Moral Responsibility

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
First published Sat Jan 6, 2001; substantive revision Wed Mar 26, 2014

When a person performs or fails to perform a morally significant action, we sometimes think that a particular kind of response is warranted. Praise and blame are perhaps the most obvious forms this reaction might take. For example, one who encounters a car accident may be regarded as worthy of praise for having saved a child from inside the burning car, or alternatively, one may be regarded as worthy of blame for not having used one's mobile phone to call for help. To regard such agents as worthy of one of these reactions is to regard them as responsible for what they have done or left undone. (These are examples of other-directed ascriptions of responsibility. The reaction might also be self-directed, e.g., one can recognize oneself to be blameworthy). Thus, to be morally responsible for something, say an action, is to be worthy of a particular kind of reaction—praise, blame, or something akin to these—for having performed it.

The entire article is here.

Beliefs in moral luck: When and why blame hinges on luck

By Heather C. Lench, Darren Domsky, Rachel Smallman and Kathleen E. Darbor
The British Journal of Psychology
DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12072

Abstract

Belief in moral luck is represented in judgements that offenders should be held accountable for intent to cause harm as well as whether or not harm occurred. Scores on a measure of moral luck beliefs predicted judgements of offenders who varied in intent and the outcomes of their actions, although judgements overall were not consistent with abstract beliefs in moral luck. Prompting participants to consider alternative outcomes, particularly worse outcomes, reduced moral luck beliefs. Findings suggest that some people believe that offenders should be punished based on the outcome of their actions. Furthermore, prompting counterfactuals decreased judgements consistent with moral luck beliefs. The results have implications for theories of moral judgement as well as legal decision making.

The entire story is here, behind a paywall.

Dennett Willing to Abandon the term "Free Will"?

By Greg Caruso
Flickers of Freedom Blog
Originally posted March 19, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the Sean Carroll workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don’t have free will, couldn’t have free will, but so what? It has nothing to do with morality or the meaning of life. Their advice to me at the symposium was simple: recast my pressing question as whether naturalism (materialism, determinism, science...) has any implications for what we may call moral competence. For instance, does neuroscience show that we cannot be responsible for our choices, cannot justifiably be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished? Abandon the term “free will” to the libertarians and other incompatibilists, who can pursue their fantasies untroubled. - See more at:

The entire blog post is here.

The Failure of Social and Moral Intuitions

Edge Videos
HeadCon '13: Part IX
David Pizarro

Today I want to talk a little about our social and moral intuitions and I want to present a case that they're rapidly failing, more so than ever. Let me start with an example. Recently, I collaborated with economist Rob Frank, roboticist Cynthia Breazeal, and social psychologist David DeSteno. The experiment that we did was interested in looking at how we detect trustworthiness in others.

We had people interact—strangers interact in the lab—and we filmed them, and we got the cues that seemed to indicate that somebody's going to be either more cooperative or less cooperative. But the fun part of this study was that for the second part we got those cues and we programmed a robot—Nexi the robot, from the lab of Cynthia Breazeal at MIT—to emulate, in one condition, those non-verbal gestures. So what I'm talking about today is not about the results of that study, but rather what was interesting about looking at people interacting with the robot.



The entire page is here.

Punishment and Blame within Criminal Justice

By Hanna Pickard
Flickers of Freedom
Originally posted January 21, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

As well as working clinically with patients, I’m also currently developing a training for prison officers, to teach them how to distinguish responsibility from blame in theory and in practice, as part of an initiative to increase awareness and skills working with personality disorder (PD) and promote a more rehabilitative environment within prisons. On a purely personal note, going into prisons has been hard. Over time I’ve become much less scared, but I still can’t bear being locked in, dependent on the officers and their keys to get out. Every time I go, I can’t quite believe we’ve ended up doing this to people, no matter what they’ve done. So I certainly think there’s reason to re-think radically the entire system, on multiple grounds. However the training I’m developing and the theoretical work that underpins it aims to be pragmatic rather than revolutionary – and that’s what I’m going to blog about today. No utopian ideals!

We currently spend millions and millions imprisoning offenders. Meanwhile there’s some real and plenty of anecdotal evidence that one of the best ways to increase re-offending is to put people in jail – arguably, you really couldn’t design a better environment to entrench criminality if you tried. Yet 66% of male offenders and 50% of female offenders have PD – they have many of the same mental health problems and psycho-socio-economic backgrounds as patients in the community who we know we can help in Therapeutic Communities and other forms of treatment program.

The entire blog post is here.

