Conditions of responsibility : an examination of first-person and interpersonal approaches / Paul Litton.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Litton, Paul.

Contributor:

Meyer, Susan Sauvé, advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--Philosophy.

Philosophy--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Philosophy.

Philosophy--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

ix, 256 pages ; 29 cm

Production:

2003.

Summary:

To answer whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, two different methods for justifying compatibilist conditions of responsibility have emerged in recent literature. First-person approaches, such as Hilary Bok's, appeal to the first-person experience of human agency to justify our practices of holding agents responsible. In contrast, T. M. Scanlon and Jay Wallace, following P. F. Strawson, begin with an account of the interpersonal significance of holding each other responsible in order to discern the conditions under which it is appropriate to assign that significance to an agent's actions. In this dissertation, I evaluate these different methodologies, and I examine the details of each view in order to find a proper understanding of the conditions of responsibility and of the significance of responsibility judgments within our interpersonal lives.

I argue that the backward-looking significance we attach to responsibility judgments, including those of blame and praise, can be captured only by an interpersonal approach. Specifically, I argue that the significance of responsibility is not found in the negative consequences (such as punishment) or emotions (such as resentment) that we associate with holding agents responsible. Rather, ascribing to an agent the status of being responsible is a form a deep respect, which has practical implications. I argue that our intuitions concerning victims of severely deprived childhoods are best accounted for if we recognize that ascription as a form of respect and we separate the question of whether an agent is responsible from considerations of appropriate punishments.

With regard to the conditions of responsibility, I argue that practical reasoners should be considered responsible not only for their choices, but also for negligent omissions, moral beliefs, and certain emotional reactions, even if such phenomena are not based on their choices. In addition, I argue that compatibilists do not need to add the capacity to grasp distinctly moral reasons to the requirements of responsible agency because that capacity is entailed by the basic capacity to reason practically. I examine the psychological literature on psychopaths---agents who supposedly are practical reasoners without moral understanding---to counter an objection to my view.

Notes:

Adviser: Susan Sauve Meyer.

Thesis (Ph.D. in Philosophy) -- University of Pennsylvania, 2003.

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 3095911.

OCLC:

244973207