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This paper focuses on the role of culpability in determining the degree of liability to defensive harm, and asks whether there are any restrictions on when culpability is relevant to liability. A natural first suggestion is that it is only relevant (or at least is significantly enhanced) when combined with an actual threat of harm in the situation in which defensive harm becomes salient as a means of protection. The paper begins by considering the question of whether two people are equally liable to defensive harm in a situation if both culpably intend to harm another, but due to circumstances outside the control of the two people only one has a chance of succeeding in causing harm. I argue that there is no difference in liability between the two. I then turn to a kind of slippery slope challenge that accepting this conclusion would lead to a vast over-inclusiveness in those liable to defensive harm, and consider a recent attempt at meeting it that requires that a person’s culpability can only affect liability if it concerns the very situation in which defensive harm is relevant. Finally, I put forward and assess a new way of meeting the challenge that appeals to a particular conception of culpability together with auxiliary theses concerning how culpability can decrease over time, among others.

On the one hand, there seem to be compelling parallels to moral responsibility, blameworthiness, and praiseworthiness in domains other than the moral. For example, we often praise people for their aesthetic and epistemic achievements and blame them for their failures. On the other hand, it has been argued that there is something special about the moral domain, so that at least one robust kind of responsibility can only be found there. In this paper, I argue that we can adopt a unifying framework for locating responsible agency across domains, thereby capturing and explaining more of our actual practices. The key, I argue, is to identify the right conditions for being morally accountable, which I take to be a matter of having an opportunity of a good enough quality to act well. With this account in hand, I argue that we can adopt a unifying framework that allows us to recognize parallels across domains, even as it points the way to important differences among them.

This paper takes as its starting point the thesis that one is responsible for one’s actions insofar as one has the ability to act for good reasons. Such a view faces a challenge: it is plausible that only beings with the ability to reflect are responsible agents, and yet it seems that not only is it possible to act for reasons without reflecting, it seems to happen quite frequently. Thus, advocates of the rational-ability view of responsibility must either reject as a necessary condition that responsible agents must have the ability to reflect, or locate a plausible role for reflective ability. In this paper, I propose and assess a variety of ways to meet this challenge.

This chapter examines the nature and significance of blame, including conceptions in terms of the cognitive or conative states of appraisers, the social functions of blame, and multi-dimensional clusters of psychological and social factors. It raises questions about the extensional and explanatory adequacy of these conceptions. The chapter defends a conception of the core and syndrome of blame. The core is an aversive attitude that an appraiser holds toward a target based on the belief that the target is blameworthy for some failure in attitude or conduct; the syndrome is a set of psychological and social factors that are normally, but not invariably, downstream from blame. The chapter argues that blame can presuppose blameworthiness without circularity and explores the significance of this conception of blame for the ethics of blame.

This article critically explores three debates about ways in which responsibility and personal relationships have been thought to be linked. First, there is a question of whether valuable human relationships such as friendship in some way presuppose responsible agency on the part of their participants. Those who have argued in favor of such a connection have taken a variety of approaches: For example, friendship has been claimed to require responsible agency in virtue of the fact that it requires susceptibility to the reactive attitudes such as indignation that presuppose responsibility; friendship has been claimed to be more valuable when chosen by exercising the capacity of free choice constitutive of responsible agency; and friendship has been claimed to be constituted by special obligations that themselves require the kind of free agency necessary for responsibility. Second, there is a question of whether the conditions of responsible agency must make essential reference to relationships; for example, on one prominent view, to take someone to be blameworthy is to take their attitudes to be such as to have impaired one’s relationship with them. Finally, there is a question of whether and how our particular relationships to others affects whether and how it is all-things considered permissible to blame them. This last question falls into what has come to be known as the “ethics of blame.”

In this paper, I assess a challenging argument made by McKenna (J Ethical Theory, 2019) that free will might be important in justifying our moral responsibility practices even if free will is not important insofar as it is required for desert of blame and praise. I offer an alternative picture, according to which while we can justify our practices of moral responsibility in terms that appeal to free will without using terms that explicitly appeal to desert, desert is necessarily implicated nevertheless by the very practices we seek to justify. In the process, I set out my understanding of the nature of blame and address the question of whether blame should always be understood as deserved in a sense distinct from fitting.

