Addiction, recovery and moral agency: Philosophical considerations

Uusitalo, S. (2015). Addiction, recovery and moral agency: Philosophical considerations. The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, X(Y), N-M. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.vXiY.190 Aims: The purpose of this paper is to argue that it is important to recognize that addicts are morally accountable even for their addictive action, as moral agency is more generally an important factor in full-blown human agency. The challenge is to identify the problems that addicts have in their agency without discarding their potentially full-blown agency. Design: In philosophy of agency, moral responsibility and accountability, in particular, may refer to control over one’s action. I discuss this control as reason-responsiveness and, on a more general level, illustrate the importance of moral agency to human agency with a contrasting example of psychopaths and addicts as agents. Measures: A philosophical analysis is carried out in order to argue for the relevance and importance of moral accountability in therapeutic models of addiction. Findings: The example of psychopaths and addicts illustrates that moral agency is part of full-blown human agency, as psychopaths are generally believed to lack moral skills common to non-psychopathic individuals. I argue that addicts are not analogous to psychopaths in the framework of moral agency in this respect. Conclusions: By fleshing out the conceptual considerations in the framework of addiction therapies, I clarify the relevance and importance of moral accountability in therapeutic models of addiction. If evidence-based therapies attempt to restore the addict’s full-fledged agency at least in respect to addiction, then acknowledging addicts’ moral accountability for their action does matter.

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Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780190682781.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Evan Franklin

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Free Will ◽

Human Agency ◽

Causal Role ◽

Central Question ◽

Agent Causation ◽

The Right

This chapter lays out the book’s central question: Assuming agency reductionism—that is, the thesis that the causal role of the agent in all agential activities is reducible to the causal role of states and events involving the agent—is it possible to construct a defensible model of libertarianism? It is explained that most think the answer is negative and this is because they think libertarians must embrace some form of agent-causation in order to address the problems of luck and enhanced control. The thesis of the book is that these philosophers are mistaken: it is possible to construct a libertarian model of free will and moral responsibility within an agency reductionist framework that silences that central objections to libertarianism by simply taking the best compatibilist model of freedom and adding indeterminism in the right junctures of human agency. A brief summary of the chapters to follow is given.

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Moral Responsibility, Socially Embedded

10.1093/oso/9780198830405.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Lisa Herzog

Keyword(s):

Social Psychology ◽

Moral Responsibility ◽

Moral Agency ◽

Human Behaviour ◽

Shared Responsibility ◽

The Face ◽

Moral Theorizing ◽

The Impact

This chapter asks whether we can hold on to the picture of the morally responsible subject as we knew it in the face of evidence from social psychology about the impact of contexts on human behaviour. Some theorists have taken this to present a major challenge to moral theorizing. However, the chapter argues that, while we should acknowledge the malleability of human behaviour, we should not give up the notion of responsible agency. Rather, we need to broaden our theoretical horizon in order to include individuals’ co-responsibility for the contexts in which they act. This argument is a general one, but it is of particular relevance for organizations: it is our shared responsibility to turn them into contexts in which moral agency is supported rather than undermined.

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Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 6

10.1093/oso/9780198845539.001.0001 ◽

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.

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Autonomy and Addiction

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1353/cjp.2006.0018 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 427-447 ◽

Cited By ~ 46

Author(s):

Neil Levy

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Human Agency ◽

The Other ◽

Reasons Responsiveness ◽

Extended Agency ◽

Conception Of The Good ◽

Autonomous Agency ◽

The Way

Whatever its implications for the other features of human agency at its best — for moral responsibility, reasons-responsiveness, self-realization, flourishing, and so on—addiction is universally recognized as impairing autonomy. But philosophers have frequently misunderstood the nature of addiction, and therefore have not adequately explained the manner in which it impairs autonomy. Once we recognize that addiction is not incompatible with choice or volition, it becomes clear that none of the Standard accounts of autonomy can satisfactorily explain the way in which it undermines fully autonomous agency. In order to understand to what extent and in what ways the addicted are autonomy-impaired, we need to understand autonomy as consisting, essentially, in the exercise of the capacity for extended agency. It is because addiction undermines extended agency, so that addicts are not able to integrate their lives and pursue a Single conception of the good, that it impairs autonomy.

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Religion in the Yugoslav conflicts: post-war perspectives

Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis ◽

10.30674/scripta.67312 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 19 ◽

pp. 256-275

Author(s):

Christian Moe

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Human Agency ◽

Holy War ◽

Religious Wars ◽

Yugoslav Wars ◽

Post War ◽

Critical Notes ◽

The Way

The wars that dissolved Yugoslavia – were they religious wars? Why are conflicts increasingly coded as religious, rather than as, for example, social or ethnic? What constitutes a ‘religious’ or ‘holy’ war. This article attempts an inventory of important categories and hypotheses generated in the relevant literature so far, with a few critical notes along the way. The author considers the role assigned to religion in structural, cultural, and actor-oriented explanations of the Yugoslav wars. Structural and cultural explanations downplay the role of human agency and, hence, of moral responsibility; actor-oriented approaches focus on it.

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Alexander of Macedon: An Early Biography

Athens Journal of History ◽

10.30958/ajhis.7-3-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 233-256

Author(s):

Oliver R. Baker

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Human Agency ◽

Historical Narrative ◽

Persian Wars ◽

Continuous Narrative ◽

Human Destiny

Claims that Herodotus reveals himself as a proto-biographer are not yet widely accepted. To advance this claim, I have selected one man, Alexander I, who finds himself and his kingdom caught in the middle of the Greco-Persian Wars and whose activities are recounted in the Histories. It is to a near contemporary, Heraclitus, to whom we attribute the maxim—character is human destiny. It is the truth of this maxim—which implies effective human agency—that makes Herodotus’ creation of historical narrative possible. He is often read for his off-topic vignettes, which colour-in the character of the individuals depicted without necessarily advancing his narrative. But by hop scotching through five of the nine books of the Histories, we can assemble a largely continuous narrative for this remarkable individual. This narrative permits us to attribute both credit and moral responsibility for his actions. Arguably, this implied causation demonstrates that Herodotus’ writings include much that amounts to proto-biography.

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

Ethics & International Affairs ◽

10.1017/s0892679414000094 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 115-145 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

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.

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