Pub Date : 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0013
Carla Bagnoli
This chapter introduces the novel category of ‘disclaimers’—distinctive normative acts which challenge third-party attributions of responsibility in a community governed by norms of mutual accountability. While the debate focuses on evasive and wrongful refusals to take responsibility for one’s wrongs, this chapter argues that disclaimers are fundamental modes of exercising normative powers, whose main functions are demanding recognition, responding to wrongs, voicing disagreement, exiting alienating conditions, and calling for a fair redistribution of specific responsibilities. In particular, understood as disclaimers, denials of responsibility are shown to be key modes of ethical and political empowerment, which play a significant role in producing normative changes and directing societal transformations.
{"title":"Disclaiming Responsibility, Voicing Disagreements, and Negotiating Boundaries","authors":"Carla Bagnoli","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter introduces the novel category of ‘disclaimers’—distinctive normative acts which challenge third-party attributions of responsibility in a community governed by norms of mutual accountability. While the debate focuses on evasive and wrongful refusals to take responsibility for one’s wrongs, this chapter argues that disclaimers are fundamental modes of exercising normative powers, whose main functions are demanding recognition, responding to wrongs, voicing disagreement, exiting alienating conditions, and calling for a fair redistribution of specific responsibilities. In particular, understood as disclaimers, denials of responsibility are shown to be key modes of ethical and political empowerment, which play a significant role in producing normative changes and directing societal transformations.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130331766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0005
C. Peterson, J. Samuel
Metaethical constructivism aims to explain morality’s authority and relevance by basing it in agency, in a capacity of the creatures who are in fact morally bound. But constructivists have struggled to wring anything recognizably moral from an appropriately minimal conception of agency. Even if they could, basing our reasons in our individual agency seems to make other people reason-giving for us only indirectly. This chapter argues for a constructivism based on a social conception of agency, on which our capacity to recognize ourselves as having reasons ties us inescapably to others. It argues that mutual recognition is a pervasive feature of linguistic concepts, and builds this into a view called transformative expressivism.
{"title":"The Right and the Wren","authors":"C. Peterson, J. Samuel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Metaethical constructivism aims to explain morality’s authority and relevance by basing it in agency, in a capacity of the creatures who are in fact morally bound. But constructivists have struggled to wring anything recognizably moral from an appropriately minimal conception of agency. Even if they could, basing our reasons in our individual agency seems to make other people reason-giving for us only indirectly. This chapter argues for a constructivism based on a social conception of agency, on which our capacity to recognize ourselves as having reasons ties us inescapably to others. It argues that mutual recognition is a pervasive feature of linguistic concepts, and builds this into a view called transformative expressivism.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128778512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0011
Pamela Hieronymi
One might be puzzled about what philosophers have in mind when they talk about ‘basic desert,’ ‘true moral responsibility,’ or the ‘condemnatory force’ of moral criticism. In particular, one might be puzzled by its presumed relation to some strong requirement of freedom. The presumption is that, if we are not ‘free’ in some very strong sense, then we are not truly morally responsible and so do not deserve condemnation. But, what is this condemnation and why does it require a strong for of freedom? This chapter responds to this question and offers a new understanding of the presumed relation between a strong form of freedom and a status that might be called ‘condemnation’ or a kind of desert that might be called ‘basic.’
{"title":"Fairness, Sanction, and Condemnation","authors":"Pamela Hieronymi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"One might be puzzled about what philosophers have in mind when they talk about ‘basic desert,’ ‘true moral responsibility,’ or the ‘condemnatory force’ of moral criticism. In particular, one might be puzzled by its presumed relation to some strong requirement of freedom. The presumption is that, if we are not ‘free’ in some very strong sense, then we are not truly morally responsible and so do not deserve condemnation. But, what is this condemnation and why does it require a strong for of freedom? This chapter responds to this question and offers a new understanding of the presumed relation between a strong form of freedom and a status that might be called ‘condemnation’ or a kind of desert that might be called ‘basic.’","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123123258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0004
M. Bratman
This chapter begins with the use of the planning theory of individual temporally extended human action in a construction of shared intention. It then develops a series of further constructions that build on each other: of Hart-type, criticism/demand-involving social rules; of authority-augmented social rules of procedure involved in the rule-guided infrastructure of an organized institution; of institutional intentions as outputs of social rules of procedure (where these intentions require neither corresponding shared intention nor a dense, holistic institutional subject); and of institutional intentional agency. These constructions articulate inter-related roles of our capacity for planning agency in important forms of human practical organization: temporally extended, small-scale social, and institutional.
