scholarly journals Good Selves, True Selves: Moral Ignorance, Responsibility, and the Presumption of Goodness

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (3) ◽  
pp. 606-622
Author(s):  
David Faraci ◽  
David Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Ignorance

Blame and Moral Ignorance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Sher
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Situation ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Moral Principles

People can be mistaken either about the truth of the moral principles they accept or about the rightness of their actions. Can they legitimately be blamed for acting wrongly when they know what they are doing but don’t know that it is wrong? This chapter argues that the answer is sometimes “yes,” but that whether blame is appropriate in any given case depends on certain facts about the actor’s epistemic situation. The aims of the chapter are to establish, first, that a morally ignorant wrongdoer’s epistemic circumstances do have a bearing on that person’s culpability, but, second, that giving content to this familiar view is far harder than is generally appreciated.

scholarly journals Larry Alexander and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan on Omissions and Normative Ignorance: A Critical Reply

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Husak
Keyword(s):  
Moral Ignorance

AbstractReflections on Crime and Culpability seeks to elaborate, extend, and occasionally qualify the insights reached by Larry Alexander and Kim Ferzan in their influential prior collaboration, Crime and Culpability. They deftly explore any number of new issue that all criminal theorists should be encouraged to address. In my essay, I discuss and challenge their positions on omissions as well as on moral ignorance. Their treatment of the latter issue is a clear improvement over that in their earlier book. But their views on omissions suggest to me that they should have had reservations about some of the most fundamental claims of their overarching theory.

Excuse without Exculpation

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-95
Author(s):  
Paulina Sliwa
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Mistaken Assumption ◽  
The Relationship

Can moral ignorance excuse? This chapter argues that philosophical debate of this question has been based on a mistaken assumption: namely that excuses are all-or-nothing affairs; to have an excuse is to be blameless. The chapter argues that we should reject this assumption. Excuses are not binary but gradable: they can be weaker or stronger, mitigating blame to greater or lesser extent. This chapter explores the notions of strength of excuses, blame mitigation and the relationship between excuses and moral responsibility. These ideas open up some principled middle-ground between the two positions staked out in the literature. Moral ignorance may well excuse but it does not exculpate.

Incompetence, Psychopathy, and Fair Opportunity

2021 ◽  
pp. 256-300
Author(s):  
David O. Brink
Keyword(s):  
Insanity Defense ◽  
Penal Code ◽  
Cognitive Competence ◽  
Model Penal Code ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Andrea Yates

Fair opportunity supports a modified version of the Model Penal Code insanity test, against the narrower M’Naghten test. The Andrea Yates case is introduced as a paradigmatic insanity defense. Recent arguments that psychopaths should be excused because their psychological deficits prevent them from developing cognitive competence about moral norms are considered and rejected. Moral blindspots involving selective discrimination raise questions about selective incompetence. In general, the selective nature of these blindspots implies that agents with blindspots have the capacity to correct their moral ignorance and so should not be excused.

Moral ignorance and the social nature of responsible agency

Inquiry ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Fernando Rudy-Hiller
Keyword(s):  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social

UNEXCUSED REASONABLE MISTAKES: CAN THE CASE FOR NOT EXCUSING MISTAKES OF LAW BE SUPPORTED BY THE CASE FOR NOT EXCUSING MISTAKES OF MORALITY?

Legal Theory ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Alexander A. Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
The Law

ABSTRACTIn most common-law and civil-law jurisdictions, mistakes of law do not excuse. That is, the fact that one was ignorant of the content or requirements of some law does not excuse violations of that law. Many have argued that this doctrine is mistaken. In particular, many have argued that if an individual's ignorance or false belief is blameless, if she held the false belief reasonably, then she ought to be able to use that ignorance as an excuse for violating the law. It is much harder to find defenders of the doctrine, despite its prevalence. Pragmatic considerations are occasionally offered on its behalf, but these are generally not impressive. In this paper, I consider a more direct kind of justification for the doctrine, one that attempts to identify something more immediately normatively objectionable about being ignorant of the law. In particular, I consider an argument that suggests that legal ignorance is more like moral ignorance than like nonmoral ignorance and maintains that even nonculpable moral ignorance does not excuse.

Moral Beliefs and Blameworthiness

Philosophy ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 69 (270) ◽  
pp. 397-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd Fields
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Moral Principles

It is a commonly-held belief that ignorance excuses. But what of moral ignorance? Is a person blameless who acts from “false” moral principles? In this paper I shall try to show that such a person is blameworthy. I shall produce an argument that connects the acceptance of moral principles with character, character with moral responsibility, and moral responsibility with the justifiability of blame.

scholarly journals Moral ignorance and blameworthiness

2015 ◽  
Vol 172 (11) ◽  
pp. 3037-3057 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elinor Mason
Keyword(s):  
Moral Ignorance

scholarly journals The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Serra-Garcia ◽  
Nora Szech
Keyword(s):  
Moral Ignorance

scholarly journals Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
High Time ◽  
Epistemic Condition ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Independent Condition ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Full Volume

Philosophers have long agreed that moral responsibility might not only have a freedom condition, but also an epistemic condition. Moral responsibility and knowledge interact, but the question is exactly how. Ignorance might constitute an excuse, but the question is exactly when. Surprisingly enough, the epistemic condition has only recently attracted the attention of scholars, and it is high time for a full volume on the topic. The chapters in this volume address the following central questions. Does the epistemic condition require akrasia? Why does blameless ignorance excuse? Does moral ignorance sustained by one’s culture excuse? Does the epistemic condition involve knowledge of the wrongness or wrongmaking features of one’s action? Is the epistemic condition an independent condition, or is it derivative from one’s quality of will or intentions? Is the epistemic condition sensitive to degrees of difficulty? Are there different kinds of moral responsibility and thus multiple epistemic conditions? Is the epistemic condition revisionary? What is the basic structure of the epistemic condition?

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