In her Descartes Lectures, Cheshire Calhoun argues that “responsible person” is a valuable cross-temporal status assigned by default to fellow social participants. Responsible persons, on Calhoun’s proposal, are (i) accountable, (ii) compliant with at least basic normative expectations, and (iii) disposed to take responsibility—to promote good ends in ways that are not normatively expected. The third component in particular goes beyond what is standardly discussed in debates about moral responsibility, where the relation to what is normatively expected is central. In (...) the main part of my commentary, I outline what I take to underlie normative expectations related to predictively expected acts of promoting good ends. These normative expectations are structured by pro tanto obligations to help, by evaluative autonomy, and by what I call “balancing norms,” which call on us to care about giving people and certain other values a certain comparative weight over time. Once we take this structure into account, I suggest, it is doubtful that people are assumed by default to be responsibility takers in Calhoun’s sense: what we predictively expect is also normatively expected. In addition, I propose a way of nevertheless making good on Calhoun’s suggestion that accountability, compliance responsibility, and contributions to the common good that merit gratitude are all aspects of responsibility. Finally, I suggest that what positive reactive attitudes reveal about their targets is not that they are responsibility takers, but that they are weight-givers subject to balancing norms. (shrink)

Some have argued that advances in the science of human decision-making, particularly research on automaticity and unconscious priming, would ultimately thwart our commonsense understanding of free will and moral responsibility. Do people interpret this research as a threat to their self-understanding as free and responsible agents? We approached this question by seeing how feelings of surprise mediate the relationship between personal sense of control and third-personal attributions of free will and responsibility. Across three studies (N = 1,516) we found that (...) people with a greater sense of personal control were more surprised at the results of experiments showing effects of unconscious priming on moral behavior. Surprise differentially mediated the relationship between personal control and attributions of free will and responsibility: people attributed less free will and more responsibility as they were more surprised. This suggests that people exhibit defensive thinking with respect to responsibility, but not free will. (shrink)

Descartes held that it is impossible to make true statements about what we perceive, but I go over alleged cases of illusory experience to show why such a skeptical conclusion (and recourse to God) is overblown. The overreaction, I contend, stems from an insufficient awareness of the habitual expectations brought to any given experience. These expectations manifest themselves in motor terms, as perception constantly prompts and updates an embodied posture of readiness for what might come next. Such habitual anticipations work (...) best when they efface themselves, so it is easy to blame perception when our expectations get frustrated. I illustrate this misdirected blame with the example of a stick partially in water: it is only because we expect the stick to be straight that its appearance as bent is deemed problematic. I thus conclude that, if we factor in the habitual interpretations operative in perception and switch to a processual view that allows practical engagement, we can deflate the worries that led Descartes to rule out perceptual truths. Distancing myself from the naïve “sign” of folk semiotics, my critique draws inspiration from the triadic semiotic model developed in some late medieval schools of Portugal. (shrink)

Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness (MEC) is a theory of decision-making under moral uncertainty. It says that we ought to handle moral uncertainty in the way that Expected Value Theory (EVT) handles descriptive uncertainty. MEC inherits from EVT the problem of fanaticism. Roughly, a decision theory is fanatical when it requires our decision-making to be dominated by low-probability, high-payoff options. Proponents of MEC have offered two main lines of response. The first is that MEC should simply import whatever are the best (...) solutions to fanaticism on offer in decision theory. The second is to propose statistical normalization as a novel solution on behalf of MEC. This paper argues that the first response is open to serious doubt and that the second response fails. As a result, MEC appears significantly less plausible when compared to competing accounts of decision-making under moral uncertainty, which are not fanatical. (shrink)

In this chapter I examine how expected-value theory might inform responses to what I call the dual-use problem. I begin by defining that problem. I then outline a procedure, which invokes expected-value theory, for tackling it. I first illustrate the procedure with the aid of a simplified schematic example of a dual-use problem, and then describe how it might also guide responses to more complex real-world cases. I outline some attractive features of the procedure. Finally, I consider whether and how (...) the procedure might be amended to accommodate various criticisms of it. (shrink)

Philosophical views of responsibility often identify responsible agency with capacities like rationality and self-control. Yet in ordinary life, we frequently hold individuals responsible who are deficient in these capacities, such as children or people with mental illness. The existing literature that addresses these cases has suggested that we merely pretend to hold these agents responsible, or that they are responsible to a diminished degree. In this paper, I demonstrate that neither of these approaches is satisfactory, and offer an alternative focused (...) on the role relationships play in determining whether it is appropriate to hold someone responsible. I argue that relationships are sources of normative expectations about how parties in that relationship ought to behave, and that we can be responsible in virtue of being subject to these norms. This is so, not only for those who are impaired or immature, but for all of us. (shrink)

The Dutch Book Argument for Probabilism assumes Ramsey's Thesis (RT), which purports to determine the prices an agent is rationally required to pay for a bet. Recently, a new objection to Ramsey's Thesis has emerged (Hedden 2013, Wronski & Godziszewski 2017, Wronski 2018)--I call this the Expected Utility Objection. According to this objection, it is Maximise Subjective Expected Utility (MSEU) that determines the prices an agent is required to pay for a bet, and this often disagrees with Ramsey's Thesis. I (...) suggest two responses to Hedden's objection. First, we might be permissive: agents are permitted to pay any price that is required or permitted by RT, and they are permitted to pay any price that is required or permitted by MSEU. This allows us to give a revised version of the Dutch Book Argument for Probabilism, which I call the Permissive Dutch Book Argument. Second, I suggest that even the proponent of the Expected Utility Objection should admit that RT gives the correct answer in certain very limited cases, and I show that, together with MSEU, this very restricted version of RT gives a new pragmatic argument for Probabilism, which I call the Bookless Pragmatic Argument. (shrink)