{"title":"Shared Intention, Organized Institutions","authors":"M. Bratman","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter begins with the use of the planning theory of individual temporally extended human action in a construction of shared intention. It then develops a series of further constructions that build on each other: of Hart-type, criticism/demand-involving social rules; of authority-augmented social rules of procedure involved in the rule-guided infrastructure of an organized institution; of institutional intentions as outputs of social rules of procedure (where these intentions require neither corresponding shared intention nor a dense, holistic institutional subject); and of institutional intentional agency. These constructions articulate inter-related roles of our capacity for planning agency in important forms of human practical organization: temporally extended, small-scale social, and institutional.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"2009 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125643394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0010
Jada Twedt Strabbing
This chapter argues for the blameworthy presentation view of blame, according to which blame is (a) any attitude that, in virtue of being the type of attitude that it is, presents its target as blameworthy in a negatively valenced way; and (b) expressions of that attitude. This view captures what many (but not all) popular accounts of blame have in common and get right, thus explaining the plausibility of those accounts. The blameworthy presentation view therefore identifies blame’s core. Yet, the view is also a rival to those other accounts and, the chapter argues, is superior to them because of its capaciousness, which allows it to capture the blaming attitudes that the narrower accounts miss.
{"title":"Blame and Blameworthy Presentation","authors":"Jada Twedt Strabbing","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter argues for the blameworthy presentation view of blame, according to which blame is (a) any attitude that, in virtue of being the type of attitude that it is, presents its target as blameworthy in a negatively valenced way; and (b) expressions of that attitude. This view captures what many (but not all) popular accounts of blame have in common and get right, thus explaining the plausibility of those accounts. The blameworthy presentation view therefore identifies blame’s core. Yet, the view is also a rival to those other accounts and, the chapter argues, is superior to them because of its capaciousness, which allows it to capture the blaming attitudes that the narrower accounts miss.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127644318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0008
Daniel Telech
While Strawsonians have focused on the way in which our ‘reactive attitudes’—the emotions through which we hold one another responsible for manifestations of morally significant quality of regard—express moral demands, serious doubt has been cast on the idea that non-blaming reactive attitudes direct moral demands to their targets. Building on Gary Watson’s proposal that the reactive attitudes are ‘forms of moral address’, this chapter advances a communicative view of praise according to which the form of moral address distinctive of the praise-manifesting reactive attitudes (approbation, gratitude) is moral invitation. Like moral demand, moral invitation is a species of directive address presupposing its target’s possession of distinctive agential capacities and, when valid, provides its addressee with reason to give the addressor’s directive discursive uptake. While blame’s demands issue imperatival reasons for compliance (e.g. to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize), praise’s invitations provide discretionary reasons to accept credit in jointly valuing the significance of the act for the praiser. In addition to its phenomenological plausibility and contribution to the already fecund Watsonian-cum-Strawsonian program, the invitational view helps renders intelligible the power of our praise practices to facilitate the formation and enrichment of our interpersonal relationships.
{"title":"Praise as Moral Address","authors":"Daniel Telech","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"While Strawsonians have focused on the way in which our ‘reactive attitudes’—the emotions through which we hold one another responsible for manifestations of morally significant quality of regard—express moral demands, serious doubt has been cast on the idea that non-blaming reactive attitudes direct moral demands to their targets. Building on Gary Watson’s proposal that the reactive attitudes are ‘forms of moral address’, this chapter advances a communicative view of praise according to which the form of moral address distinctive of the praise-manifesting reactive attitudes (approbation, gratitude) is moral invitation. Like moral demand, moral invitation is a species of directive address presupposing its target’s possession of distinctive agential capacities and, when valid, provides its addressee with reason to give the addressor’s directive discursive uptake. While blame’s demands issue imperatival reasons for compliance (e.g. to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize), praise’s invitations provide discretionary reasons to accept credit in jointly valuing the significance of the act for the praiser. In addition to its phenomenological plausibility and contribution to the already fecund Watsonian-cum-Strawsonian program, the invitational view helps renders intelligible the power of our praise practices to facilitate the formation and enrichment of our interpersonal relationships.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128780460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0006
A. Webster
This chapter proposes a distinctive kind of agency that can vindicate the agency of members of marginalized groups while accommodating the autonomy-undermining influences of oppression. Socially embedded agency—the locus of which is in the exercise of our ability to negotiate between different social features—is compatible with, and can explain, various phenomena, including double-consciousness and white fragility. Moreover, although socially embedded agency is neither necessary nor sufficient for autonomy, exercising it is practically necessary to achieve autonomy, at least for members of marginalized groups in our non-ideal world. This means that we can also explain why many have thought that there was a tension between autonomy-eroding effects of oppression and the call for respecting the agency of those who are oppressed.
