Abstract
This paper draws attention to a fundamental problem for a version of the tracing strategy defended by a number of theorists in the current literature (Rosen in Philos Perspect 18(1):295–313, 2004; Fischer and Tognazzini in Noûs, 43(3):531–556, 2009). I argue that versions of the tracing strategy that require reasonable foreseeability (rather than actual foresight) are in tension with the view that blameless ignorance excuses. A stronger version of the tracing strategy (i.e., one that requires actual foresight) is consistent with the view that blameless ignorance excuses and is therefore preferable for those tracing theorists who wish to continue maintaining that it does.
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Notes
Ignorance with respect to the moral status of an action or omission comes in different forms. In this paper I am concerned with what is often called circumstantial ignorance: ignorance of the wrong-making features of an action or omission. I discuss this in more detail in Sect. 4.
It might need to be added to these foresight conditions that the agent believes that Y (or some type of consequence of which Y is token) is morally bad or wrong.
For simplicity, in what follows I will often omit “a certain type of consequence of which Y is a token” when discussing these two epistemic conditions on derivative blameworthiness.
Rosen (2004) is clear that he understands moral culpability as equivalent to blameworthiness (pp. 296–297).
Although (KC) states a necessary condition and not a sufficient one, Fischer and Tognazzini take it that this is sufficient to satisfy the epistemic condition on responsibility for consequences. This commitment will become clearer in Sect. 2.1.
Although Fischer and Tognazzini (2009) commit themselves to an epistemic condition on responsibility for consequences, they do not explicitly commit themselves to a view concerning the epistemic condition on blameworthiness for consequences. In a footnote, they say:
[I]t may well be that you are morally responsible for inadvertently offending someone even though you are not blameworthy for doing so. What sort of epistemic requirement is a condition for blameworthiness is an important and interesting question that we do not take up here.
Because of this, one might wonder whether Fischer and Tognazzini are committed to a foreseeability view of the tracing strategy as I state it in Sect. 1 (since it concerns blameworthiness).
It might be argued, as Fritz (2014) does, that the position that an agent may be responsible for wrongdoing without being blameworthy for it is unmotivated. If Fritz is correct, then Fischer and Tognazzini cannot plausibly maintain that there are distinct epistemic conditions on responsibility for consequences and blameworthiness for consequences. In any case, given their silence on this issue, the argument I present in this paper may be taken either as a critique of their position (on the assumption that they do in fact hold that these conditions are sufficient for blameworthiness for consequences) or else as a reason for them to take a stand against foreseeability versions of the tracing strategy (on the assumption that they are merely agnostic about the issue).
Husak (2011), for example, maintains that an agent should be aware of some risk “if a reasonable person in his situation would have been aware of the risk” (p. 207, my emphasis).
See, for example, Fischer and Ravizza (1998), according to which an agent’s being morally responsible for an action requires that the mechanism from which the agent acted be moderately reasons responsive.
Sher (2009, p. 100ff) maintains that the standards concerning what a given agent should be aware of are sensitive to facts about that agent’s cognitive capacities.
For simplicity, I will often use “Y is reasonably foreseeable for S” as shorthand for “it is reasonably foreseeable for S that Y (or some type of consequence of which Y is a token) will or might result from X.”
S will also have reason to do such things if S is somehow involved in or obligated to help with another agent’s deliberation concerning X.
See also Rosen (2003, pp. 63–64).
One might point out that Dr. Adams does not merely have procedural epistemic obligations to check Jeremy’s medical history chart, to ask himself whether B might be harmful to Jeremy, and so on; he has obligations to do these things carefully, and he may have failed to fulfill these more specific procedural epistemic obligations. But the supposition that Dr. Adams can, for example, ask himself whether B might be harmful to Jeremy and yet still fail to realize that it will be harmful to him does not require the assumption that Adams did not take a reasonable amount of time asking himself this question or that he did not ask himself carefully. He may have done so and nevertheless failed to recall what he knew. Although it may be unlikely that Dr. Adams fulfill each of these procedural epistemic obligations without coming to foresee that prescribing B would result in harm to Jeremy, there is no reason to suppose it impossible. Since (1) concerns possibility and not likelihood, the possibility of such a scenario is sufficient for its truth.
An additional objection is that, if it’s true that Dr. Adams had an obligation to foresee that prescribing B would be harmful to Jeremy, then he had procedural epistemic obligations take whatever steps would lead to his becoming aware of this fact. This objection assumes both that there are always steps that would guarantee foresight of the relevant fact and that an agent is required to take those steps, whatever they happen to be. Each of these assumptions would require support. Furthermore, each assumption is problematic. The first assumption fails to acknowledge that epistemic failures are often to due to circumstantial features of a particular situation in conjunction with the limited cognitive capacities of the agent, so that it is not necessarily true that there are always steps the taking of which would lead to foresight. The second assumption fails to acknowledge the limits on what we can reasonably be expected to do. As Rosen stresses, we are not (legally or morally) required to be maximally prudent, but only reasonably so (2004, p. 301). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer from Philosophical Studies for suggesting that I address this objection.