In this essay, I consider a particular version of the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to suffer, namely, that they deserve to feel guilty to the proper degree (a thesis I call "Desert-Guilt"). Two further theses have been thought to explicate and support the thesis, one that appeals to the non-instrumental goodness of the blameworthy receiving what they deserve (in this case, the experience of guilt), and the other that appeals to the idea that being blameworthy provides reason to promote the blameworthy receiving what they deserve (again, in this case, the experience of guilt). I call the first "Good-Guilt" and the second "Reason-Guilt.” I begin by exploring what I take to be the strongest argument for Good-Guilt which gains force from a comparison of guilt and grief, and the strongest argument against. I conclude that Good-Guilt might be true, but that even if it is, the strongest argument in favor of it fails to support it in a way that provides reason for the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to feel guilty. I then consider the hypothesis that Reason-Guilt might be true and might be the more fundamental principle, supporting both Good-Guilt and Desert-Guilt. I argue that it does not succeed, however, and instead propose a different principle, according to which being blameworthy does not by itself provide reason for promoting that the blameworthy get what they deserve, but that being blameworthy systematically does so in conjunction with particular kinds of background circumstances. Finally, I conclude that Desert-Guilt might yet be true, but that it does not clearly gain support from either Good-Guilt or Reason-Guilt.

In this essay, I assess what I call the “Duty View,” subtly articulated and defended by Victor Tadros in Wrongs and Crimes (Oxford University Press, 2016). According to the Duty View, wrongdoers incur enforceable duties, including the duty to be punished in some circumstances, in virtue of their wrongdoing; therefore, punishment can be justified simply on the ground that wrongdoers’ duties are being legitimately enforced. I argue that, while wrongdoers do incur important duties, these are not necessarily fulfilled by providing protection against future offenses, and I offer a comparative evaluation of the Duty View and an alternative approach, which I call the “Desert Plus View.” The Desert Plus View shares some of the key commitments of the Duty View, such as the rejection of the intrinsic goodness of wrongdoers getting what they deserve. More positively, however, according to the Desert Plus View, the fact that people are deserving can, together with certain additional conditions, such as the need for protection of its citizens, provide a reason for the state to give them what they deserve.

There is a vast literature that seeks to uncover features underlying moral judgment by eliciting reactions to hypothetical scenarios such as trolley problems. These thought experiments assume that participants accept the outcomes stipulated in the scenarios. Across seven studies (N = 968), we demonstrate that intuition overrides stipulated outcomes even when participants are explicitly told that an action will result in a particular outcome. Participants instead substitute their own estimates of the probability of outcomes for stipulated outcomes, and these probability estimates in turn influence moral judgments. Our findings demonstrate that intuitive likelihoods are one critical factor in moral judgment, one that is not suspended even in moral dilemmas that explicitly stipulate outcomes. Features thought to underlie moral reasoning, such as intention, may operate, in part, by affecting the intuitive likelihood of outcomes, and, problematically, moral differences between scenarios may be confounded with non-moral intuitive probabilities.

Psychologists and philosophers who pose moral dilemmas to understand moral judgment typically specify outcomes as certain to occur in them. This contrasts with real-life moral decision-making, which is almost always infused with probabilities (e.g., the probability of a given outcome if an action is or is not taken). Seven studies examine sensitivity to the size and location of shifts in probabilities of outcomes that would result from action in moral dilemmas. We find that moral judgments differ between actions that result in an equal increase in probability of harm (equal size), but have different end-states (e.g., an increase in harm probability from 25% to 50% or from 50% to 75%). This deviation from expected value is robust under separate evaluation, and increases when the comparison between shifts is made explicit under simultaneous evaluation. Consistent with the centrality of perceived harm in some models of moral judgment, perceived harm partially mediates sensitivity to location of harm probability shift. Unlike for shifts in harm probabilities, participants are insensitive to the location of shifts in probability of beneficial outcomes. They are also insensitive to the location of shifts in probability of analogous monetary losses and gains, suggesting an asymmetry between harm and benefit in moral reasoning, as well as an asymmetry between moral and monetary decision-making more broadly. Implications for normative philosophical theory and moral psychological theory, as well as practical applications, are discussed.