In an influential paper, L. A. Paul argues that one cannot rationally decide whether to have children. In particular, she argues that such a decision is intractable for standard decision theory. Paul's central argument in this paper rests on the claim that becoming a parent is ``epistemically transformative''---prior to becoming a parent, it is impossible to know what being a parent is like. Paul argues that because parenting is epistemically transformative, one cannot estimate the values of the various outcomes of (...) a decision whether to become a parent. In response, we argue that it is possible to estimate the value of epistemically transformative experiences. Therefore, there is no special difficulty involved in deciding whether to undergo epistemically transformative experiences. Insofar as major life decisions do pose a challenge to decision theory, we suggest that this is because they often involve separate, familiar problems. (shrink)

Abstract: This study aimed to identify the behavior of organizational citizenship in Palestinian Police Force between reality and expectations, and this study comes to study the reality of human resources and their organizational behavior in the police apparatus, which is the largest security services operating in Gaza Strip, so it is expected that this study will contribute to improving this This aspect will be reflected positively on serving the country and the citizen and achieving security and safety for them. The (...) study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, using the questionnaire, and targeting a stratified random sample of (400) officers, who hold the rank of captain and above, from the study population of 1550 officers, and the study tool was distributed to the sample members in all departments and governorates Police in Gaza Strip. (353) questionnaires were retrieved, with a recovery rate of (88.3%), and they were analyzed using (SPSS) software. The study found that the organizational citizenship behavior was largely due to all its components. The study also showed that there are statistically significant differences between the respondents ’average response towards the organizational citizenship behavior due to the variables (type of administration, age group, job title, military rank, and years of service). The study recommended taking into account the interests of employees when making decisions and involving them in formulating them, explaining their justifications, and finally, the study recommended that organizational citizenship behavior be considered an organizational value that the police seek, and to create an organizational climate in which a sense of justice prevails, given its prominent role in stability, calm and discipline at work Thus, the elevation of the police institution and the achievement of its desired goals. (shrink)

Beliefs about the moral status of children have changed significantly in recent decades in the Western world. At the same time, knowledge about likely consequences for children of individual, parental, and societal choices has grown, as has the array of choices that (prospective) parents may have at their disposal. The intersection between these beliefs, this new knowledge, and these new choices has created a minefield of expectations from parents and a seemingly ever-expanding responsibility towards their children. Some of these new (...) challenges have resulted from progress in genetics and neuroscience. It is these challenges that we focus on in this introduction and volume. (shrink)

It is often assumed that, except perhaps in a few rare cases, people with addiction can be aptly held responsible for having acquired the condition. In this chapter, I consider the argument that supports this view and draw attention to a number of challenges that can be raised against it. Assuming that early decisions to use drugs were made in possession of normal-range psychological capacities, I consider the key question of whether drug users who later became addicted should have known (...) that addiction was a likely outcome of their decisions to use drugs in a way that makes them blameworthy for their lack of foresight. I focus on three different points of contention surrounding this claim: how likely the outcome to be predicted was, how tolerable risk should be weighed against the expected value of decisions to use, and how reliable the relevant predictive abilities of the average person are. Once we consider in some detail what would have to be true in order for someone to be aptly held responsible for becoming addicted, the prospects for making a convincing case to that effect look, I argue, somewhat more uncertain than they might at first appear. (shrink)

Is there a response, which is not accounted for by regression to the mean, natural history, the Hawthorne effect?The term placebo comes to us from the Latin for "I shall please," indicating that the phenomenon known as the "placebo effect" or "placebo response" has been familiar to medical practitioners for a number of centuries, at least. As we reached the mid-20th century and randomized controlled trials became a central feature of medical research, the use of controls and blinding (...) in those trials allowed for the isolation of the placebo effect in ways that made it much clearer that there... (shrink)

The situationist literature in psychology claims that conduct is not determined by character and reflects the operation of the agent’s situation or environment. For instance, due to situational factors, compassionate behavior is much less common than we might have expected from people we believe to be compassionate. This article focuses on whether situationism should revise our beliefs about moral responsibility. It assesses situationism’s implications against the backdrop of a conception of responsibility that is grounded in norms about the fair opportunity (...) to avoid wrongdoing that require that agents be normatively competent and possess situational control. Despite the low incidence of compassionate behavior revealed in situationist studies, situationism threatens neither situational control nor normative competence. Nonetheless situationism may force revision in our views about responsibility in particular contexts, such as wartime wrongdoing. Whereas a good case can be made that the heat of battle can create situational pressures that significantly impair normative competence and thus sometimes provide a full or partial excuse, there is reason to be skeptical of attempts to generalize this excuse to other contexts of wartime wrongdoing. If so, moral responsibility can take situationism on board without capsizing the boat. (shrink)

Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are ubiquitous. From social media timelines, video recommendations on YouTube, and the kinds of adverts we see online, AI, in a very real sense, filters the world we see. More than that, AI is being embedded in agent-like systems, which might prompt certain reactions from users. Specifically, we might find ourselves feeling frustrated if these systems do not meet our expectations. In normal situations, this might be fine, but with the ever increasing sophistication of AI-systems, this (...) might become a problem. While it seems unproblematic to realize that being angry at your car for breaking down is unfitting, can the same be said for AI-systems? In this paper, therefore, I will investigate the so-called “reactive attitudes”, and their important link to our responsibility practices. I then show how within this framework there exist exemption and excuse conditions, and test whether our adopting the “objective attitude” toward agential AI is justified. I argue that such an attitude is appropriate in the context of three distinct senses of responsibility (answerability, attributability, and accountability), and that, therefore, AI-systems do not undermine our responsibility ascriptions. (shrink)

The Lockean Thesis says that you must believe p iff you’re sufficiently confident of it. On some versions, the 'must' asserts a metaphysical connection; on others, it asserts a normative one. On some versions, 'sufficiently confident' refers to a fixed threshold of credence; on others, it varies with proposition and context. Claim: the Lockean Thesis follows from epistemic utility theory—the view that rational requirements are constrained by the norm to promote accuracy. Different versions of this theory generate different versions of (...) Lockeanism; moreover, a plausible version of epistemic utility theory meshes with natural language considerations, yielding a new Lockean picture that helps to model and explain the role of beliefs in inquiry and conversation. Your beliefs are your best guesses in response to the epistemic priorities of your context. Upshot: we have a new approach to the epistemology and semantics of belief. And it has teeth. It implies that the role of beliefs is fundamentally different than many have thought, and in fact supports a metaphysical reduction of belief to credence. (shrink)

Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) weaves together rigor and relevance while it improves student achievement and engagement. The Philippine Department of Education implemented Indigenous People’s education to respond to the demands for culturally responsive teaching. Teacher education graduates are expected to articulate the rootedness of education in sociocultural contexts in creating a learning environment that recognizes respect, connectedness, choice, personal relevance, challenges, engagement, authenticity, and effectiveness. Practice teachers need relevant exposure and immersion to fully develop their competence in CRT. This scenario (...) necessitates attention to assessing the competence of 191 practice teachers in CRT, correlating their competence across dimensions, and verifying the role of gender and degree programs in competence development. This investigation provides evidence on the role of gender in competence development toward culturally responsive teaching. Such competence is vital in practice teachers, especially because they are exposed to learners with diverse backgrounds during their teaching internship. This evidence informs supervising instructors in molding practice teachers. (shrink)

Following Strawson, many philosophers have claimed that holding someone responsible necessitates its being appropriate to feel or express the negative reactive attitudes (e.g., resentment) toward her. This view, while compelling, is unable to capture the full range of cases in which we hold others responsible in ordinary life. Consider the parent who holds her five-year-old responsible for not teasing his sister, or the therapist who holds her patient responsible for avoiding self-injurious behavior. Holding responsible in such cases requires enforcing normative (...) expectations, but these norms can (and typically should) be enforced without involving the negative reactive attitudes. To demonstrate this, I consider how responsibility attributions function in psychotherapy, as well as in other contexts where the negative reactive attitudes do not have a natural home. (shrink)

As the aim of the responsible robotics initiative is to ensure that responsible practices are inculcated within each stage of design, development and use, this impetus is undergirded by the alignment of ethical and legal considerations towards socially beneficial ends. While every effort should be expended to ensure that issues of responsibility are addressed at each stage of technological progression, irresponsibility is inherent within the nature of robotics technologies from a theoretical perspective that threatens to thwart the endeavour. This is (...) because the concept of responsibility, despite being treated as such, is not monolithic: rather this seemingly unified concept consists of converging and confluent concepts that shape the idea of what we colloquially call responsibility. From a different perspective, robotics will be simultaneously responsible and irresponsible depending on the particular concept of responsibility that is foregrounded: an observation that cuts against the grain of the drive towards responsible robotics. This problem is further compounded by responsible design and development as contrasted to responsible use. From a different perspective, the difficulty in defining the concept of responsibility in robotics is because human responsibility is the main frame of reference. Robotic systems are increasingly expected to achieve the human-level performance, including the capacities associated with responsibility and other criteria which are necessary to act responsibly. This subsists within a larger phenomenon where the difference between humans and non-humans, be it animals or artificial systems, appears to be increasingly blurred, thereby disrupting orthodox understandings of responsibility. This paper seeks to supplement the responsible robotics impulse by proposing a complementary set of human rights directed specifically against the harms arising from robotic and artificial intelligence technologies. The relationship between responsibilities of the agent and the rights of the patient suggest that a rights regime is the other side of responsibility coin. The major distinction of this approach is to invert the power relationship: while human agents are perceived to control robotic patients, the prospect for this to become reversed is beginning. As robotic technologies become ever more sophisticated, and even genuinely complex, asserting human rights directly against robotic harms become increasingly important. Such an approach includes not only developing human rights that ‘protect’ humans but also ‘strengthen’ people against the challenges introduced by robotics and AI [This distinction parallels Berlin’s negative and positive concepts of liberty ], by emphasising the social and reflective character of the notion of humanness as well as the difference between the human and nonhuman. This will allow using the human frame of reference as constitutive of, rather than only subject to, the robotic and AI technologies, where it is human and not technology characteristics that shape the human rights framework in the first place. (shrink)

