Feeling Wronged: The Value and Deontic Power of Moral Distress

This paper argues that moral distress is a distinctive category of reactive attitudes that are taken to be part and parcel of the social dynamics for recognition. While moral distress does not demonstrate evidence of wrongdoing, it does emotionally articulate a demand for normative attention that is addressed to others as moral providers. The argument for this characterization of the deontic power of moral distress builds upon two examples in which the cognitive value of the victim’s emotional experience is controversial: the case of micro-aggression, and the case of misplaced distress. In contrast to appraisal and perceptual models of distress, it is argued that its epistemic and normative value is dialogical rather than evidential, in that it presses claims that engage the audience in a normative discussion about the normative standing of the claimant, the proper grounds of the attitude, and the normative standards used to assess them.

Appreciating Responsible Persons

Given how central feeling, expressing, and receiving tokens of appreciation are in our everyday lives with others, one might wonder why these are important. Are these just instrumentally valuable because they make us happier, more satisfied with our lives, and more motivated to do good things in the future? Strawson suggested that “reactive attitudes” like resentment and gratitude are valuable because they are central to regarding others as responsible agents. This chapter takes this thought seriously and argues that if gratitude and appreciation are reactive attitudes, we will need to reconceive what it means to regard someone as a responsible agent. To be a responsible agent is not just to be someone who can be held accountable for failures, but also someone who has the capacity to take responsibility in a variety of ways. The chapter concludes with remarks about why expressing appreciation and feeling appreciated matter.

Taking the Straight Path. P.F. Strawson's Later Work on Freedom and Responsibility

I highlight three features of P.F. Strawson’s later, neglected work on freedom and responsibility. First, in response to a criticism by Rajendra Prasad, Strawson explicitly rejects an argument put forward in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ against the relevance of determinism to moral responsibility. Second, his remarkable acceptance of Prasad’s criticism motivates him to take the ‘straight path’, that is, to be straightforward about the relation between determinism, freedom, the ability to do otherwise and the conditions of responsibility. He claims that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition of responsibility and provides a list of additional conditions, including a knowledge condition. Third, he clarifies the relation between responsibility, quality of will and the reactive attitudes. The latter do not figure essentially in his answer to the question, ‘What are the conditions of responsibility?’, but they do play an essential role in his answer to the question, ‘Why do we have the concept of responsibility?’ We have it, Strawson suggests, because of our natural concern about the quality of will with which people act, a concern expressed in our reactive attitudes. I argue that, although Strawson’s later work definitely involves a shift of emphasis when compared to ‘Freedom and Resentment’, his overall account of freedom and responsibility is coherent. The later work helps to better understand the nature and significance of Strawson’s contribution, and to identify problems with common interpretations of and objections to ‘Freedom and Resentment’. 

Understanding Responsibility in Stem Cell Research

"Over the years, numerous ethical implications in stem cell research have been identified. Consequentially, there is a need to anticipate, prevent and/or mitigate these implications. In literature and in the guidelines of the International Society for Stem Cell Research some of these implications have been reframed into (moral) responsibilities. What exactly is meant by responsibility and which notions of responsibility are important often remains unclear. As a consequence, this encumbers the possibility to deal with these responsibilities in a systematic way. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to discuss how the concept of responsibility in stem cell research could best be understood. This paper addresses which notions of responsibility are relevant for the field of stem cell research. This will be done by first distinguishing between backward-looking and forward-looking notions of responsibilities, where backward-looking responsibilities are about reactive attitudes and forward-looking responsibilities are about what could be expected from someone to prevent ethical implications. Subsequently, ethical implications of and wrongdoings in stem cell research will be categorized in these notions of responsibility. Taking one step back and looking at the different notions of responsibility could help to identify gaps in responsibilities as well as to distinguish obligatory and supererogatory responsibilities. Consequentially, this informs how to prioritize, distribute and delegate responsibilities over the different stakeholders in stem cell research. This paper concludes by discussing the distribution of responsibilities and different strategies to promote responsibility in stem cell research. "

