It is widely held that one can be responsible for doing something that one was unable to avoid doing. This paper focuses primarily on the question of whether one can be responsible for not doing something that one was unable to do. The paper begins with an examination of the account of responsibility for omissions offered by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, arguing that in many cases it yields mistaken verdicts. An alternative account is sketched that jibes with and (...) explains judgments about a variety of omissions cases, including intentional omissions as well as simple failures to act. (shrink)

The statement that we are currently failing to address some of humanity’s greatest challenges seems uncontroversial—we are not doing enough to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 °C and we are exposing vulnerable people to preventable diseases when failing to produce herd immunity. But what singles out such failings from all the things we did not do when all are unintended? Unlike their individualist counterparts, collective inaction and omission have not yet received much attention in the literature. collective (...) inaction, I argue, can be attributed to a group of agents where a collective action x that the agents did not perform was collectively feasible at time t where each agent in that group had sufficient reason to contribute to performing x or others had a reasonable expectation that they would perform x. I show that, perhaps surprisingly, we can speak of collective inaction even where only one member of the group fails to act. However, where large and dispersed groups of agents are concerned, there is often no meaningful way of attributing collective failings. Still, I contend that the failure to close the global emissions gap and—in some cases—to generate herd immunity are indeed on us. (shrink)

Philosophers have already recognized the importance of causal preemption involving “positive” events. First, preemption with positive events raises problems for counterfactual theories of causation. Second, theories of moral and legal responsibility rely heavily on the concept of causation, so accurately assessing responsibility in preemption cases requires correctly assessing their causal structure. However, philosophers have not discussed preemption involving “negative” events or omissions. This paper argues that cases of preemptive omissions exist and have important implications for theories of causation and for (...) moral and legal responsibility. Of theoretical importance, the alterations made to counterfactual theories of causation to address preemption with positive events do not seem to work for accommodating preemptive omissions. Of practical importance, there have been actual legal cases involving preemptive omissions, and at least one such case was, this paper contends, decided incorrectly on erroneous causal grounds. This paper identifies what must happen for preemptive omissions to obtain. It then argues for the existence of preemptive omissions by constructing a series of cases and drawing structural parallels between preemption cases with positive events and cases with omissions. It ultimately presents a formula for generating preemptive omissions and examines both why “traditional” methods of generating preemption fail for omissions and why the proposed method avoids such concerns. (shrink)

Loewer (in: Physicalism and its discontents, 2001; Philos Phenomenol Res 65:655–663, 2002; in: Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind, 2007) has argued that the nonreductive physicalist should respond to the exclusion problem by endorsing the overdetermination entailed by their view. Kim’s (Physicalism, or something near enough, 2005; in: Contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind, 2007) argument against this reply is based on the premise that mental causation must be a productive relation in order to sustain human agency. In this (...) paper, I challenge the premise that mental causation is a productive relation by appealing to the underlying double prevention structure of the physiological mechanisms of human action. Since the causal pathways from an agent’s mental events to bodily movement involves an absence, mental causation is not productive. This places Kim in a troublesome dilemma in his debate with Loewer: either surrender mental causation or deny that causation is a productive relation. With the support offered for productive mental causation undermined, responses to the exclusion problem based on accepting overdetermination remain viable options for the nonreductive physicalist. (shrink)

In response to Stephen Neale (2016), I argue that aphonic expressions, such as PRO, are intentionally uttered by normal speakers of natural language, either by acts of omitting to say something explicitly, or by acts of giving phonetic realization to aphonics. I argue, also, that Gricean intention-based semantics should seek divorce from Cartesian assumptions of transparent access to propositional attitudes and, consequently, that Stephen Schiffer's so-called meaning-intention problem is not powerful enough to banish alleged cases of over-intellectualization in contemporary philosophy (...) of language and mind. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to test empirically an idea that many philosophers find intuitive, namely that non-moral ignorance can exculpate. Many philosophers find it intuitive that moral agents are responsible only if they know the particular facts surrounding their action. Our results show that whether moral agents are aware of the facts surrounding their action does have an effect on people’s attributions of blame, regardless of the consequences or side effects of the agent’s actions. In general, it was (...) more likely that a situationally aware agent will be blamed for failing to perform the obligatory action than a situationally unaware agent. We also tested attributions of forgiveness in addition to attributions of blame. In general, it was less likely that a situationally aware agent will be forgiven for failing to perform the obligatory action than a situationally unaware agent. When the agent is situationally unaware, it is more likely that the agent will be forgiven than blamed. We argue that these results provide some empirical support for the hypothesis that there is something intuitive about the idea that non-moral ignorance can exculpate. (shrink)