Drink driving causes great suffering and material destruction. The alcohol interlock promises to eradicate this problem by technological design. Traditional counter-measures to drink driving such as policing and punishment and information campaigns have proven insufficient. Extensive policing is expensive and intrusive. Severe punishment is disproportionate to the risks created in most single cases. If the interlock becomes inexpensive and convenient enough, and if there are no convincing moral objections to the device, it may prove the only feasible as well as (...) the only justifiable solution to the problem of drink driving. A policy of universal alcohol interlocks, in all cars, has been proposed by several political parties in Sweden and is supported by the National Road Administration and the 2006 Alcohol Interlock Commission. This article assesses two possible moral objections to a policy of universal interlocks: (i) that it displaces the responsibility of individual drivers and (ii) that it constitutes a paternalistic interference with drivers. The first objection is found unconvincing, while the second has only limited bite and may be neutralized if paternalism is accepted for the sake of greater net liberty. Given the expected technological development, the proposed policy seems a commendable health promotion measure for the near future. (shrink)

How partners encounter each other plays a role in whether they will be able to sustain their interaction. How partners go about maintaining their interaction reveals features of their epistemological system, particularly with respect to factors like what they know, what they take to be relevant to the interpretation, and what they value. In this way, the value system (what partners want) and the epistemological system (what partners know) intersect. By focusing on the role of reasoning and understanding, I believe (...) we stand to gain a clearer picture of how expectations about interactions inform the dynamics between partners. This, in turn, affords a picture of what partners can actually achieve in and through their connection. I am particularly interested in considering what features of interaction are necessary for maximizing the affordances of the partnership. I say this not as a utilitarian interested in maximizing good simpliciter, but as a social epistemologist thinking about the contingent goods that are present in relation (e.g. care). The epistemic picture assumes that there are things that are knowable in dancing together, while the ethical picture assumes that partners are responsible for the things they ought to know. -/- . (shrink)

Why should we refrain from doing things that, taken collectively, are environmentally destructive, if our individual acts seem almost certain to make no difference? According to the expected consequences approach, we should refrain from doing these things because our individual acts have small risks of causing great harm, which outweigh the expected benefits of performing them. Several authors have argued convincingly that this provides a plausible account of our moral reasons to do things like vote for policies that will reduce (...) our countries’ greenhouse gas emissions, adopt plant-based diets, and otherwise reduce our individual emissions. But this approach has recently been challenged by authors like Bernward Gesang and Julia Nefsky. Gesang contends that it may be genuinely impossible for our individual emissions to make a morally relevant difference. Nefsky argues more generally that the expected consequences approach cannot adequately explain our reasons not to do things if there is no precise fact of the matter about whether their outcomes are harmful. -/- In the following chapter, author Howard Nye defends the expected consequences approach against these objections. Nye contends that Gesang has shown at most that our emissions could have metaphysically indeterministic effects that lack precise objective chances. He argues, moreover, that the expected consequences approach can draw upon existing extensions to cases of indeterminism and imprecise probabilities to deliver the result that we have the same moral reasons to reduce our emissions in Gesang’s scenario as in deterministic scenarios. Nye also shows how the expected consequences approach can draw upon these extensions to handle Nefsky’s concern about the absence of precise facts concerning whether the outcomes of certain acts are harmful. The author concludes that the expected consequences approach provides a fully adequate account of our moral reasons to take both political and personal action to reduce our ecological footprints. (shrink)

Often in academia, women and minorities are held to a higher standard in how they present themselves (caring, empathetic) and how they manage the emotions of colleagues and students. The emotional labour that is expected of them is well documented. In this paper, I develop a new concept to address the emotional labour of diversity workers: Responsive Diversity Work. I summarize Carla Fehr’s view of the epistemic diversity worker, develop a theory of emotional labour, and explain how the responsive diversity (...) worker, in virtue of the unfair emotional labour expected of her, is at great risk of mental health issues. (shrink)

In this paper, we present three necessary conditions for morally responsible animal research that we believe people on both sides of this debate can accept. Specifically, we argue that, even if human beings have higher moral status than nonhuman animals, animal research is morally permissible only if it satisfies (a) an expectation of sufficient net benefit, (b) a worthwhile-life condition, and (c) a no unnecessary-harm/qualified-basic-needs condition. We then claim that, whether or not these necessary conditions are jointly sufficient conditions of (...) justified animal research, they are relatively demanding with the consequence that many animal experiments may fail to satisfy them. (shrink)

In this article I discuss David Shoemaker’s recently published piece “Responsibility: The State of the Question. Fault Lines in the Foundations.” While agreeing with Shoemaker on many points, I argue for a more unified diagnosis of the seemingly intractable debates that plague (what I call) “responsibility studies.” I claim that, of the five fault lines Shoemaker identifies, the most basic one is about the role that the notion of deserved harm should play in the theory of moral responsibility. I argue (...) that the deep divide between those theorists who affirm and those who deny that moral responsibility is essentially about the justification of desert thus understood can be traced to the disagreement about whether the focus on the reactive attitudes by itself entails that moral responsibility has nothing to do with traditional questions about desert and free will. I then show that the seeming intractableness of the other four fault lines Shoemaker identifies is expectable and explicable in light of this more basic disagreement. After this diagnostic work, I conclude by suggesting a solution to the “morass” that has taken over responsibility studies: theorists working in the field should acknowledge that it has effectively bifurcated into two discrete subareas, which I suggest calling “retribution studies” and “interpersonal studies.” -/- . (shrink)

I argue that advocates of moderate epistemic idealization need some standards against which they can determine whether a particular individual P has a responsibility to acquire some specific piece of information α. Such a specification is necessary for the purpose of determining whether a reason R, the recognition of which depends on accounting for α, can legitimately be ascribed to P. To this end, I propose an initial sketch of a criterion that may be helpful in illuminating the conditions in (...) which P might be said to have a responsibility to take α into account when searching for reasons to act or believe. I worry that reason ascriptions that are based on information acquisition expectations which are not captured by this criterion may be open to charges of authoritarianism, especially when such a reason ascription prompts one person to demand that another act in a way that is responsive to the ascribed reason. (shrink)