In recent decades, participants in the debate about whether we are free and responsible agents have tended with increasing frequency to begin their papers or books by fixing the terms “free” and “responsible” in clear ways to avoid misunderstanding. This is an admirable development, and while some misunderstandings have certainly been avoided, and positions better illuminated as a result , new and interesting questions also arise. Two ways of fixing these terms and identifying the underlying concepts have emerged as especially influential, one that takes the freedom required for responsibility to be understood in terms of accountability and the other in terms of desert . In this paper, I start by asking: are theorists talking about the same things, or are they really participating in two different debates? Are desert and accountability mutually entailing? I tentatively conclude that they are in fact mutually entailing. Coming to this conclusion requires making finer distinctions among various more specific and competing accounts of both accountability and desert. Ultimately, I argue, that there is good reason to accept that accountability and desert have the same satisfaction conditions.

Psychopaths pose a puzzle. The pleasure they take in the pain of others suggests that they are the paradigms of blameworthiness, while their psychological incapacities provide them with paradigm excuses on plausible accounts of moral responsibility. I begin by assessing two influential responses: one that claims that psychopaths are morally blameworthy in one sense and not in another, and one that takes the two senses of blameworthiness to be inseparable. I offer a new argument that psychopaths, as understood in the debate, are blameworthy in neither sense, while showing how the two senses of blameworthiness nevertheless come apart.

Unwitting omissions pose a challenge for theories of moral responsibility. For common-sense morality holds many unwitting omitters morally responsible for their omissions, even though they appear to lack both awareness and control. People who leave dogs in their car on a hot day or forget to pick something up from the store as they promised seem to be blameworthy. If moral responsibility requires awareness of one’s omission and its moral significance, it appears that the protagonists of these cases are not morally responsible. This chapter considers and rejects a number of influential views on this problem, including a view that grounds responsibility for such omissions in previous exercises of conscious agency, and “Attributionist” views that ground responsibility for such omissions in the value judgments or other aspects of the agents’ selves. The chapter proposes a new tracing view that grounds responsibility for unwitting omissions in past opportunities to avoid them.

In everyday life, we assume that there are degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. Yet the debate about the nature of moral responsibility often focuses on the “yes or no” question of whether indeterminism is required for moral responsibility, while questions about what accounts for more or less blameworthiness or praiseworthiness are underexplored. In this paper, I defend the idea that degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness can depend in part on degrees of difficulty and degrees of sacrifice required for performing the action in question. Then I turn to the question of how existing accounts of the nature of moral responsibility might be seen to accommodate these facts. In each case of prominent compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts that I consider, I argue that supplementation with added dimensions is required in order to account for facts about degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. For example, I argue that the reasons-responsiveness view of Fischer and Ravizza (1998) requires supplementation that takes us beyond even fine-grained measures of degrees of reasons-responsiveness in order to capture facts about degrees of difficulty (contrary to the recent attempt by Coates and Swenson (2013) to extend the reasons-responsiveness view by appealing to such measures). I conclude by showing that once we recognize the need for these additional parameters, we will be in a position to explain away at least some of the appeal of incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility.

In this paper, we defend the general thesis that intentions are relevant not only to moral permissibility and impermissibility, but also to criminal wrongdoing, as well as a specific version of the Doctrine of Double Effect that we believe can help solve some challenging puzzles in the criminal law. We begin by answering some recent arguments that marginalize or eliminate the role of intentions as components of criminal wrongdoing [e.g., Alexander and Ferzan (Crime and culpability: a theory of criminal law. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2009), Chiao (Crim Law Philos 4:37–55, 2010), Walen (Crim Law Philos 3:71–78, 2009)]. We then turn to some influential theories that articulate a direct role for intentions [e.g., Duff (Answering for crime: responsibility and liability in the criminal law. Hart Publishing, Portland, 2007), Husak (Crim Law Philos 3:51–70, 2009)]. While we endorse the commitment to such a role for intentions, we believe that extant theories have not yet been able to adequately address certain objections or solve certain puzzles, such as that some attempt convictions require criminal intent when the crime attempted, if successful, requires only foresight, and that some intended harms appear to be no more serious than non-intended ones of the same magnitude, for example. Drawing on a variety of resources, including the specific version of the Doctrine of Double Effect we have developed in recent published work, we present solutions to these puzzles, which in turn provide mutual support for our general approach to the role of intentions and for thinking that using others as means is itself a special kind of wrongdoing.

