My first experience as a clinician was in a Therapeutic Community for service users with personality disorder. As well as having personality disorder, many of the Community members also suffered from related conditions, such as addiction and eating disorders. Broadly speaking, these conditions are what we might call ‘disorders of agency’. Core diagnostic symptoms or maintaining factors of disorders of agency are actions and omissions: patterns of behaviour central to the nature or maintenance of the condition. For instance, borderline personality (...) disorder is diagnosed in part via deliberate self-harm and attempted suicide, reckless and impulsive behaviour, substance use, violence, and outbursts of anger; addiction is diagnosed via maladaptive patterns of drug consumption; eating disorders involve eating too much or too little. If a service user is to improve let alone recover from these disorders, they must change the diagnostic or maintaining pattern of behaviour (cf. Pearce and Pickard, 2010). For instance, service users with borderline personality disorder must stop self-harming; addicts need to quit using drugs or alcohol; anorexics must eat. (shrink)

Theories of social justice are necessarily abstract, reaching beyond the particular and the immediate to the general and the timeless. Yet such theories, addressing the world and its problems, must respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. A brilliant work of practical philosophy, Frontiers of Justice is dedicated to this proposition. Taking up three urgent problems of social justice neglected by current theories and thus harder to tackle in practical terms and everyday life, Martha Nussbaum seeks a (...) theory of social justice that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to social cooperation. The idea of the social contract--especially as developed in the work of John Rawls--is one of the most powerful approaches to social justice in the Western tradition. But as Nussbaum demonstrates, even Rawls's theory, suggesting a contract for mutual advantage among approximate equals, cannot address questions of social justice posed by unequal parties. How, for instance, can we extend the equal rights of citizenship--education, health care, political rights and liberties--to those with physical and mental disabilities? How can we extend justice and dignified life conditions to all citizens of the world? And how, finally, can we bring our treatment of nonhuman animals into our notions of social justice? Exploring the limitations of the social contract in these three areas, Nussbaum devises an alternative theory based on the idea of capabilities. She helps us to think more clearly about the purposes of political cooperation and the nature of political principles--and to look to a future of greater justice for all. (shrink)

Since the 1970s Gary Watson has published a series of brilliant and highly influential essays on human action, examining such questions as: in what ways are we free and not free, rational and irrational, responsible or not for what we do? Moral philosophers and philosophers of action will welcome this collection, representing one of the most important bodies of work in the field.

Disability is primarily a social phenomenon -- a way of being a minority, a way of facing social oppression, but not a way of being inherently or intrinsically worse off. This is how disability is understood in the Disability Rights and Disability Pride movements; but there is a massive disconnect with the way disability is typically viewed within analytic philosophy. The idea that disability is not inherently bad or sub-optimal is one that many philosophers treat with open skepticism, and sometimes (...) even with scorn. The goal of this book is to articulate and defend a version of the view of disability that is common in the Disability Rights movement. To be physically disabled is not to have a defective body, but simply to have a minority body. (shrink)

In this article we examine obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). We examine and reject two existing models of this disorder: the Dysfunctional Belief Model and the Inference‐Based Approach. Instead, we propose that the main distinctive characteristic of OCD is a hyperactive sub‐personal signal of being in error, experienced by the individual as uncertainty about his or her intentional actions (including mental actions). This signalling interacts with the anxiety sensitivities of the individual to trigger conscious checking processes, including speculations about possible harms. (...) We examine the implications of this model for the individual's capacity to control his or her thoughts. (shrink)

Mental health-care clinicians report that they hold patients responsible for morally objectionable behaviour but at the same time consider blaming attitudes to be inappropriate. These practices present a conundrum for all Strawsonian theories of responsibility. In response to this conundrum, Pickard has proposed severing the Strawsonian connection between being responsible and being an appropriate target of blaming attitudes. In this article I will argue that her solution fails to explain the practices at stake and provide an alternative solution that uncovers (...) an under-theorized stance we take towards those whose abilities are underdeveloped or compromised. (shrink)

This book brings together, in systematic and generalized form, the main outlines of a conceptual scheme for the analysis of the structure and processes of social systems. It carries out Pareto's intention by using the "structural-functional" level of analysis.

It is now taken for granted in many circles that substantial psychological variability exists across human populations; we do not merely differ in the ways we behave, but in the ways we think, as well. Versions of this view have been around since early interest in ‘cultural relativism’ in cultural psychology and anthropology, but Joe Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan’s 2010 paper, ‘The Weirdest People in the World?’ has had an exciting and catalyzing impact on the field, getting researchers (...) involved in discussions of human nature to take cross-cultural cognitive diversity seriously. Reviewing a broad selection of comparative studies from across the behavioral sciences, in social psychology, cognitive... (shrink)

R. Jay Wallace argues in this book that moral accountability hinges on questions of fairness: When is it fair to hold people morally responsible for what they do? Would it be fair to do so even in a deterministic world? To answer these questions, we need to understand what we are doing when we hold people morally responsible, a stance that Wallace connects with a central class of moral sentiments, those of resentment, indignation, and guilt. To hold someone responsible, he (...) argues, is to be subject to these reactive emotions in one's dealings with that person. Developing this theme with unusual sophistication, he offers a new interpretation of the reactive emotions and traces their role in our practices of blame and moral sanction. With this account in place, Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for responsibility. Rigorously argued, eminently readable, this book touches on issues of broad concern to philosophers, legal theorists, political scientists, and anyone with an interest in the nature and limits of responsibility. (shrink)