This chapter evaluates two competing views of morally responsible agency. The first view at issue is Vargas’s circumstantialism—on which responsible agency is a function of the agent and her circumstances, and so is highly context sensitive. The second view is McGeer’s scaffolded-responsiveness view, on which responsible agency is constituted by the capacity for responsiveness to reasons directly, and indirectly via sensitivity to the expectations of one’s audience (whose sensitivity may be more developed than one’s own). This chapter defends a version (...) of the scaffolded-responsiveness view, and develops two further claims. Firstly, moral responsibility should not be tied too closely to liability to praise or blame. Secondly, rather than revising our existing concept of responsibility, we would do better to ask what we want the concept of responsibility for. (shrink)

Strawson argues that we should understand moral responsibility in terms of our practices of holding responsible and taking responsibility. The former covers what is commonly referred to as backward-looking responsibility , while the latter covers what is commonly referred to as forward-looking responsibility . We consider new technologies and interventions that facilitate assignment of responsibility. Assigning responsibility is best understood as the second- or third-personal analogue of taking responsibility. It establishes forward-looking responsibility. But unlike taking responsibility, it establishes forward-looking responsibility (...) in someone else. When such assignments are accepted, they function in such a way that those to whom responsibility has been assigned face the same obligations and are susceptible to the same reactive attitudes as someone who takes responsibility. One family of interventions interests us in particular: nudges. We contend that many instances of nudging tacitly assign responsibility to nudgees for actions, values, and relationships that they might not otherwise have taken responsibility for. To the extent that nudgees tacitly accept such assignments, they become responsible for upholding norms that would otherwise have fallen under the purview of other actors. While this may be empowering in some cases, it can also function in such a way that it burdens people with more responsibility that they can (reasonably be expected to) manage. (shrink)

In this Article, I will argue that a person may be deserving of criminal punishment even in certain situations where she is not necessarily morally responsible for her criminal act. What these situations share in common are two things: the psychological factors that motivate the individual’s behavior are environmentally determined and her crime is serious, making her less eligible for sympathy and therefore less likely to be acquitted. -/- To get to this conclusion, I will proceed in four steps. In (...) Part II, I will offer the first two of these steps. First, I will argue that our foundational assumption that moral responsibility is necessary for just blame and punishment is not self-evident and is actually rather difficult to explain and justify. Second, I will offer an explanation and justification that appeals to our moral psychology. Specifically, I will argue that we subscribe to this assumption ultimately because we sympathize with agents who lack responsibility for their actions. -/- Third, in Part IV, I aim to show that even if moral responsibility is not conceptually — only “emotionally” — necessary for just blame and punishment, the traditionally recognized criminal excuses are not at risk because, contrary to popular wisdom, they do not really rely on this assumption to begin with. Instead, they stand less for the metaphysical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing the non-responsible and more for the normative/ethical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing those whom we cannot reasonably expect to have acted better. I will further argue that the latter proposition does not necessarily reduce to the former. -/- Fourth, once I have defended my account of the excuses, I will question in Parts V and VI the increasingly popular notion that we should add certain conditions or circumstances to the list of recognized excuses. I will focus on one in particular — the psychological theory of “situationism” — and will argue that, despite its initial plausibility, it should be kept off the list. While situationism arguably does negate moral responsibility, it does not negate criminal responsibility. -/- Of course, this is a controversial point. Criminal responsibility is almost universally thought to require moral responsibility. But in a previous article, "Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject to Criminal Punishment And to Preventive Detention," 48 San Diego L. Rev. 1299, I used personality psychology to drive a wedge between the two. In this article, I will use the opposite end of the psychological spectrum — social psychology — to drive the same important wedge. (shrink)

A response to "I can't get no (epistemic) satisfaction: Why the hard problem of consciousness entails a hard problem of explanation" by Brian Earp.

Some consequentialists argue that ordinary individuals are obligated to act in specific, concrete ways to address large-scale harms. For example, they argue that we should each refrain from meat-eating and avoid buying sweatshop-made clothing. The case they advance for such prescriptions can seem intuitive and compelling: by acting in those ways, a person might help prevent serious harms from being produced at little or no personal cost, and so one should act in those ways. But I argue that such reasoning (...) often relies on an overly simplistic assessment of the costs and benefits of those prescriptions, one that misconstrues or neglects important issues. Indeed, a closer look at those costs and benefits reveals just how little we often know about a number of real-world matters that bear on the expected consequences of the prescribed individual actions. Our predicament is one of radical uncertainty: we currently lack a sound basis for concluding that the relevant actions are more likely to do good than to backfire. I distinguish this empirically grounded objection from others, which are not convincing—including one based on the mere conceivability of the actions in question backfiring and another based on the supposition that such actions cannot make a difference in addressing the massive problems at issue. The upshot is that, at least for now, consequentialist arguments for many specific individual actions aimed at addressing large-scale harms are inconclusive. (shrink)

