Taking Responsibility

This chapter introduces a third sort of blameworthiness, extended blameworthiness. The argument defends the idea that we can take responsibility. One kind of relevant case was discussed in Chapter 6: sometimes agents try hard, but because of their own bad motivations, do badly. This chapter returns to that case, and considers two other challenges: cases where an agent’s act or omission is bad but entirely inadvertent, and cases where an agent acts through implicit biases. In these cases, there is some pull to find the agent blameworthy. We can make sense of that by arguing that when certain sorts of relationship are at stake, agents should take responsibility for their failures and be willing to engage in the blame conversation. In taking responsibility they become properly blameworthy in the extended way.