PEA Soup

Attributability and Daddy Issues

(Also posted on Flickers of Freedom.)

I am a fan of attributability as a conception of responsibility.  The trick, as we all know, is to get clear on just what that means.  Even if you don't think attributability is a conception of responsibility, it is surely necessary for responsibility, so getting clear on what it consists in is in everyone's interest.  One popular theory of attributability is a kind of evaluative judgment view: an action or attitude is properly attributable to me just in case it is ultimately dependent on my evaluative judgments.  I'm wondering, though, about the following possible counterexample to this view.

Strawson 50th Love Fest

In honor of my favorite philosophical article, I'm pleased to pass on the following announcement from Neal Tognazzini:

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of P. F. Strawson's 'Freedom and Resentment'. In honor of its remarkable influence over the past half-century, the philosophy department at The College of William & Mary is hosting a two-day conference this fall, *Responsibility & Relationships*, that will explore Strawsonian themes in contemporary moral philosophy, psychology, and the law, including new work on blame, punishment, and the moral emotions. And you're all invited.

The website for the conference is here.

Scanlon on Blame, Part 3: Criminal Blame and Meaning

In the previous post, I noted that there are two important aspects of Scanlonian blame -- relationships and meaning -- and that extending Scanlon's account to cover criminal blame (punishment) was problematic with respect to the former in virtue of the fact that the necessary sort of relationship (whose impairment prompts blame) was missing in the citizenry/legal case.  I want to focus here (in much briefer terms) on the second aspect, meaning.

Scanlon on Blame, Part 2: Criminal Blame?

Part 1, for those of you old enough to remember, was posted two years ago here.  Yes, I'm a very slow thinker.

In Part 2, I want to explore the possibility of extending Scanlon's account of blame to include criminal blame.  For both legal and moral theorists writing on these issues, criminal responsibility (and the intelligibility of criminal blame) entails moral responsibility (and the intelligibility of moral blame).  I have begun to believe that this assumption is just false, or at least the relation between criminal and moral responsibility is far more complicated than people have believed.  In order to explore this idea, I want to look at recent, plausible accounts of blame to see how, if at all, they might ostensibly explain both moral and criminal blame.  I begin today by discussing one worry about doing so with Scanlon's view.  I hope (sooner this time!) to discuss another worry of doing so, and if I'm energetic enough, I'll then turn to George Sher's account of blame to explore the same issues.  If anyone's still awake by then, I may offer a diagnosis of the problem.  Warning: long row to hoe ahead!

RIP Birmingham Workshop: Free Will and Moral Responsibility

I'm helping to put together a Royal Institute of Philosophy workshop on Free Will and Moral Responsibility here at the Philosophy department of the University of Birmingham. It will from 1pm to 6pm on Saturday the 7th of May - at University of Birmingham Campus, ERI building. The workshop is free but please book a place by emailing me at jussiphil@gmail.com. The speakers are Veronica Rodriquez-Blanco (Birmingham), Raymond Tallis (Manchester), and Kevin Timpe (Northwest Nazarene University). More info below.

Does Ought Imply Can Outside Ethics?

[My apologies if this is well-trodden ground.  I am pretty ignorant of the ought-implies-can literature, and quick check over articles didn't reveal anybody discussing what I'm about to write.]

In general, philosophers take it for granted that a person morally ought to X if and only she can X.  I'll treat this as equivalent to claiming that a person can have an all-things-considered moral duty to X if and only she can X. So, e.g, I cannot have an all-things-considered duty to shoot magic fireballs from my fingers because I am physically unable to do so.

Outside of ethics, though, there seem to be a few cases where intuitively we don't accept this, or, at least, I don't.  

What does 'ought' implies 'can' imply about moral dilemmas?

I've had moral dilemmas on my mind lately, and I'm troubled by a common argument given against the possibility of genuine moral dilemmas. I'm hoping people can help diagnose what's troubling me. And I apologize in advance for the disorganized thinking.

Here's the argument: Suppose an individual S is obligated both to perform act A and obligated to perform act B. S is therefore obligated to perform (A&B). Assuming that for S to be obligated to ø entails that S ought to ø, then S ought to A, ought to B, and ought (A&B). Applying 'ought' implies 'can,' then S ought (A&B) entails S can (A&B). But the circumstances of the world are such that S is metaphysically precluded from performing (A&B), so she cannot (A&B). Hence, it is both true that S ought (A&B) and false that S ought (A&B).

Blaming Past Generations

According to Bernard Williams, what is true about relativism is that the more distant cultures are historically and culturally, the less willing we are to make moral appraisals that concern them. We don’t think that their ethical views are incorrect, and we won’t adopt reactive attitudes of praise and blame towards the representatives of these cultures - no matter how well or badly they behave. Yet, we do make moral appraisals of cultures that are closer to us in the history, and we blame their people for their evil deeds. 

There is then a challenge of giving an account of moral appraisals (I’ll focus on blame) that carves up the joints of history at the intuitive places. Here I’ll focus on three accounts: Williams’s, Miranda Fricker’s, and Tim Scanlon’s. I’ll then develop my own proposal on the basis of Scanlon’s view. 

Criminal and Legal Responsibility

Fellow PEA Brains: I have a quick question for those in the know.  The terms "criminal responsibility" and "legal responsibility" are often used interchangeably in what little of the literature I know in legal theory dealing with the concepts.  I'm wondering, though, if there are some theorists who think these terms pick out different concepts.  And independently of whether or not some theorists actually do so, are there good reasons to do so?  I have my suspicions about a possible reason to distinguish talk of legal from criminal responsibility, but I'd rather hear from experts on the topic.  (And I'm thinking of distinctions where both legal and criminal responsibility refer to a type of responsibility for something, rather than merely referring to a particular sort of status, i.e., being a responsible agent).

The Virtue Responsive Evil Demon

Suppose you are an ordinary virtuous agent. Up until now, you haven’t lived the kind of life that involves making any huge life or death decisions, but you are kind to your friends and acquaintances, charitable to distant strangers in need, honest to everyone except those you can’t trust etc. Now an evil demon comes to you and tells you that, for the rest of your life, he will kill 5 people (randomly selected strangers in another country) every time you act virtuously, and won’t kill any people every time you act non-virtuously. He makes it impossible for you to commit suicide (if this were an option, you might think you should immediately take it – although doing so would, quite plausibly, lead to the death of 5 people, the killing would stop there). (Alternatively, one could simply specify that the demon tells you that whenever you happen to die, but not before, he will move on to present some other ordinary virtuous person with the same problem.) On the assumption that the evil demon will keep his word, what are you to do? Given that you start off virtuous, what might we predict you do in this situation? And what might we predict the demon does in response to your subsequent acts?