In this paper, I engage with several of the intriguing theses Michael McKenna puts forward in his Conversation and Responsibility. For example, I examine McKenna’s claim that the fact that an agent is morally responsible for an action and the fact that an agent is appropriately held responsible explain each other. I go on to argue that despite the importance of the ability to hold people responsible, an agent’s being morally responsible for an action is explanatorily fundamental, and in this sense responsibility is response-independent. I then explore some of the specific aspects of McKenna’s conversational theory before turning to his suggestion that the conversational nature of our responsibility practices gives us special kinds of reasons for accepting that agents are deserving of the harms of blame. Finally, I conclude by raising questions for his argument that the scope of blameworthy actions extends beyond that of impermissible actions.

Responsibility, blameworthiness in particular, has been characterized in a number of ways in a literature in which participants appear to be talking about the same thing much of the time. More specifically, blameworthiness has been characterized in terms of what sorts of responses are fair, appropriate, and deserved in a basic way, where the responses in question range over blame, sanctions, alterations to interpersonal relationships, and the reactive attitudes, such as resentment and indignation. In this paper, I explore the relationships between three particular theses: (i) the claim that one is blameworthy to the extent that it is fair to impose sanctions, (ii) the claim that one is blameworthy to the extent that one deserves sanctions, and (iii) the claim that one is blameworthy to the extent that it is appropriate to respond with reactive attitudes. Appealing to the way in which luck in the outcome of an action can justifiably affect the degree of sanctions received, I argue that (i) is false and tha...

The doctrine of double effect, together with other moral principles that appeal to the intentions of moral agents, has come under attack from many directions in recent years, as have a variety of rationales that have been given in favor of it. In this paper, our aim is to develop, defend, and provide a new theoretical rationale for a secular version of the doctrine. Following Quinn (1989), we distinguish between Harmful Direct Agency and Harmful Indirect Agency. We propose the following version of the doctrine: that in cases in which harm must come to some in order to achieve a good (and is the least costly of possible harms necessary), the agent foresees the harm, and all other things are equal, a stronger case is needed to justify Harmful Direct Agency than to justify Harmful Indirect Agency. We distinguish between two Kantian rationales that might be given for the doctrine, a “dependent right” rationale, defended by Quinn, and an “independent right” rationale, which we defend. We argue that the doctrine and the “independent right” rationale for it are not vulnerable to counterexamples or counterproposals, and conclude by drawing implications for the larger debate over whether agents' intentions are in any way relevant to permissibility and obligation.

Background The putative health benefits of forgiveness may include long-term buffering against cardiovascular reactivity associated with rumination. Although studies show short-term benefits of adopting a forgiving perspective, it is uncertain whether this perspective protects against repeated future rumination on offenses, which may be necessary for long-term health benefits. Also unclear is whether forgiveness offers unique benefits beyond simple distraction. Methods Cardiovascular parameters (systolic blood pressure [SBP], diastolic blood pressure [DBP], and heart rate) were measured while 202 participants thought about a previous offense from an angry or forgiving perspective or were distracted. All participants were then distracted for 5 minutes, after which they freely ruminated on the offense. Results Angry rumination initially yielded the greatest increase in blood pressure from baseline (mean [M] [standard deviation {SD}]: SBP = 9.24 [11.16]; M [SD]: DBP = 4.69 [7.48]) compared with forgiveness (M [SD]: SBP = 3.30 [6.48]; M [SD]: DBP = 1.51 [4.94]) and distraction (M [SD]: SBP = 4.81 [6.28]; M [SD]: DBP = 1.75 [3.80]), which did not differ from each other (p > .30). During free rumination, however, those who had previously focused on forgiveness showed less reactivity (M [SD]: SBP = 7.33 [9.61]; M [SD]: DBP = 4.73 [7.33]) than those who had been distracted (M [SD]: SBP = 10.50 [7.77]; M [SD]: DBP = 7.71 [6.83]) and those who previously focused on angry rumination (M [SD]: SBP = 12.04 [11.74]; M [SD]: DBP = 8.64 [12.63]). There were no differences for heart rate. Conclusions Forgiveness seems to lower reactivity both during the initial cognitive process and, more importantly, during mental recreations of an offense soon thereafter, potentially offering sustained protection, whereas effects of distraction appear transient.