In response to the growing social discontent at what is perceived as generational injustice, due to younger generations of voters facing long-term negative consequences from issues disproportionately decided by the votes of older generations of voters, there have been suggestions to introduce an upper age voting threshold. These have been all but universally dismissed as offensive and contrary to basic democratic values. In the present article, I show that the idea is in fact entirely consonant with present-day democratic practices (...) and far from without a precedent. Hence, I describe how the aforementioned generational injustice can be rectified using a simple vote weighting scheme which is easy to implement and interpret. Lastly, I discuss the societal effects that this alteration of the voting system would have on the distribution of the origins of political power. (shrink)

The issue of how best to combat the negative impacts of misinformation distributed via social media hangs on the following question: are there methods that most individuals can reasonably be expected to employ that would largely protect them from the negative impact that encountering misinformation on social media would otherwise have on their beliefs? If the answer is “yes,” then presumably individuals bear significant responsibility for those negative impacts; and, further, presumably there are feasible educational remedies for the problem of (...) misinformation. However, I argue that the answer is “no.” Accordingly, I maintain that individuals do not bear significant responsibility for the negative impacts at issue; and, further, I maintain that the only effective remedies for the problem of misinformation involve changing the information environment itself. (shrink)

Some progress has been made in recent decades to articulate corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, more recently, to associate CSR with international enforcement of human rights. This progress continues to be hampered, however, by the ability of a multinational corporation (MNC) that violates human rights not only to shift liability from itself to a nation-state but even to win compensation from that nation-state for loss of profits due to restrictions on its business activities. In the process, the nation-state’s sovereignty is (...) diminishing; and, in effect, though still attributed to nation-states, it is being transferred to the MNC. The main aim of this article is (1) to draw on normative considerations to claim that this MNC proto-sovereignty should be modified and (2) to contend that this can eventually be accomplished by adding to corporate adoption of CSR guidelines a regimen of global human rights enforcement. I base this contention on expectations about the internationalization of corporate criminal law and the globalization of civil society in general and of NGOs in particular. I consider various jurisdictions but I focus on US jurisprudence. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a socially situated account of responsible agency, the main tenet of which is that the powers that constitute responsible agency are themselves socially constituted. I explain in detail the constitution relation between responsibility-relevant powers and social context and provide detailed examples of how it is realized by focusing on what I call ‘expectations-generating social factors’ such as social practices, cultural scripts, social roles, socially available self-conceptions, and political and legal institutions. I then bring my account (...) to bear on the debate about the exculpatory potential of moral ignorance. I show that a prominent position in this debate – the position that denies that moral ignorance exculpates – is grounded on an individualistic and acontextualist conception of moral capacities, moral cognition, and blameworthiness, and that this conception leads those philosophers who endorse it to make a number of questionable claims regarding the ability of ordinary agents to overcome their moral ignorance and the culpability they bear for the latter. I conclude by indicating how my socially situated account addresses the issue of moral ignorance. (shrink)

In order to strengthen RI in the private sector, it is imperative to understand how companies organise this process, where it takes place, and what considerations and motivations are central in the innovation process. In this chapter, the questions of whether and where normative considerations play a role in the innovation process, and whether dimensions of RI are present in the innovation process, are addressed. In order answer these research questions, a theoretical framework is developed based on Jones’s theory of (...) ethical decision making and Cooper’s stagegate model of innovation management. In order to answer the research questions, a specific case of innovations that contribute to public health is explored, namely, that of food companies that participate in a Front-of-Pack logo for healthier food. As the use of healthy food logos does not necessarily have a positive impact on sales and profits, it is expected that in the decision-making process, as part of their innovation process, companies make several trade-offs between economic, technical and moral factors. As the social-ethical values at stake in corporate innovation processes have remained to a large extent unexplored in research on innovation management, the aim of this chapter is to identify the motivations and barriers for companies embracing and continuing a FoP logo for healthier food, and to assess whether ethical considerations play a role in this innovation process. From the findings in this research, it will become clear that although the studied companies participated in a programme for healthy food and thus are responsive to the needs of society, and although the companies feel responsible for public health, ethical considerations do not play a central role in the operational innovation process. Instead, technical and economic considerations seem to prevail in the operational innovation process. Furthermore, none of the procedural dimensions of RI seems to be present at this level in the innovation trajectory. It is argued that this may be an indication that the ethical decision-making process for RI is not located at the level of the operational innovation process itself, but is something that might be located on a higher strategic level in the company. It is at this level that the moral decision is taken to adopt the FoP logo and to engage in the RI process. The findings cast a new light on the discourse on RI in general, and in the private sector in particular. (shrink)

Proposals for allocating scarce lifesaving resources in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic have aligned in some ways and conflicted in others. This paper attempts a kind of priority setting in addressing these conflicts. In the first part, we identify points on which we do not believe that reasonable people should differ—even if they do. These are (i) the inadequacy of traditional clinical ethics to address priority-setting in a pandemic; (ii) the relevance of saving lives; (iii) the flaws of first-come, (...) first-served allocation; (iv) the relevance of post-episode survival; (v) the difference between age and other factors that affect life-expectancy; and (vi) the need to avoid quality-of-life judgments. In the second part, we lay out some positions on which reasonable people can and do differ. These include (i) conflicts between maximizing benefits and priority to the worst off; (ii) role-based priority; and (iii) whether patients’ existing lifesaving resources should be subject to redistribution. (shrink)

