Ways to be Blameworthy: Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility

239 Pages·2019·1.26 MB·English

by  Elinor Mason

OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,11/2/2019,SPi
Ways to be Blameworthy
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,11/2/2019,SPi
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,11/2/2019,SPi
Ways to be
Blameworthy
Rightness, Wrongness,
and Responsibility
Elinor Mason
1
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,11/2/2019,SPi
3
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements vii
I. Introduction l
1. Methodology 2
2. The Arguments 8
2. Subjective Obligation 17
1. Objective Rightness: Hyper-objectivism and Prospectivism 20
2. Subjective ObU萨lionand Praise会andBlame,vorthiness 23
3. Subjective ObU萨tionand Action Guidance 27
4. Anchoring Subjective Obli胪tion:The True Morality 31
5. Grasping Morality 37
6. Formula血gSubjective Obligation: Beli亟 42
7. Formulating Subjective Obli胪tion:Trying to Do Well
by Morality 46
8. Conclusion 48
3. Trying to Do Well by Morality 50
1. Trying Over Tune 52
2. Trying and the Accessibility Requirement 53
3. A,wreness of the Aim 56
4. Trying and Indirect Strategies 61
5. Strong and Weak Senses of Trying 62
6. Trying to Do Well by Morality: An Analogy 70
7. Faili.ngt o Try 71
8. Conclusion 73
4. Ordinary Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness 75
1. Compe血gAccounts of Subjective Obligation 76
2. Pure Subjectivism and Conscience Respectworthiness 78
3. The Moral Concern View. tbe Searchlight ViC\v,a nd the
ReflexivityR 勺uiremmt 83
4. Orclinary Praise-and Blameworthiness 93
5. Conclusion 97
5. Praise and Blame 100
1. Ordinary Blame 102
2. Ordinary Praise 107
3. D如中eelBlame (and Blameworthiness) 112
4. Detached Praise (and P面艾worthiness) 123
5. Conclusion 125
vi CONTENTS
6. Excuses 127
1. Mitigating Orcumstances 128
2. ML~edM otivations and Local Detached Blameworthiness 135
3. Excuses and Detached Blame: Formative Circumstances 145
4. Conclusion 150
7. Exemptions 152
1. Deeply Morally Ignorant but Un血pairedAgents 154
2. Culpable Ignorance 158
3. Moral Moti四tionand Wolf's Asymmetry 160
4. Psychopaths and Moral Knowledge 169
5. Psychopaths, Moral Outliers, and Morality Defiers 174
6. Conclusion 177
8. Taking Responsibility 179
l. Ambiguous Agency 181
2. Liability 185
3. Remorse and Agent Regret 187
4. Taking Responsibility in Relationships 191
5. Impersonal Relationships and Implicit Bias 196
6. Avoiding Blameworthiness 200
7. The Psychology of Taking Responsibility 202
8. Extended Blameworthiness and the Shape of Remorse 204
9. Conclusion 206
9. Conclusion 208
Bibliography 215
Name Ind釭 229
Index 232
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Preface and Acknowledgements
I completed the first draft of this book while on research leave from
Edinburgh University, on a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship
attheCenterforHumanValuesatPrincetonUniversity.Iamextremely
gratefulfortheopportunity.
I am heavily indebted to many people, but a few stand out as being
heroicallyhelpful.MichaelMcKennareadseveraldraftsandwasunfail-
ingly generous: this book has benefited enormously from his astute
comments and suggestions. Gunnar Björnsson has not only discussed
theseideaswithmeonnumerousoccasions,andreadvarioussectionsat
various points, but also arranged a workshop on the final draft in
Gothenburg.Iamincrediblygratefultohimandtotheothercommen-
tatorsonthatoccasionfortheircarefulandinsightfulcriticisms(Krister
Bykvist, Andreas Brekke Carlsson, Ragnar Francén, Robert Hartman,
KristinMickelson,andAndrásSzigeti).Iamalsoimmenselygratefulto
Guy Fletcher for organizing a reading group on an early draft at the
UniversityofEdinburgh,andtotheotherparticipants(MatthewChrisman,
Guy Fletcher, Kieran Oberman, Euan MacDonald, Mike Ridge, Debbie
Roberts, Simon Rosenqvist, and Patrick Todd). Both of these reading
groups transformed my own understanding of what I wanted to say in
variousways,andIfeelveryprivilegedtohavehadthechancetobenefit
from such impressive and willing interlocutors. I would also like to
specially thank Matthew Talbert for extensive and constructive com-
ments in his role as a reader for Oxford University Press, almost all of
whichIhavegratefullyincorporatedintothefinalversion.
Therearemanyotherswhohavehelpedmeinvariousways,reading
andcommentingonchapters,discussingtheideasatvariousstages,and
providinggeneralintellectualsupportandstimulation.Iwouldparticu-
larlyliketothankLucBovens,RuthChang,StewartCohen,BenColburn,
Julia Driver, David Enoch, Fred Feldman, Alex Guerrero, Elizabeth
Harman, Matt King, Tori McGeer, Jennifer Morton, Rik Peels, Doug
Portmore, David Shoemaker, Holly Smith, Jonathan Spelman, and