The Distinction Between Antisociality And Mental Illness

By Abigail Marsh
Edge.org
Originally published January 15, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Cognitive biases include widespread tendencies to view actions that cause harm to others as fundamentally more intentional and blameworthy than identical actions that happen not to result in harm to others, as has been shown by Joshua Knobe and others in investigations of the "side-effect effect", and to view agents who cause harm as fundamentally more capable of intentional and goal-directed behavior than those who incur harm, as has been shown by Kurt Gray and others in investigations of distinction between moral agents and moral patients. These biases dictate that an individual who is predisposed to behavior that harms others as a result of genetic and environmental risk factors will be inherently viewed as more responsible for his or her behaviors than another individual predisposed to behavior that harms himself as a result of similar genetic and environmental risk factors. The tendency to view those who harm others as responsible for their actions, and thus blameworthy, may reflect seemingly evolved tendencies to reinforce social norms by blaming and punishing wrongdoers for their misbehavior.

The entire blog post is here.

Tweet Police

Kansas’ ability to fire professors for posting on social media is bad news for academic freedom—and may not even be legal.

By Frank K. LoMonte
Inside Higher Ed via Slate
Originally posted January 3, 2014

For decades, the Supreme Court has kept vigil over the campuses of state universities as, in the words of one memorable 1995 ruling, "peculiarly the marketplace for ideas." No opinion, the Supreme Court has emphasized, is too challenging or unsettling that it can be banned from the college classroom.

Forget the classroom—professors today are fortunate if they can be safe from punishment for an unkind word posted from a home computer on a personal, off-campus blog.

The Kansas Board of Regents triggered academic-freedom alarm bells across America last month with a hastily adopted revision to university personnel policies that makes “improper use of social media” grounds for discipline up to and including termination. (While the board this week ordered a review of the policy, it remains in place.)

The entire story is here.

Sanity of Psychologist’s Killer Is Again at Issue

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
The New York Times
Published: January 2, 2014

The mental health of a man accused of killing a psychologist in her Upper East Side office was once again in question on Thursday, just as a judge in Manhattan was about to set a date for a new trial because the first one ended in a hung jury.

Lawyers for the man, David Tarloff, 45, said during a hearing on Thursday that a court-appointed psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital Center had found him unfit to stand trial during an examination in November.

The entire story is here.

The Emotions That Prosecutors Elicit to Make Jurors Vote Guilty

Jurors experiencing “moral outrage” will be more likely to convict, and changes in technology are making this a bigger factor.

By Lauren Kirchner
The Pacific Standard
Originally published December 4, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Recently, two psychologists teamed up to analyze and identify the emotions that have the most impact on the outcome of jury trials. They had participants in mock trials read scenarios and look at crime-scene evidence, and keep track of their feelings throughout the experiment. The researchers found that anger paired with disgust makes up the powerful mix of emotions that we often call “moral outrage.” The authors also concluded that this particular response—more than sadness, more than the desire for vengeance, more than any other emotion—is the one that most often brings jurors to vote to convict, and to be confident in those convictions.

“Humans intuitively understand what moral outrage is,” said Jessica M. Salernoo, co-author of the study, published in the journal Psychological Science. “However, researchers debate its emotional components. We wanted to investigate the relationships between anger and disgust since emotions tend to co-occur with each other.” Salerno and her co-author, Liana C. Peter-Hagene, note that this mix of emotions is entirely involuntary, and the jurors can often be unaware that they are feeling it—which makes it that much more effective.

The entire article is here.

Moral Responsibility and PAP

By Heath White
PEA Soup
A blog dedicated to philosophy, ethics, and academia
Originally posted December 19, 2013

Does moral responsibility require the ability to do otherwise?  For example, must one have been able to refrain from an evil deed if one is to be appropriately blamed for it?  The answer turns on the truth of a familiar principle:

(PAP) If S is blameworthy for doing X, S must have been able to do otherwise than X.

The traditional view is that (PAP) is true; Frankfurt argued that it was false, with a form of example which is still widely discussed.  I’m going to argue for Frankfurt’s conclusion in a way that has nothing to do with Frankfurt-style examples.  I’d be interested in feedback.

Blaming (or punishing) someone for failing to live up to a moral standard is a special case of a more general phenomenon.  There are many cases where there is some kind of requirement, someone fails to live up to it, and negative consequences are imposed as a result.  It is instructive to look at how we view “couldn’t have done otherwise” in these other cases.

The entire blog post is here.

Free Will, Responsibility, and Psychology

Greg Caruso and Bruce Waller Discussion
Philosophy TV
Originally posted December 16, 2013

Most people believe that we can and should be held morally responsible for our actions. Caruso and Waller both hold that this belief is not only false, but harmful. They recommend that we abandon the notion of moral responsibility. But they disagree about free will: Waller thinks that we can preserve a scientifically and philosophically respectable notion of free will without moral responsibility; Caruso thinks that free will and moral responsibility should both be rejected. They begin their discussion with an overview of the traditional problem of free will (1:09). Next, they discuss Waller’s view of free will (9:14) and debate whether the notion of free will ought to be given up (23:51). Then they lay out their reasons to be skeptical about moral responsibility (41:04) and consider some of the concerns that have been expressed by defenders of moral responsibility (54:05).




