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Friday, January 30, 2015

Does Moral Responsibility Come in Degrees?

By Justin Caouette
Flickers of Freedom Blog
Originally published January 14, 2015

Here are two excerpts:

I think Mele is right to say that moral responsibility is commonly regarded as a matter of degree, but I’m not so sure that such an assumption is warranted. And, if the assumption is warranted, I think it’s worthwhile to get clear on why this is so.  Investigating this so-called degree feature might help to shed light on the nature of moral responsibility itself. Further, if one holds that moral responsibility does come in degrees it might limit what one can say about the nature of moral responsibility and this conclusion could be fruitful as well for those trying to uncover the the root of the differences between competing views.

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So, the purpose of posting on this topic is simply to get a sense of how can we make sense of moral responsibility as coming in degrees. Must we assume that blameworthiness and moral responsibility is the same thing to make sense of this? And, what does it even mean to say that moral responsibility comes in degrees?

The entire blog post, and some great responses, are here.

Editor's Note: These types of articles are particularly relevant for forensic psychology, and helping to understand how psychologists help describe mitigating factors.

Moral responsibility is also easily applied to psychotherapy.