It’s worthwhile to note that we needn’t assume that such an agent’s failure is somehow due to a negative quality of will, such as a lack of due regard. On the contrary, often times, an agent who fulfills all of the relevant epistemic duties displays due regard by doing so. Again, I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer from Philosophical Studies for suggesting that I address this objection.
Although I have not here raised the question of what epistemic conditions there are on direct blameworthiness, a blameless failure to satisfy them would constitute an excuse.
Elsewhere Rosen writes, “We also have a plausible sufficient condition for excusable ignorance, according to which ignorance is excusable when it is nonnegligent—that is, when it persists despite the fact that the agent has taken every required precaution against such ignorance” (2008, p. 604).
Although Fischer and Tognazzini speak in terms of moral responsibility here, elsewhere they maintain that moral responsibility is required for blameworthiness, so they seem to be implicitly committed to my claim (2011).
Given what Rosen and Fischer and Tognazzini say, they may hold that, if an agent does everything that can reasonably expected of him with respect to awareness of some relevant fact and nevertheless fails to become aware of that fact, then the fact is simply not reasonably foreseeable. If this is so, then they may not accept (1). While I defend against this sort of objection in Sect. 3.3, it is worth noting that what these theorists say does not immediately commit them to the first premise of the argument. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer from Philosophical Studies for pointing this out to me.
Rosen (2003) defends the claim that blameless ignorance of any kind excuses. Talbert (2013) accepts that blameless circumstantial ignorance often excuses but argues that moral ignorance often does not. Clarke (2014) argues that (BI) (understood either in terms of circumstantial or moral ignorance) is lacking in support.
Talbert (2013), for example, seems to have something much like this in mind in maintaining that non-culpable circumstantial ignorance may excuse an agent from wrongdoing but that non-culpable moral ignorance usually does not (p. 226).
Levy (2009) offers a distinct reason in favor of (BI), namely that it is unfair to blame someone for doing something if he blamelessly lacked the belief that he has good or compelling reason to omit from doing it (likewise, it is unfair to blame someone for failing to do something if he blamelessly lacked the belief that he has good or compelling reason to do it). Blameless ignorance of the wrong-making features of an action (i.e., blameless circumstantial ignorance) may make it so that the agent blamelessly lacks such a belief.
A second reason to accept the conditional claim can be seen by considering how one might object to these principles. For example, one may reject (BIC) by maintaining that, if it is reasonable to expect an agent to know or to be aware of some likely bad consequence of some (free) action of his and yet he fails to be aware of it, then he is blameworthy for that consequence, blameless ignorance notwithstanding. The purpose of stating this objection is not to defend against it but rather to point out that the same sort of objection works equally well against (BI): if it is reasonable to expect an agent to know or to be aware of some wrong-making feature of some (free) action of his and yet he fails to be aware of it, then he is blameworthy for performing that action, blameless ignorance notwithstanding. Indeed, it may be that any objection to (BIC) can be made to work equally well against (BI). This would support the claim that, if (BIC) is false then so is (BI), which is logically equivalent to the claim we are seeking support for.
Notice that both (1) and (5) can be altered to correspond to the amendments to the epistemic condition considered in Sect. 3.2, so that modified versions of this argument will fare just as well against views that adopt those epistemic conditions.
Zimmerman, for example, maintains (BI) and an actual foresight view much like TSb (1997, pp. 420–421).
Referencing Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, I–II, Q 6, art. 8., FitzPatrick (2008) calls this kind of ignorance (where one intentionally remains ignorant in order to have an excuse) “affected ignorance.”
The argument in this section works just as well if we add that S ought to foresee a certain type of consequence of which Y is an instance” to (d′). The result would be the final revision to the epistemic condition that I consider in Sect. 3.3.
This paper is primarily focused on accounts (like Rosen’s and Fischer and Tognazzini’s) that hold that one is directly blameworthy for something only if it is under one’s direct voluntary control. Since ignorance is not under an agent’s direct voluntary control, these accounts imply that one cannot be directly blameworthy for ignorance. Rosen (2004, pp. 301–303) explicitly uses this first assumption as a premise in his argument for skepticism about moral responsibility.
Rosen also uses this second assumption as a premise in his argument (2004, p. 299).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Randolph Clarke, John Fischer, Justin Capes, Kyle Fritz, Gabriel De Marco, Yishai Cohen, and Benjamin Matheson for helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to the participants at the Moscow State University Free Will and Moral Responsibility Summer School 2014 for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. In addition, I would like to thank Andrew Martin for a thoughtful conversation about this paper.
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Miller, D. Reasonable foreseeability and blameless ignorance. Philos Stud 174, 1561–1581 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0772-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0772-6