A single-blind experiment was conducted on free-responsive spatially non-local perception of free-selective simple photographic targets. One author (the tasker) chose a photographic target not subjected to a priori compiling, and the other author (the perceiver) attempted to unconventionally perceive the target. Feedback was expected prior to a new target being selected. A hundred trials were completed over 11 months. Thirteen judges offered gradings that collectively projected an apparent information requisition yield (AIRY). The AIRY refers to two aspects of the matching (...) of a taskette (a target’s counterpart) with respect to the target based on fuzzy scales from 0% to 100%, graded with an increment of 10%. The type-I or “tangibility” aspect of matching assessed the extent of the resemblance of a taskette to the target in terms of the shape or structural details of the primary physical entity/event. The type-II or “intangibility” aspect of the matching assessed the degree of the reconstruction of a taskette to the target in terms of the feature or functionality of the predominant physical entity/event. A total of 6 taskettes received >50% grades in both type-I and type-II aspects of matching with their respective targets. This outcome may correspond to an effect size of 1.47 if the chance-expectation may give a benchmark proportion of 3 out of 100 trials producing >50% grades in both type-I and type-II aspects of matching. Patterns indicating target interference associated with two trials entail further investigation. The approaches offer new insights to quantifying the band-limited information throughputs of spatially non-local perception. (shrink)

In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) (...) adulthood (2003–present) during which revolutionary research areas such as molecular biology and genomics have achieved a certain level of normalcy—have evolved into a normal science. I will indicate how a psychoanalytical assessment conducted in this manner may help us to interpret and address some of the key normative issues that have been raised with regard to molecular genetics over the years, such as ‘relevance’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘promise management’. (shrink)

Open Access: Trudy Govier (FR) argues for “conditional unforgivability,” yet avers that we should never give up on a human being. She not only says it is justifiable to take a “hopeful and respectful attitude” toward one’s wrongdoers, she indicates that it is wrong not to; she says it is objectionable to adopt an attitude that any individual is “finally irredeemable” or “could never change,” because such an attitude “anticipates and communicates the worst” (137). Govier’s recommendation to hold a hopeful (...) attitude seems to follow from one’s knowing that an appropriate object of unforgivability is also an agent capable of moral transformation. I appeal to Blake Myers-Schultz’s and Eric Schwitzgebels’ account of knowledge without belief, and Schwitzgebels’ account of attitudes, to argue that a victim’s knowledge that a wrongdoer has the capacities of a moral agent does not entail belief in the possibility that a wrongdoer will exercise those moral capacities, nor does knowledge of a wrongdoer’s moral capacities entail hopeful attitudes toward the prospects of an individual wrongdoer’s moral transformation. I conclude that what victims can hope for should not be that which victims are held to as a moral minimum. (shrink)

In a recent discussion, Walter Glannon discusses a number of ways we might try to minimize harm to patients who experience intraoperative awareness. In this response I direct attention to a possibility that deserves further attention. It might be that a kind of psychological intervention – namely, informing patients of the possibility of intraoperative awareness and of what to expect in such a case – would constitute a unique way to respect patient autonomy, as well as minimize the harm (...) that typically follows intraoperative awareness events. (shrink)

This is a study of Roman adaptations of Stoic doctrine that seeks to portray a model of the self functioning as a mediator between philosophical and traditional values (1). The author’s aim is ‘to let the Roman Stoics’ self arise out of a comprehensive analysis of their extant philosophical work and to conduct that analysis from the vantage point of the specific question of social embeddedness. Such an approach yields a Stoic self that is constituted by the encounter between challenges (...) and normative expectations’ (2). Overall, this aim is met. The Roman Stoics referred to are Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and to a lesser extent Hierocles, who ‘all had to come to terms with the sociopolitical challenges of imperial Rome’ (3). The tame thesis advanced is that the doctrine of these Roman Stoics ‘shows a distinctive pattern of emphasizing social responsibility’ (3). This social responsibility includes commitments to the political community, marriage, and parenthood. (shrink)

As to what distinguishes music from other sound, some investigators in both philosophy and cognitive scientists have answered “tonality.” It seems subservient even to rhythm. Tonality is considered to be the central factor around which the piece is oriented; it gives a sense of home, expectation, and completeness. Most important, much of this inquiry builds on naturalistic, evolutionary explanation to account for human nature and behavior. The conclusion of such line of thought is that sounds missing tonality or tonal focus (...) cannot be music. This article challenges such sort of naturalistic criteria distinguishing music from nonmusic. Permitting certain sets of sounds to be considered music does not necessitate denial or approval of naturalistic explanations but does allow nontonal music to serve a part of human and musical evolution. (shrink)

The paper points out three serious problems in Ruud ter Meulen’s view of solidarity and of its role in healthcare ethics. First, it is not clear whether and to what extent ter Meulen expects normative concepts to be rooted in existing social practices: his criticism of liberal theories of justice seems to imply a different view on this issue than his implicit assumption that normative concepts are independent from social and historical trends. Second, it is not clear at which level (...) his notion of solidarity is meant to be applied: does it provide principles for individuals or for institutions? Nor is it clear at what level of generality it should work: is it meant for healthcare institutions or for states, for citizens or for healthcare practitioners? Third, it is not at all clear how the communitarian and the universalist aspirations in his conception of solidarity can be reconciled. In light of such difficulties it is argued that within philosophical discourse solidarity can be a useful notion only if it can be clearly distinguished from existing and commonly used ethical concepts. Three examples of such narrow and specific uses of solidarity are presented. Finally, a sceptical view of confining the work of applied philosophers to articulating normative concepts is put forward and an alternative view of blending empirical and philosophical analysis is proposed. This vision of field philosophy requires serious attention and careful understanding of the circumstances and constraints within which normative recommendations operate. It is suggested that such a modest and empirically grounded understanding of normative work is a better way of honouring the belief that philosophy is rooted in social institutions and in complex webs of relations. (shrink)

