Moral Responsibility and Desert of Praise and Blame by Anton Audrey L.;

Author:Anton, Audrey L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Retrospective Responsibility:

A Necessary but Not Sufficient Condition?

John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza endorse the causality assumption (as do I). However, in endorsing CA as well as the primacy assumption, their view incurs some strange consequences. Not only is it the case that they cannot account for examples like those given above where agents deserve praise or blame but are not RMR, but Fischer[25] is also committed to the idea that agents can be RMR but deserve no praise or blame. In other words, Fischer maintains that being RMR is necessary but not sufficient for one to be worthy of praise or blame. However, one is not praiseworthy or blameworthy without being RMR.[26] First, let us briefly review their position.

On Fischer and Ravizza’s account of moral responsibility, a moral agent is morally responsible for what one does only if one has guidance control.[27] One behaves with guidance control if and only if one satisfies two conditions. First, the agent must have the kind of control afforded agents in Frankfurt-style cases. Recall that a Frankfurt-style case is one in which an agent is prevented from doing otherwise, but the agent appears to act voluntarily and, therefore, is thought to be morally responsible for what she does.[28] In addition, Fischer and Ravizza require that this control be issued from the agent’s own moderately reasons-responsive mechanism.[29] That is to say that the agent regularly recognizes reasons to do otherwise—some of which are moral reasons—and there exists at least one possible world in which the agent also responds to a reason to do otherwise.

It is easy to see how, on this view, agents can be RMR without being praiseworthy or blameworthy. There are countless actions in which agents engage each and every day that involve guidance control. Many of those actions are what I shall call morally insignificant actions. An action (qua action token) is morally significant just in case it causally contributes to a state of affairs involving consequences of moral import. I take for granted that moral import just means the object of evaluation (e.g., that someone is hurt, that deception was involved) matters morally. In other words, some moral element is embroiled in the consequences (such as a right, an obligation, an expression of virtue, justice, etc.). Not every token action is morally significant (and an action is morally insignificant just in case it is not morally significant). For instance, the ordinary instances when I tie my shoes are morally insignificant. When I tie my shoes in the morning, I exhibit guidance control over my shoe-tying and I am receptive and reactive to prudential reasons connected to wanting to walk outside without tripping, getting my feet wet, etc. Yet, if I had a very good (and moral) reason not to tie my shoes, I would be able to go out with them untied.[30] Since acting with guidance control is sufficient for moral responsibility, I am morally responsible for tying my shoes in the morning even when tying my shoes is of no moral consequence.

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