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 Compatibilism Can Be Natural

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Turri
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Moral Responsibilities ◽  
Philosophical Debates ◽  
Commonsense Morality

Compatibilism is the view that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. Natural compatibilism is the view that in ordinary social cognition, people are compatibilists. Researchers have recently debated whether natural compatibilism is true. This paper presents six experiments (N = 909) that advance this debate. The results provide the best evidence to date for natural compatibilism, avoiding the main methodological problems faced by previous work supporting the view. In response to simple scenarios about familiar activities, people judged that agents had moral responsibilities to perform actions that they were unable to perform (Experiment 1), were morally responsible for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 2), were to blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiments 3-4), deserved blame for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 5), and should suffer consequences for unavoidable outcomes (Experiment 6). These findings advance our understanding of moral psychology and philosophical debates that depend partly on patterns in commonsense morality.

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 Beyond Atheism and Atheology: The Divine Humanism of Emmanuel Levinas

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Manuel Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Creation

Is the divine a meaningful and indispensable element of moral responsibility? Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics have brought new expression to the question of God and the Good. Contemporary engagements with Levinas’ provocation, however, have generated a morass of contrary judgments and enigmatic explications, including praise and criticism for its atheology, secular transcendence, and crypto-religious conceit. The essay takes issue with secular and atheistic interpretations of Levinas, arguing that his mature ethics offer a philosophical species of divine humanism, one that justifies the indispensable significance of the divine for moral responsibility. It examines the philosophical problems that lead to the creation of new phenomenological descriptions for divine transcendence, and it sheds light on the seemingly erratic scattering of divine names—infinite, third person, trace, immemorial past, absence, beyond being, illeity—as improvisational orchestrations for God at the margins of moral responsibility.

Coalitions of the Willing and Responsibilities to Protect: Informal Associations, Enhanced Capacities, and Shared Moral Burdens

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Erskine
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Vulnerable Populations ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Larry May ◽  
Moral Responsibilities ◽  
Informal Associations

“Coalition of the willing” is a phrase that we hear invoked with frequency in world politics. Significantly, it is generally accompanied by claims to moral responsibility. Yet the label commonly used to connote a temporary, purpose-driven, self-selected collection of states sits uneasily alongside these assertions of moral responsibility.This article explores how the informal nature of such associations should inform judgments of moral responsibility. I begin by briefly recounting what I call a model of institutional moral agency in order to explain why it seems theoretically and practically problematic to talk about the moral responsibilities of informal associations. I then focus on coalitions of the willing as prominent, and challenging, examples of such associations, before raising misgivings about my own rather stark distinction if it means that accounts of moral responsibility must be reduced to the members—or potential members—of such coalitions in a way that neglects the moral significance of their acting together. Prompted by these concerns, I explore arguments by Virginia Held and Larry May about moral responsibility in relation to informal associations and identify insights that can be taken from these positions to refine our expectations and evaluations of the actions associated with such collectivities. Finally, I consider the particular implications of these insights in relation to the widely espoused duty to intervene to rescue vulnerable populations.

Marketing to Inner-City Blacks: PowerMaster and Moral Responsibility

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
George G. Brenkert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Market Segment ◽  
Market System ◽  
Marketing Campaign ◽  
Unfair Advantage ◽  
Marketing Program ◽  
Moral Responsibilities

Abstract:PowerMaster was a malt liquor which Heileman Brewing Company sought to market to inner-city blacks in the early 1990s. Due to widespread opposition, Heileman ceased its marketing of PowerMaster. This paper begins by exploring the moral objections of moral illusion, moral insensitivity and unfair advantage brought against Heileman’s marketing campaign. Within the current market system, it is argued that none of these criticism was clearly justified. Heileman might plausibly claim it was fulfilling its individual moral responsibilities.Instead, Heileman’s marketing program must be viewed as part of a group of marketing programs which all targeted inner-city blacks. It is argued that those marketers who target this particular market segment constitute a group which is collectively responsible for the harms imposed by their products on inner-city blacks. This responsibility is reducible neither to individual responsibility nor to a shared responsibility. It constitutes a dimension of moral responsibility to which marketers must pay attention.

Reply to Silcox on Moral Luck

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-113
Author(s):  
Brian Rosebury
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person

AbstractIn earlier work, I argued that examples supposed to substantiate consequential moral luck can lose their anomalous appearance if due account is taken of the moral obligation to discharge epistemic responsibilities, and of the different scope and focus of this obligation for the agent as contrasted with the observer. In his recent JMP article, Mark Silcox argues that my explanatory strategy is dependent on an unacceptable commitment to an 'ineliminable epistemic gulf ' between first-person and third-person perspectives. Here I attempt a defence against Silcox's criticism, and tentatively suggest some wider implications of the debate.

scholarly journals Folk Intuitions and the Conditional Ability to Do Otherwise

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nadelhoffer ◽  
Siyuan Yin ◽  
Rose Graves
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Free Will ◽  
First Person ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Folk Intuitions ◽  
Ability To Do Otherwise

In a series of three pre-registered studies, we explored (a) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about deterministic scenarios, (b) the difference between people’s intuitions about indeterministic scenarios and their intuitions about neurodeterministic scenarios (that is, scenarios where the determinism is described at the neurological level), (c) the difference between people’s intuitions about neutral scenarios (e.g., walking a dog in the park) and their intuitions about negatively valenced scenarios (e.g., murdering a stranger), and (d) the difference between people’s intuitions about free will and responsibility in response to first-person scenarios and third-person scenarios. We predicted that once we focused participants’ attention on the two different abilities to do otherwise available to agents in indeterministic and deterministic scenarios, their intuitions would support natural incompatibilism—the view that laypersons judge that free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism. This prediction was borne out by our findings.

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.

The Obligation to Believe

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Brinton
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
William James ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Moral Questions

Do we ever have an obligation to choose to hold beliefs, religious or otherwise? The relations between belief, volition and moral responsibility are the subject of William James' widely discussed essay ‘The Will to Believe’. James first takes up the relationship between volition and belief: Does it make sense to speak of choosing to believe a proposition? His answer is that it does, in the sense that we can choose to act in ways which encourage the production of a believing attitude in ourself. For example, we can be selective in attending to evidence, and we can incline ourselves toward belief by acting as though we already believe. By avoiding certain influences and subjecting ourself to others, we can encourage the development of belief. In so doing, we in effect treat ourself as a third person, and our behaviour is analogous to what we might engage in when encouraging others toward favourable evidence. The question of moral responsibility then becomes appropriate in our own case in a way analogous to that in which it does with respect to our belief-producing actions toward others. Just as the deception of others raises moral questions, so does the deception of ourselves.

Accelerating Economic Inequality and the Moral Responsibilities of Corporate-Employed Technologists

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-38
Author(s):  
Alan E. Singer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Special Position ◽  
The Us ◽  
Governance Process ◽  
Moral Responsibilities ◽  
Corporate Level ◽  
Do So

Corporate-employed technologists and have a special moral responsibility to themselves and to others to help oppose the dynamics of accelerating inequality in the US and globally. They have distinctive capabilities in this respect and they are in a special position to do so. There exists a moral-responsibility-to-self in this context, involving meta-coherence and integrity. Responsibility-to-others can be enacted by attempting to inject scientific and ethical habits-of-thought into the global distributed governance process, but also d by standing in opposition to corporate-level strategies and practices that make inequality worse.

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