Schmidt S (2018)
Publication Language: English
Publication Type: Conference contribution, Abstract of lecture
Publication year: 2018
Are people necessarily blameworthy for having objectionable attitudes? In response to Rosen’s paper on skepticisim about moral responsibility (2004), it has been argued that we are originally responsible for certain attitudes, rather than merely for the actions by which we have caused our attitudes (Harman 2011). This claim recently gained support by accounts of responsibility which understand basic responsibility as a form of answerability (Hieronymi 2006; 2007; 2008; 2014; Smith 2005; 2015a; 2015b). In this presentation, I will defend what I call “actions first”-accounts of responsibility à la Rosen which claim that we are responsible for X only if [either (1) X is itself one of our actions, or (2) X was caused by one of our previous actions.] I argue that “attitude first”-accounts, which locate original responsibility not only in actions, but also in attitudes, implausibly imply two incommensurable kinds of blameworthiness: in many cases, they do not allow for an overall judgment of whether someone is blameworthy. I consider and reject two possible replies for avoiding the incommensurability, based on Smith’s unified account of responsibility (2015), and Hieronymi’s conception of moral demands which apply to individuals who cannot fulfill them (2007; 2014, 33-35). Furthermore, I argue that the incommensurability is implausible because it implies genuine blameworthiness in cases where subjects could not have avoided having an attitude. Though “actions first”-accounts in principle allow for both blameless objectionable attitudes and a skeptical tendency towards appropriate blame, I argue that these conclusions are not as unwelcome as they might seem.
APA:
Schmidt, S. (2018). Responsibility for Attitudes and History. Paper presentation at 6. Tagung für Praktische Philosophie (Salzburg (Österreich), 27./28.09.2018); 10. Kongress der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie (GAP 10) (Köln, 17.-20.09.2018); Bern-Zurich Workshop in Moral Theory (Bern (Schweiz), 07./08.06.2018).
MLA:
Schmidt, Sebastian. "Responsibility for Attitudes and History." Presented at 6. Tagung für Praktische Philosophie (Salzburg (Österreich), 27./28.09.2018); 10. Kongress der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie (GAP 10) (Köln, 17.-20.09.2018); Bern-Zurich Workshop in Moral Theory (Bern (Schweiz), 07./08.06.2018) 2018.
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