a (partial) form of life members jointly find worthwhile. In doing so, they form an element of the identities of community members, albeit an element that can conflict with the personal values of each. Second, members identify with each other through their recognition respect, which amounts to a kind of non-intimate love. Taken together, this means that persons are to be understood in terms of communities of respect—from a first-person plural perspective.

Personal Relationships and Blame

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bennett W. Helm
Keyword(s):  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Reactive Attitude ◽  
Communal Relationships

Scanlon argues that blame involves revising one’s relationship with a wrongdoer because of the significance for the blamer of that wrongdoing, and he argues that reactive attitude accounts of blame cannot accommodate how blame varies according to that relationship. This chapter argues that a reactive attitude account can nonetheless accommodate this point. To do this, one must turn to broad, interpersonal rational patterns of reactive attitudes in terms of which we can make sense of human communities. The sort of relationship whose impairment is relevant to blame, then, is that of co-membership in such communities, and the significance of the agent's wrongdoing relevant for blame is the significance those actions and attitudes have for us in the community. Examining the connections between one’s personal commitments and one’s communal relationships reveals that revisions to one’s relationship with the wrongdoer are a consequence rather than, as Scanlon claims, a part of blame.

Trust: A Forward-Looking Reactive Attitude

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bennett W. Helm
Keyword(s):  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Reactive Attitude ◽  
Evaluative Judgments ◽  
Forward Looking

The reactive attitudes are often thought to be “reactive” in that they are backward-looking responses to wrongdoing that has already happened. This is a mistake that obscures the rational interconnections among the reactive attitudes. Rather, we should understand trust and distrust to be forward-looking reactive attitudes, so that in feeling trust we are thereby committed to later feeling approbation or gratitude when our trust is upheld or resentment when it is betrayed. Understanding trust in this way not only clarifies the rational interconnections among reactive attitudes. It also provides a compelling account of trust itself, including: the nature of trustworthiness and the rationality of trust; distinctions among personal, self, and vicarious reactive trust; the nature of welcome and unwelcome trust; and how trust can motivate the trustee to act in accordance with that trust. The Chapter concludes by helpfully blurring the distinction between emotions and evaluative judgments.

scholarly journals Shame and the Scope of Moral Accountability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Tinghao Wang
Keyword(s):  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Reactive Attitude ◽  
Moral Accountability ◽  
Stephen Darwall

Abstract It is widely agreed that reactive attitudes play a central role in our practices concerned with holding people responsible. However, it remains controversial which emotional attitudes count as reactive attitudes such that they are eligible for this central role. Specifically, though theorists near universally agree that guilt is a reactive attitude, they are much more hesitant on whether to also include shame. This paper presents novel arguments for the view that shame is a reactive attitude. The arguments also support the view that shame is a reactive attitude in the sense that concerns moral accountability. The discussion thereby challenges both the view that shame is not a reactive attitude at all, suggested by philosophers such as R. Jay Wallace and Stephen Darwall, and the view that shame is a reactive attitude but does not concern moral accountability, recently defended by Andreas Carlsson and Douglas Portmore.

The Negative Consequences of Stuttering for Perceptions of Leadership Ability

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Virgil Zeigler-Hill ◽  
Avi Besser ◽  
Yuval Besser
Keyword(s):  
Self Esteem ◽  
Negative Association ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Perceived Leadership ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Perceptions Of Leadership

Abstract. The purpose of the present study was to extend previous research concerning the negative perceptions of stuttering by considering the perceived leadership ability of targets who stuttered compared with targets who did not stutter. We were also interested in the possibility that negative perceptions of the targets (i.e., low levels of self-esteem, intelligence, dominance-based status motivation, and prestige-based status motivation) would mediate the association between stuttering and a lack of perceived leadership ability as well as the possibility that manipulating the ostensible self-esteem level of the target would further moderate these associations. The results for 838 Israeli community members revealed a negative association between stuttering and perceived leadership ability that was mediated by the perceived self-esteem level and dominance-based status motivation of the target. Further, the associations between stuttering and perceptions of leadership ability were moderated by the ostensible self-esteem level of the target. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for understanding the negative halo that surrounds stuttering.

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