:Reasons-responsiveness theories of moral responsibility are currently among the most popular. Here, I present the fallibility paradox, a novel challenge to these views. The paradox involves an agent who is performing a somewhat demanding psychological task across an extended sequence of trials and who is deeply committed to doing her very best at this task. Her action-issuing psychological processes are outstandingly reliable, so she meets the criterion of being reasons-responsive on every single trial. But she is human after all, so (...) it is inevitable that she will make rare errors. The reasons-responsiveness view, it is claimed, is forced to reach a highly counterintuitive conclusion: she is morally responsible for these rare errors, even though making rare errors is something she is powerless to prevent. I review various replies that a reasons-responsiveness theorist might offer, arguing that none of these replies adequately addresses the challenge. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt’s Unwilling Addict and Willing Addict cases accomplish something fairly unique: they pull apart the predictions of control-based views of moral responsibility and competing self-expression views. The addicts both lack control over their actions but differ in terms of expression of their respective selves. Frankfurt’s own view is that—in line with the predictions of self-expression views—the unwilling addict is not morally responsible for his drug-directed actions while the willing addict is. But is Frankfurt right? In this essay, I put (...) together a systematic defence of Frankfurt’s position. (shrink)

This essay explores the boundaries of the moral community—the collection of agents eligible for moral responsibility—by focusing on those just inside it and those just outside it. In particular, it contrasts mild mental retardation with psychopathy, specifically among adults. For those who work with and know them, adults with mild mental retardation are thought to be obvious members of the moral community (albeit not full-fledged members). For those who work with and theorize about adult psychopaths, by contrast, they are not (...) members of the moral community (albeit not in such a full-fledged fashion as the insane). Both psychopaths and adults with MMR have a disability, and the essay is interested in how disability sometimes exempts one from the moral community and sometimes doesn't. It will be through two associated puzzles that we will eventually come to see the complicated tripartite relation between disability, responsibility, and moral community. (shrink)

It is argued that alcoholism, and substance addiction generally, is a disease. It is not of its nature chronic or progressive, although it is in serious cases. It is better viewed as a psychological disease than a neurological one. It is argued that each time an alcoholic takes a drink, this is the result of choice; however, in cases of serious affliction, such choices are compulsive and may be called 'involuntary' in that they are made against the subject's will, motivated (...) by an overwhelmingly powerful desire that he wishes he did not have and not to act on. Alternative accounts in terms social learning theory and behavioral economics are critiqued. The conception of alcoholism as a tripartite disease composed of a 'physical allergy,' a mental obsession, and a 'spiritual malady' is defended from a contemporary scientific point of view. (shrink)

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, Australia and.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction What Is the Problem? Why Try to Change the Profession? The Challenges Epistemic Responsibility and Credibility Why the Personal Is Philosophical Is Political References.

Does having a mental disorder, in general, affect whether someone is morally responsible for an action? Many people seem to think so, holding that mental disorders nearly always mitigate responsibility. Against this Naïve view, we argue for a Nuanced account. The problem is not just that different theories of responsibility yield different verdicts about particular cases. Even when all reasonable theories agree about what's relevant to responsibility, the ways mental illness can affect behavior are so varied that a more nuanced (...) approach is needed. (shrink)

Do we know what we're doing, and why? Psychological research seems to suggest not: reflection and self-awareness are surprisingly uncommon and inaccurate. John M. Doris presents a new account of agency and responsibility, which reconciles our understanding of ourselves as moral agents with empirical work on the unconscious mind.

In Freedom Within Reason, Susan Wolf charts a course between incompatibilism, or the notion that freedom and responsibility require causal and metaphysical independence from the impersonal forces of nature, and compatibilism, or the notion that people are free and responsible as long as their actions are governed by their desires. Wolf argues that some of the forces which are beyond our control are friends to freedom rather than enemies of it, enabling us to see the world for what it is. (...) The freedom we want is not independence from the world, but independence from the forces that prevent us from choosing how to live in the light of a sufficient appreciation of the world. (shrink)

This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for a (...) whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices. (shrink)

In very general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and 'agency' denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity. The philosophy of action provides us with a standard conception and a standard theory of action. The former construes action in terms of intentionality, the latter explains the intentionality of action in terms of causation by the agent’s mental states and events. From this, we obtain a standard conception and a standard theory of agency. There are (...) alternative conceptions of agency, and it has been argued that the standard theory fails to capture agency. Further, it seems that genuine agency can be exhibited by beings that are not capable of intentional action, and it has been argued that agency can and should be explained without reference to causally efficacious mental states and events. Debates about the nature of agency have flourished over the past few decades in philosophy and in other areas of research. In philosophy, the nature of agency is an important issue in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, the debates on free will and moral responsibility, in ethics, meta-ethics, and in the debates on the nature of reasons and practical rationality. For the most part, this entry focuses on conceptual and metaphysical questions concerning the nature of agency. In the final sections, it provides an overview of empirically informed accounts of the sense of agency and of various empirical challenges to the commonsense assumption that our reasons and our conscious intentions make a real difference to how we act. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the conditions under the umbrella “personality disorders” actually constitute two very different kinds of theoretical entities. In particular, several core personality disorders are actually moral, and not medical, conditions. Thus, the categories that are held to represent them are really moral, and not medical, theoretical kinds. The chapter works back from the possibility of treatment to the nature of the kinds that are allegedly treated, revisiting 18th-century ideas of moral treatment along the way. The discussion closes (...) with a reflection on how the ambiguous medical status of personality disorders and their treatment today is reminiscent of the ideological tug of war that pits alienist “mad doctors” like Pinel against their lay counterparts such as Tuke as they battled over who should be in charge of treating the mad. (shrink)