We are responsible for some things but not for others. In this thesis, I investigate what it takes for an entity to be responsible for something. This question has two components: agents and actions. I argue for a permissive view about agents. Entities such as groups or artificially intelligent systems may be agents in the sense required for responsibility. With respect to actions, I argue for a causal view. The relation in virtue of which agents are responsible for actions is (...) a causal one. I claim that responsibility requires causation and I develop a causal account of agency. This account is particularly apt for addressing the relationship between agency and moral responsibility and sheds light on the causal foundations of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The characteristic asymmetry in intentionality attributions that is known as the Knobe effect can be explained by conjoining an orthodox theory of intentional action with a normative account of intentional omission. On the latter view: omissions presuppose some normative context; there are good reasons why the intentionality of omissions requires agents' knowledge rather than intention. The asymmetry in intentionality attributions in Knobe's cases can be seen to be derivative from an asymmetry in intentional omissions. The omissions account further explains the (...) Butler problem and some related puzzles. It also safeguards the simple view of intentional action from the asymmetry challenge. (shrink)

This 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. (shrink)

Palmer defends the ‘Constitution View’ of omissions. According to this view, every omission is constituted by, though not identical to, some positive event. I argue that Palmer’s version of this view can’t do all the work he wants it to do. First, it can’t provide an answer to the ontological question to which he addresses himself: ‘What kind of thing is an omission?’ Second, it doesn’t give us the resources to determine which positive events serve as the ultimate constituters of (...) omissions which seem to occur over long periods of time ; at least, not without embracing consequences Palmer wishes to avoid. (shrink)

The Knobe effect :190–194, 2003a) consists in our tendency to attribute intentionality to bringing about a side effect when it is morally bad but not when it is morally good. Beebe and Buckwalter have demonstrated that there is an epistemic side-effect effect : people are more inclined to attribute knowledge when the side effect is bad in Knobe-type cases. ESEE is quite robust. In this paper, I present a new explanation of ESEE. I argue that when people attribute knowledge in (...) morally negative cases, they express a consequence-knowledge claim rather than a predictive claim. I use the omissions account :550–571, 2015) to explain why the consequence-knowledge claim is particularly salient in morally negative cases. Unlike the doxastic heuristic account :264–289, 2012), the omissions account can explain the persistence of ESEE in the so-called slight-chance of harm conditions. I present the results of empirical studies that test the predictions of the account. I show that ESEE occurs in Butler-type scenarios. Some of the studies involve close replications of Nadelhoffer’s :277–284, 2004) study. (shrink)

According to the dominant account of harming, to harm an agent is to cause her to occupy a harmed state. Matthew Hanser rejects this “state-based” account, arguing that each version of it faces counterexamples. Instead, Hanser argues, to harm an agent is to cause her to suffer harm, where suffering harm is undergoing an event: in particular, it is losing or being prevented from receiving a basic good. In this thesis, I argue that this “event-based” account is, at best, a (...) version of the state-based account. The identity of any event as the suffering of a harm, I argue, derives from the fact that it causes the agent to occupy a harmed state. I then defend the “counterfactual comparative” version of the state-based account against three prominent objections. The intended upshot of my arguments is that the state-based account of harming is superior to its event-based counterpart. (shrink)

According to what I call theidentity view, omissions are actual events. For example, the nominal ‘Ali's non-jogging’ denotes whatever Ali is doing at the time she is said not to be jogging. Some have objected that omissions (and more generally absences) cannot be events, since the two do not have the same causal relations. I show how advocates of the identity view can offer a pragmatic account of the data the objection relies on.

Epistemic and practical interests are often in conflict. This also occurs in institutional settings such as the legal one. Rule 407 of the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence is an example of that because it sacrifices some epistemic interests in favour of practical ones. It is the rule on subsequent remedial measures (SRM), which is mainly designed to answer a practical concern (reducing accidents) instead of the epistemic one of getting some evidence to find out whether the defendant was negligent (...) or whether there was a defect in a product. Some commentators and courts think that the rationale of the rule is more complex and deserves a more careful discussion, as this paper shows. Additionally, this paper discusses a modification proposal (from categorical ban of SRM evidence to case‐by‐case decision) and develops some theoretical considerations, in the spirit of philosophical pragmatism, on the best way to conceptualize the problem addressed. The idea is to see such conflicts as conflicts of goals and to explain them in terms of the incompatible desires that we happen to have. (shrink)

In some recent work on omissions, it has been argued that the causal theory of action cannot account for how agency is exercised in intentionally omitting to act in the same way it explains how agency is exercised in intentional action. Thus, causalism appears to provide us with an incomplete picture of intentional agency. I argue that causalists should distinguish causalism as a general theory of intentional agency from causalism as a theory of intentional action. Specifically, I argue that, while (...) intentional actions may best be understood as the causal products or outcomes of causings, we should identify exercises of intentional agency with causal processes. With a causalist account of intentional agency sketched, I respond to the challenge to causalism from omissions. I argue that when an agent intentionally omits there is a causal process that has a zero-sum outcome. But the causal process is sufficient to make it true that the agent exercises intentional agency in intentionally omitting. (shrink)

Palmer defends the ‘Constitution View’ of omissions. According to this view, every omission is constituted by, though not identical to, some positive event. I argue that Palmer’s version of this view can’t do all the work he wants it to do. First, it can’t provide an answer to the ontological question to which he addresses himself: ‘What kind of thing is an omission?’ Second, it doesn’t give us the resources to determine which positive events serve as the ultimate constituters of (...) omissions which seem to occur over long periods of time ; at least, not without embracing consequences Palmer wishes to avoid. (shrink)