Monique Wonderly. I would also like to thank Peter Momtchiloff at
OxfordUniversityPressforadviceandencouragement.
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viii   
Ihavebeenfortunateinbeinginvitedtopresentsectionsofthiswork
invariouscontexts,andIhavelearnedalotfromcommentsandquestions
on those occasions. I would especially like to thank my colleagues in
philosophy at Edinburgh, who have heard several iterations of these
ideas and have tirelessly provided helpful feedback. I would also like to
give special thanks to my fellow fellows and faculty at the University
Center for Human Values at Princeton, for a wonderful sabbatical year
in2015–16.Additionally,Iamverygratefultoorganizersandaudiencesat
the University of West Virginia, University of Pennsylvania Law School,
Fordham Law School, Glasgow University, University of York, Warwick
University (CELPA), The Arizona Workshop on Normative Ethics, The
New Orleans Workshop on Agency and Responsibility, University of
Colorado,Boulder,TheResponsibilityProjectattheUniversityofGoth-
enburg,UniversityofOslo,andtheStAndrewsWorkshoponBlame.
Some parts of this book draw on previously published work. My
overall argument draws on my 2015 Philosophical Studies paper, where
I originally sketched my account of different kinds of blameworthiness
(‘MoralIgnoranceandBlameworthiness’,PhilosophicalStudies172(11)
(2015): 3037–57). Section 3 of Chapter2 summarizes some arguments
that I originally presented in my ‘Do the Right Thing: An Account of
Subjective Obligation’ in Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Nor-
mativeEthics,OxfordUniversityPress(2017):117–37.Theargumentsof
Chapter6 draw on the arguments I presented in ‘Moral Incapacity and
Moral Ignorance’ in Rik Peels (ed.), Perspectives on Ignorance from
Moral and Social Philosophy, Routledge (2016): 30–51. The argument
about taking responsibility that I present in Chapter8 appears in
‘Respecting Each Other and Taking Responsibility for our Biases’ in
earlier versions in Marina Oshana, Katrina Hutchison, and Catriona
Mackenzie (eds.), Social Dimensions of Moral Responsibility, Oxford
University Press (2018): 163–84. I am grateful to the publishers for
grantingpermissiontoreusematerialhere.
Finally,Iwouldliketothankmyfamily.First,thankyoutomyfather,
Donald Mason, who introduced me to philosophy, and has been a
constantsourceofencouragement,nottomentionacarefulreaderand
editor. I am very grateful and appreciative. Most of all, I thank my
husband, Eric Freund, for endless love and support, and my children,
InezandLeon,forinspirationandjoy.
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,11/2/2019,SPi
1
Introduction
Onaverysimplisticviewofblameworthiness,aviewthatnobodyholds,
we are always blameworthy when we act wrongly and always praise-
worthywhenweactrightly.Ofcoursetherelationshipbetweenrightness
andwrongnessontheonehand,andpraise-andblameworthinessonthe
other,ismorecomplexthanthat.Wrongnessandblameworthinessmust
come apart to some extent, although perhaps not completely. It seems
undeniablethatitispossibletoactwronglywithoutbeingblameworthy.
Similarly,itseemsobviousthatonecanactrightlywithoutbeingpraise-
worthy, and not just because the bar for praiseworthiness seems higher
than the bar for blameworthiness: clearly one can act rightly without
deservinganycreditatall.
Ontheotherhand,thereissurelysomeessentialrelationshipbetween
our moral concepts, rightness and wrongness, and our responsibility
related concepts, like praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. To be
praiseworthy must involve the idea that the agent has done something
right—has acted rightly in some sense. And likewise, an agent who is
blameworthymusthaveactedwronglyinsomesense.Myoverallaimin
thisbookistoshedlightonournotionsofpraise-andblameworthiness.
Clearly,moralpraise-andblameworthinessmusthavesomethingtodo
withtheagent’srelationshiptorightorwrongaction.Butwhat,exactly?
Weneedtoknowwhat‘rightness’and‘wrongness’meaninthiscontext.
Weshouldnottakeforgrantedthatthereisanindependentaccountof
rightnessandwrongnessthatwecansimplyhelpourselvesto.
In this book I defend a pluralistic view of both our deontic concepts
and our responsibility concepts. I argue that there are three different
ways to be blameworthy: ordinary blameworthiness, detached blame-
worthiness, and extended blameworthiness. The first way is closest to
the way that we ordinarily think of praise- and blameworthiness, and
so I call it ‘ordinary praiseworthiness and blameworthiness’, and refer
Ways to be Blameworthy: Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility. Elinor Mason,
Oxford University Press (2019). © Elinor Mason.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198833604.003.0001