An Anatomy of Moral Responsibility

Mind 121 (483):601-634 (2012)
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Abstract

This paper examines the structure of moral responsibility for outcomes. A central feature of the analysis is a condition that we term the ‘avoidance potential’, which gives precision to the idea that moral responsibility implies a reasonable demand that an agent should have acted otherwise. We show how our theory can allocate moral responsibility to individuals in complex collective action problems, an issue that sometimes goes by the name of ‘the problem of many hands’. We also show how it allocates moral responsibility in the classic Frankfurt example.

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Author Profiles

Matthew Braham
Universität Hamburg
Martin Van Hees
VU University Amsterdam

References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
Mortal questions.Thomas Nagel - 1979 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Famine, Affluence, and Morality.Peter Singer - 1972 - Oxford University Press USA.
What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon - 2002 - Mind 111 (442):323-354.

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