{"title":"Socially Embedded Agency","authors":"A. Webster","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter proposes a distinctive kind of agency that can vindicate the agency of members of marginalized groups while accommodating the autonomy-undermining influences of oppression. Socially embedded agency—the locus of which is in the exercise of our ability to negotiate between different social features—is compatible with, and can explain, various phenomena, including double-consciousness and white fragility. Moreover, although socially embedded agency is neither necessary nor sufficient for autonomy, exercising it is practically necessary to achieve autonomy, at least for members of marginalized groups in our non-ideal world. This means that we can also explain why many have thought that there was a tension between autonomy-eroding effects of oppression and the call for respecting the agency of those who are oppressed.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"398 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124524558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-19DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0003
L. O’Brien
It is widely accepted that we are answerable in a special way for our intentional actions. And it is also widely accepted that we are thus answerable because we perform intentional actions for reasons. The aim of this chapter is to argue against this ‘reasons’ view of such answerability. First, reasons are distinguished from practical standards. Then, it is argued that the best interpretation of the practices in which we treat agents as answerable is that they fundamentally concern practical standards rather than reasons. This view shows that we are answerable, not just because we are deliberators, but because we are executive agents whose complex executive capacities open us to criticism.
{"title":"Answerability Without Reasons","authors":"L. O’Brien","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"It is widely accepted that we are answerable in a special way for our intentional actions. And it is also widely accepted that we are thus answerable because we perform intentional actions for reasons. The aim of this chapter is to argue against this ‘reasons’ view of such answerability. First, reasons are distinguished from practical standards. Then, it is argued that the best interpretation of the practices in which we treat agents as answerable is that they fundamentally concern practical standards rather than reasons. This view shows that we are answerable, not just because we are deliberators, but because we are executive agents whose complex executive capacities open us to criticism.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126652134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-19DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0007
Daniel C. Burnston
According to the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), genuine actions are individuated by their causal history. Actions are bodily movements that are causally explained by citing the agent’s reasons. Reasons are then explained as some combination of propositional attitudes—beliefs, desires, and/or intentions. The CTA is thus committed to realism about the attitudes. This chapter explores current models of decision-making from the mind sciences, and argues that it is far from obvious how to locate the propositional attitudes in the causal processes they describe. The outcome of the analysis is a proposal for pluralism: there are several ways one could attempt to map states like ‘intention’ onto decision-making processes, but none will fulfill all of the roles attributed to the attitudes by the CTA.
{"title":"Pluralistic Attitude-Explanation and the Mechanisms of Intentional Action","authors":"Daniel C. Burnston","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"According to the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), genuine actions are individuated by their causal history. Actions are bodily movements that are causally explained by citing the agent’s reasons. Reasons are then explained as some combination of propositional attitudes—beliefs, desires, and/or intentions. The CTA is thus committed to realism about the attitudes. This chapter explores current models of decision-making from the mind sciences, and argues that it is far from obvious how to locate the propositional attitudes in the causal processes they describe. The outcome of the analysis is a proposal for pluralism: there are several ways one could attempt to map states like ‘intention’ onto decision-making processes, but none will fulfill all of the roles attributed to the attitudes by the CTA.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134402645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-19DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0009
Hannah Tierney
Recent work on blameworthiness has prominently featured discussions of guilt. The philosophers who develop guilt-based views of blameworthiness do an excellent job of attending to the evaluative and affective features of feeling guilty. However, these philosophers have been less attentive to guilt’s characteristic action tendencies and the role admissions of guilt play in our blaming practices. This chapter focuses on the nature of guilty confession and argues that it illuminates an important function of blame that has been overlooked in the recent work on guilt as it relates to blameworthiness: Blame can communicate respect.
{"title":"Guilty Confessions","authors":"Hannah Tierney","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192844644.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Recent work on blameworthiness has prominently featured discussions of guilt. The philosophers who develop guilt-based views of blameworthiness do an excellent job of attending to the evaluative and affective features of feeling guilty. However, these philosophers have been less attentive to guilt’s characteristic action tendencies and the role admissions of guilt play in our blaming practices. This chapter focuses on the nature of guilty confession and argues that it illuminates an important function of blame that has been overlooked in the recent work on guilt as it relates to blameworthiness: Blame can communicate respect.","PeriodicalId":383646,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 7","volume":"244 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133491529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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