In this paper, I begin by considering a traditional argument according to which it would be unfair to impose sanctions on people for performing actions when they could not do otherwise, and thus that no one who lacks the ability to do otherwise is responsible or blameworthy for his or her actions in an important sense. Interestingly, a parallel argument concluding that people are not responsible or praiseworthy if they lack the ability to do otherwise is not as compelling. Watson, recently, offers in its stead an ‘interpersonal’ argument that appeals to a distributive notion of unfairness to conclude that praiseworthy actions, too, require the ability to do otherwise. I argue that this argument does not succeed. At this point, it seems that we have support for an asymmetrical treatment of blameworthy and praiseworthy actions. However, I conclude that while such an asymmetrical treatment may ultimately be correct, there is reason to doubt that considerations of fairness of sanction and reward support an as...

In rejecting the Principle of AlternatePossibilities (PAP), Harry Frankfurt makes useof a special sort of counterfactual of thefollowing form: ``he wouldn't have doneotherwise even if he could have''. Recently,other philosophers (e.g., Susan Hurley (1999,2003) and Michael Zimmerman (2002)) haveappealed to a special class of counterfactualsof this same general form in defending thecompatibility of determinism andresponsibility. In particular, they claim thatit can be true of agents that even if they aredetermined, and so cannot do otherwise, theywouldn't have done otherwise even if they couldhave. Using as a central case an argument ofSusan Hurley's, I point out that thecounterfactuals in question are both``interlegal'' and ``indeterministic'', and I raisedoubts about whether this special class ofcounterfactuals have clear truth conditions. Finally I suggest that acknowledging thesepoints leads to an appreciation of the realstrength of Frankfurt-style examples.

Among the many goods thought to be at stake in the free will debate is friendship. Robert Kane lists it, together with love, as one of ten items that hang in the balance in figuring out if we are free in the sense of being undetermined originators of our actions.1 Susan Wolf, in describing the worries of many, writes that ‘the most gruesome difference between [a world in which we give up our practices that depend on the assumption that we are free agents] and our world would be reflected in our closest human relationships’ (1981: 291). Although we could form ‘some sorts of associations that could be described as relationships of friendship and love’, the words ‘friendship’ and ‘love’ would take on ‘a hollow ring’. We would inhabit ‘a world of human isolation so cold and dreary that any but the most cynical must shudder at the idea of it’ (1981: 291).

In the debate over the nature of self–deception, “intentionalists” argue that self–deception requires an intention to deceive oneself, and “motivationists” argue that a desire, and not an intention, typically plays a crucial causal role in self–deception. Intentionalists have criticized motivationist views for ignoring what is distinctive about self–deception, and for failing to account for cases of “twisted” self–deception. I offer a new motivationist account whose distinctive element is the desire to believe. I argue that this account identifies what is common to cases of both “twisted” and “straight” self–deception, and that it captures what is distinctive about self–deception.

Van Inwagen, like many other libertarians, is convinced by the argument. But there is a problem: one of the presuppositions of the Consequence argument seems to yield a powerful argument for the incompatibility of freedom and indeterminism, an argument van Inwagen calls the Mind argument.1 It seems, then, that what many have taken to provide the most powerful reason to reject compatibilism also provides reason to embrace scepticism about the very possibility of freedom. Since van Inwagen is a libertarian and would like to reject both compatibilism and scepticism, he recognizes the need to respond to this problem. His solution is to identify and reject a premiss of the Mind argument not shared by the Consequence argument, but he admits that he does not know 'how it could be' that the premiss in question is false.

Jim buys a ticket in a million-ticket lottery. He knows it is a fair lottery, but, given the odds, he believes he will lose. When the winning ticket is chosen, it is not his. Did he know his ticket would lose? It seems that he did not. After all, if he knew his ticket would lose, why would he have bought it? Further, if he knew his ticket would lose, then, given that his ticket is no different in its chances of winning from any other ticket, it seems that by parity of reasoning he should also know that every other ticket would lose. But of course he doesn't know that; in fact, he knows that not every ticket will lose. On the other hand, ifJim didn't know his ticket would lose, then can he know any empirical facts at all? If Jim does not know something that has an extremely high probability of being true (.9999) and is in fact true then what can he know? This, in short, is one version of the lottery paradox, a version I call the "knowledge version."' The proposition thatJim knew that his ticket would lose has undesirable consequences, but so does the contrary proposition that Jim did not know that his ticket would lose. The paradox can be presented more formally as follows