Praise as Moral Address

While Strawsonians have focused on the way in which our ‘reactive attitudes’—the emotions through which we hold one another responsible for manifestations of morally significant quality of regard—express moral demands, serious doubt has been cast on the idea that non-blaming reactive attitudes direct moral demands to their targets. Building on Gary Watson’s proposal that the reactive attitudes are ‘forms of moral address’, this chapter advances a communicative view of praise according to which the form of moral address distinctive of the praise-manifesting reactive attitudes (approbation, gratitude) is moral invitation. Like moral demand, moral invitation is a species of directive address presupposing its target’s possession of distinctive agential capacities and, when valid, provides its addressee with reason to give the addressor’s directive discursive uptake. While blame’s demands issue imperatival reasons for compliance (e.g. to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize), praise’s invitations provide discretionary reasons to accept credit in jointly valuing the significance of the act for the praiser. In addition to its phenomenological plausibility and contribution to the already fecund Watsonian-cum-Strawsonian program, the invitational view helps renders intelligible the power of our praise practices to facilitate the formation and enrichment of our interpersonal relationships.

Forgiveness and Consequences

When should you forgive a wrongdoer? This chapter develops an act-consequentialist approach to answering this question with a view to exhibiting its attractiveness. The act consequentialist holds that one ought always to do whatever would bring about the best reachable outcome, impartially assessed. So this approach conflicts with common beliefs. A second, independent aim of this chapter is to urge the usefulness of a spare idea of what forgiveness is. On the spare account, forgiveness is the extinguishing of certain negative reactive attitudes in a person toward another, these attitudes being directed at what is perceived to be that individual’s wrongdoing or at least subpar behavior that constitutes a wrong or offense either to the person harboring the attitudes or to others with whom that person specially identifies. Forgiving someone, then, may be something that happens to the forgiver, not something she does.

Frailty and Forgiveness

My aim in this chapter is to characterize the change of heart that plays a role in forgiveness—in giving up warranted blaming reactive attitudes. I present this in the context of developing a Kantian account of what forgiveness is and why we need it, drawing on his moral psychology to characterize the relevant change of heart. I appeal in particular to Kant’s account of human frailty and its relation to his account of human evil. I argue that it is frail and flawed agents who lack an entirely fixed and stable character for whom forgiveness is a live option and a need. For such agents, there may be space to interpret us in the light of better willing than our wrongdoing indicates.

The Reactive Attitudes and Responsibility

The chapter introduces Strawson’s link between the reactive attitudes and responsibility. It defends a realist understanding of that link, in which it is responsibility that grounds the reactive attitudes. It explains how responsibility and excuse are inversely related and how our practices of excuse vindicate a compatibilist conception of responsibility. It concludes by exploring quality of will and distinguishing accountability from attributability and answerability.

Prolegomena

The main themes about the reactive attitudes, fair opportunity, and desert are introduced. The potential fragility of fair opportunity is explored. Cases of partial responsibility and excuse are introduced. The chapter concludes with methodological remarks about combining moral psychology and criminal law perspectives, disclaimers, remarks about the origins of the book, and acknowledgements.

Fair Opportunity and Responsibility

Fair Opportunity and Responsibility lies at the intersection of moral psychology and criminal jurisprudence and analyzes responsibility and its relations to desert, culpability, excuse, blame, and punishment. It links responsibility with the reactive attitudes but makes the justification of the reactive attitudes depend on a response-independent conception of responsibility. Responsibility and excuse are inversely related; an agent is responsible for misconduct if and only if it is not excused. Consequently, we can study responsibility by understanding excuses. We excuse misconduct when an agent’s capacities or opportunities are significantly impaired, because these capacities and opportunities are essential if agents are to have a fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing. This conception of excuse tells us that responsibility itself consists in agents having suitable cognitive and volitional capacities—normative competence—and a fair opportunity to exercise these capacities free from undue interference—situational control. Because our reactive attitudes and practices presuppose the fair opportunity conception of responsibility, this supports a predominantly retributive conception of blame and punishment that treats culpable wrongdoing as the desert basis of blame and punishment. We can then apply the fair opportunity framework to assessing responsibility and excuse in circumstances of structural injustice, situational influences in ordinary circumstances and in wartime, insanity and psychopathy, immaturity, addiction, and crimes of passion. Though fair opportunity has important implications for each issue, treating them together allows us to explore common themes and appreciate the need to take partial responsibility and excuse seriously in our practices of blame and punishment.