In his recent paper, C. Fuchs formulates QBism in the form of eight postulates. We criticise QBism as an anti-realist position and propose an alternative – contextual quantum realism (QCR). 1. A quantum state is not “an agent’s personal judgement” (QBism), nor is it subjective (QBism), but objective (QCR). It describes not the current experience (QBism), but a state of a physical system in context (QCR). 2. A quantum measurement is a (literally) measurement of quantum reality (QCR), rather than an (...) agent’s action upon its external world (QBism). It can only be regarded as an action in the sense in which a cognitive Wittgensteinian language game is an action (QCR). 3. The result of a quantum meas- urement is objective, though context-sensitive (QCR), rather than subjective (QBism), personal to the agent performing the action (QBism). 4. The quantum formalism is normative (QCR and QBism) and at the same time descriptive (QCR). The wave function tells us what to expect and how a quantum experiment should be conducted (i.e. plays the role of a norm), and also describes the state of a quantum system in context (QCR). 5. Unitary evolution is objective (QCR), not subjective (QBism). It does not express an agent’s degrees of belief (QBism). 6. Probability 1 is ontic (QCR), not an agent’s maximum degree of subjective certainty without ontic content (QBism). 7. In general, measurement outcomes are not predetermined (QCR and QBism), i.e. “unperformed measurements have no outcomes” (for QCR, this is an analytical judgement; for QBism this is a thesis), but they are predeter- mined in the case of probabilities 1 and 0 (QCR). In the case of probabilities 0 and 1, one can speak of performed measurements (QCR). 8. Quantum theory is a universal Wittgen- steinian rule (norm), i.e. a rule (norm) rooted in experience, reality (QCR). It can be used by any competent subject (QCR and QBism). We illustrate the difference between QCR and QBism on the example of how they treat “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment and consider their attitude to phenomenology. (shrink)

Philosophical debates about how best to explain emotion or placebo are debates about how best to characterise and explain the distinctive form of human responsiveness to the world that is the object of interest for each of those domains of inquiry. In emotion research, the cognitive theory of emotion faces several intractable problems. I discuss two of these: the problem of epistemic deficit and the problem of recalcitrant emotions. Cognitive explanations in Placebo Studies, such as response-expectancy and belief-based (...) explanations, also face the problem of epistemic deficit in addition to the problem of logically self-destructive true belief. While such considerations might motivate a retreat to affect, this brings its own problems. I argue that it is a particular version of cognitivism, representational cognitivism (Rep-Cog), that generates the paradoxes we encounter in emotion and placebo research. I propose that turning to nonrepresentational accounts of cognition will dissolve these paradoxes. As I move toward conclusion, I propose drawing on the ethnomethodological tradition to respecify human responsiveness to loci of significance in the lifeworld by undertaking ethnographies of members’ own situated methods for making intelligible and accountable their attitudinal and nonattitudinal responsiveness to loci of significance in their environment. (shrink)

While the contemporary philosophical literature is replete with discussion of the control or freedom required for moral responsibility, only more recently has substantial attention been devoted to the knowledge or awareness required, otherwise called the epistemic condition. This area of inquiry is rapidly expanding, as are the various positions within it. This chapter introduces two major positions: the reasonable expectation view and the quality of will view. The chapter then explores two dimensions of the epistemic condition that serve as fault (...) lines along which these two views diverge. The first dimension concerns different kinds of ignorance. The second concerns what agents can be directly blameworthy for. The chapter closes by sketching a novel approach that incorporates advantages of opposing positions on this topic. (shrink)

(Expected) adverse effects of the ‘ICT Revolution’ on work and opportunities for individuals to use and develop their capacities give a new impetus to the debate on the societal implications of technology and raise questions regarding the ‘responsibility’ of research and innovation (RRI) and the possibility of achieving ‘inclusive and sustainable society’. However, missing in this debate is an examination of a possible conflict between the quest for ‘inclusive and sustainable society’ and conventional economic principles guiding capital allocation (including the (...) funding of research and innovation). We propose that such conflict can be resolved by re-examining the nature and purpose of capital, and by recognising mainstream economics’ utilitarian foundations as an unduly restrictive subset of a wider Aristotelian understanding of choice. (shrink)

I argue that culpable ignorance can be irreducibly collective. In some cases, it is not fair to expect any individual to have avoided her ignorance of some fact, but it is fair to expect the agents together to have avoided their ignorance of that fact. Hence, no agent is individually culpable for her ignorance, but they are culpable for their ignorance together. This provides us with good reason to think that any group that is culpably ignorant in this irreducibly collective (...) sense is non-distributively collectively responsible for subsequent unwitting acts and consequences. (shrink)

One branch of the responsible innovation literature involves the direction of innovation: if the public or decision-makers can or should direct innovation, how should innovation be directed? This paper explicates a case study where directionality – the plurality of plausible values for innovation – is directly implicated. In this case, a key technology may require a strategy for innovation, but there are contrasting normative reasons to drive that innovation in different ways, reflecting two distinct moral values, ‘effectiveness’ and responsiveness to (...) ‘need’. In this case, carbon dioxide removal, these values may well conflict. Strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in a cost-effective manner would tend to support siting it in regions where there are significant oil and gas operations. In contrast, strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in response to need would tend to support siting it in regions where expected demand for the technology is required for development. [Open access]. (shrink)