Abstract
Moral responsibility invariantism is the view that there is a single set of conditions for being morally responsible for an action (or omission or consequence of an act or omission) that applies in all cases. I defend this view against some recent arguments by Joshua Knobe and John Doris.
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Notes
For ease of expression I will henceforth suppress these second two disjuncts and speak in terms of responsibility for actions.
Haji (1998, ch. 1) organizes these three broad conditions in roughly this way also.
Knobe and Doris (2010). All references to Knobe and Doris in this paper are to their paper “Strawsonian Variations: Folk Morality and the Search for a Unified Theory,” to appear in J.M. Doris et al. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
(Knobe and Doris 2010)
Knobe and Doris (2010)
They write: [T]here is the problem that one can use certain cheap logical tricks to make just about any rule look invariantist. [fn. removed] These are difficult problems, and philosophers of science have been wrestling with them for decades. But here, as so often, we think it is possible to make important philosophical progress without first stepping into the swamp of technicalities necessary to ‘define one’s terms’” (Knobe and Doris 2010).
We should be careful to note what an invariantist theory of moral responsibility does not entail. First, invariantist theories are not committed to the claim that there cannot be different kinds of responsiblility See, for example, Watson (1996), on the two “faces” of responsibility: attributability and accountability. One face being invariantist would not entail that the other is. Second, an invariantist theory of moral responsibility does not exclude the possibility of an agent having an excuse that exculpates her for some wrongdoing. An excusing condition is a condition revealing that while an agent has done something morally wrong or bad, she is not morally blameworthy (and perhaps not even morally responsible) for it. So long as the conditions under which a person is excused apply to everyone in every case, an invariantist theory can account for this. For more on excuses see Austin (1956–7), Zimmerman (1988) and Wallace (1994).
This is true setting aside cases of derivative responsibility. I may have been casually determined to crash my car but morally responsible for having done so if I freely chose to go on a bender, and my choosing was not causally determined by the remote past and the laws of nature.
On a stronger real-self view, acting in accordance with one’s values or real self is both necessary and sufficient for moral responsibility.
See Frankfurt (1969)
See Watson (1975)
See Fischer and Ravizza (1998)
As Knobe and Doris (2010) note, hard incompatibilism may be a notable exception but suggest that the view’s relative unpopularity may be due to its violation of the Conservativist Assumption. In fact, Pereboom (2001, esp. pp. 199–213) devotes much energy to showing how such a view is not in as much of a blatant violation of the Conservativist Assumption as many people think.
We may be responsible for some things we do when we are asleep if, for example, we have a known past of committing violent acts in our sleep and have not taken any precautions to prevent it from happening again. At any rate, we are not always responsible for things we do when we sleep.
Namias et al. (2005)
Nichols and Knobe (2007)
Knobe and Doris also cite studies that reveal intention and action asymmetries and side-effect asymmetries. The intention/action asymmetry reveals that bad actions receive more blame than good actions receive praise, but bad intentions receive twice as much blame as good intentions receive praise. See Malle and Bennett (2004). The side-effect asymmetry reveals that subjects attribute to persons who engage in acts that have bad unforeseen side-effects a high degree of blame, whereas they give persons who engage in acts that have good unforeseen side-effects a low degree of praise. See Knobe (2003). As Knobe and Doris see things, what these asymmetries show is that people use different criteria, depending on whether they are assessing acts or intentions in the first case, or bad unforeseen side-effects or good unforeseen side-effects, in the second case.
See, for example, Sher (2006, p. 81 ff.).
I am grateful to both Lewis Powell and Stephen White, who independently suggested that I develop the arguments in the section.
See, for example, Sher (2006) and McKenna (Conversation and Agent Meaning: A Theory of Moral Responsibility, unpublished)
See McKenna (unpublished), who denies that holding moral responsible is metaphysically prior to being morally responsible, but instead argues that they are conceptually connected in a way such that one cannot fully understand the one without making reference to the other. Nevertheless, he accepts two other Strawsonian tenets: the claim that the morally reactive attitudes are central to understanding the nature of being morally responsible, and that what is most fundamental with respect to whether an agent is blameworthy or praiseworthy is the nature of the agent’s “quality of will” with which she acted.
What might we mean by “degrees of blame and praise?” Take, for example, the distinction that Michael Zimmerman makes between what he calls weak overt blame and strong overt blame (e.g., Zimmerman 1988, p. 149). A case of weak overt blame might involve the blamer merely uttering a blaming judgment. In a case of strong overt blame, a blamer brings it about that the blameworthy person suffer as she deserves. But even if one disagreed with this assessment, there is good reason to think that there is a spectrum across which one can assign blame. Overt blame can be as weak as a knowing scowl. It can be as strong as stern censure, or perhaps sanctions carried about by a special authority. One could give similar examples of degrees of moral praise. We can also assign degrees of private blame and praise: consider the difference between the experience of “cool” moral protest and “hot” resentment or ill-will. When we assign degrees of praise and blame, then, we might be understood as assigning to an agent some appropriate (or deserved) response that falls along some relevant spectrum.
There are exceptions to this generalization: George Sher, in his 2006 discussion of moral responsibility for one’s character, argues that one can be morally blameworthy for one’s character without being morally responsible for it. He thinks this because he holds that moral responsibility is a causal notion, and we can be blameworthy for our characters without having caused them. Our discussion here centers on responsibility for actions, however, and Sher would agree, I think, that at least in the case of actions, being morally blameworthy entails being morally responsible. Cf. Scanlon (2008).
Randolph Clarke raised a similar point in conversation.
Thanks to Michael McKenna for pressing me to make this distinction clear.
This is perhaps most clearly seen in cases in which one can be morally responsible for morally neutral actions, actions for which an agent is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. For more on moral responsibility for morally neutral actions, see Zimmerman (1988), Haji (1998), Fischer (2006), and McKenna (unpublished).
See, for example, the passage from Fischer (2006) cited above and McKenna (unpublished).
But see Kimbrough (2009) for a criticism of this performance error model interpretation.
It is important to note that a performance error model could be used to explain the results of all of the studies cited by Knobe and Doris, not just those from Group C. As we have seen, however, those studies from Groups A and B have other serious flaws that should prohibit us from using them as evidence for the Empirical Conclusion.
For further explanation of these first three responsibility-related concepts see Hart (1968, ch. 9).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to audiences at UCLA and Florida State University and to Michael McKenna, Randy Clarke, Stephen White, and Lewis Powell for their comments on previous drafts.
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Warmke, B. Moral Responsibility Invariantism. Philosophia 39, 179–200 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9262-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-010-9262-9