How do people attribute responsibility in situations where the contributions of multiple agents combine to produce a joint outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. In this article, we explore a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts. We draw on the structural model account of actual causation (e.g., Halpern & Pearl, 2005) and its extension to responsibility judgments (Chockler & Halpern, 2004). We review the main (...) theoretical and empirical issues that arise from this literature and propose a novel model of intuitive judgments of responsibility. This model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from previous studies and is supported by a new experiment that manipulates both pivotality and criticality. We also discuss possible extensions of this model to deal with a broader range of causal situations. Overall, our approach emphasizes the close interrelations between causality, counterfactuals, and responsibility attributions. (shrink)

Significant advancements towards a future of big data genomic medicine, associated with large-scale public dataset repositories, intensify dilemmas of genomic privacy. To resolve dilemmas adequately, we need to understand the relative force of the competing considerations that make them up. Attitudes towards genomic privacy are complex and not well understood; understanding is further complicated by the vague claim of ‘genetic exceptionalism’. In this paper, we distinguish between consequentialist and non-consequentialist privacy interests: while the former are concerned with harms secondary to (...) exposure, the latter represent the interest in a private sphere for its own sake, as an essential component of human dignity. Empirical studies of attitudes towards genomic privacy have almost never targeted specifically this important dignitary component of the privacy interest. In this paper we first articulate the question of a non-consequentialist genomic privacy interest, and then present results of an empirical study that probed people’s attitudes towards that interest. This was done via comparison to other non-consequentialist privacy interests, which are more tangible and can be more easily assessed. Our results indicate that the non-consequentialist genomic privacy interest is rather weak. This insight can assist in adjudicating dilemmas involving genomic privacy. (shrink)

The moral comparison of the three venues of deception—lying, falsely implicating, and nonverbal deception—is a central, ongoing debate in the ethics of deception. To date there has been no attempt to advance in the debate through experimental philosophy. Using methods of experimental economics, we devised a strategic game to test positions in the debate. Our article presents the experimental results and shows how philosophical analysis of the results allows drawing valid normative conclusions. Our conclusions testify against the dominant position in (...) the debate—that lying is morally worse than all non-lying deceptions. They offer prima facie support to the view that the venue of deception makes no moral difference. (shrink)

Bermúdez argues for rational framing effects based on normatively appropriate quasi-cyclical preferences. We suggest that this argument conflates preferences over specific outcomes with preferences over outcome aspects. Instead of implying quasi-cyclical preferences, framing affects decisions through standard economic trade-offs. Nonetheless, we demonstrate that framing can affect behavior through altering perceptions of particular outcome aspects when framing effects are not decomposable.