The original information is here.

Why Do Some Falsely Claim to Be Victims?

By Benjamin Radford
Discovery News
Originally published December 5, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

There are several factors that help hoaxers get away with their false reports. One of them is that victims are given special status based on the simple — and usually true — assumption that they actually have been victimized. Most people who report insults and crimes against them are telling the truth. The vast majority of physical and sexual assaults, property crimes, auto thefts and so on are real and legitimate. Hoaxers exploit this fact by hiding their faked reports in a sea of genuine ones.

Until the public and police become suspicious, hoaxers are given the benefit of the doubt, attention and assistance and treated with sympathy.

Hoaxers also often gain credibility through real or claimed membership in an oppressed or respected group. Our culture bestows respect and credibility on certain groups, such as mothers, members of the military, professionals, some minorities including the gay community, the elderly, clergy and others.

In many cases the claims themselves are often lacking significant details. They are plausible enough to be taken seriously by supporters and the public, but when police and experienced investigators examine their story, parts don’t add up.

The entire story is here.

Judge gives probation to teen who killed four in DWI crash citing 'affluenza'

By Jim Douglas
KHOU - Houston Texas
Originally posted December 10, 2013

Here is two excerpts:

Prior to sentencing, a psychologist called by the defense, Dr. G. Dick Miller,  testified that Couch's life could be salvaged with one to two years' treatment and no contact with his parents.

(cut)

Miller said Couch's parents gave him "freedoms no young person should have." He called Couch a product of "affluenza," where his family felt that wealth bought privilege and there was no rational link between behavior and consequences.

He said Couch got whatever he wanted. As an example,  Miller said Couch's parents gave no punishment after police ticketed the then-15-year-old when he was found in a parked pickup with a passed out, undressed 14-year-old girl.

The entire story is here.

Forgiveness: How does it work?

By Justin Caouette
A Philosopher's Take
Originally published June 12, 2013

Here are some excerpts:

My current philosophical interests are centered around the metaphysics of moral responsibility. This forces me to deal with the assumed underlying epistemic and control conditions. It also forces me to consider blame; when one is worthy of it (blameworthiness), how we normally ascribe it (active blame), and how we move from blame and holding one accountable to forgiveness. The focus of this post will be on forgiveness and some questions that arise when thinking about it.

(cut)

Emotional forgiveness seems to be a more difficult form of forgiveness that is much less attainable. Let’s take the same case into consideration. Following the punch in the face you get angry. Even after you’ve come to a rational understanding of why he did it you may still carry the anger or disappointment in his inability to see the difference between you and the thief. This may permanently harm your relationship to him, and, if it does it can be said that you have not emotionally forgave him.

The entire blog post is here.

Interview with Paul Russell on Free Will and Responsibility

Many philosophical theories try to evade the uncomfortable truth that luck and fate play a role in the conduct of our moral lives, argues the philosopher. He chooses the best books on free will and responsibility.

By Nigel Warburton @philosophybites
Five Books
Originally published December 2, 2013

What is free will?

Our interest in free will starts from our self-image. We are conscious of being agents in the world, capable of doing things and being active. We believe that we can intervene and order our own fate. We’re in control of the trajectory of our own life. That self-image immediately tracks something that is deeply important to us, which is our sense that we are also moral agents. We are accountable to one another for the quality of our actions and what flows from them.

So the problem of free will starts off at a very general level with the question ‘Are we really in control?’ In particular, is our view of ourselves as accountable, moral, ethical agents — which is intimately connected with that self-image — really accurate?

Most people feel, to some degree, in control of how they behave. There may be moments when they become irrational and other forces take over,  or where outside people force them to do things, but if I want to raise my hand or say “Stop!” those things seem to be easily within my conscious control. We also feel very strongly that people, including ourselves, merit praise and blame for the actions they perform because it’s us that’s performing them. It’s not someone else doing those things. And if we do something wrong, knowingly, it’s right to blame us for that.

That’s right. The common sense view — although we may articulate it in different ways in different cultures — is that there is some relevant sense in which we are in control and we are morally accountable. What makes philosophy interesting is that sceptical arguments can be put forward that appear to undermine or discredit our confidence in this common sense position. One famous version of this difficulty has theological roots. If, as everyone once assumed, there is a God, who creates the world and has the power to decide all that happens in it, then our common sense view of ourselves as free agents seems to be threatened, since God controls and guides everything that happens – including all our actions. Similar or related problems seem to arise with modern science.

The scientific challenge is that for everything that we do, we can explain it causally. There’s some prior cause that made us do that — you can go back to childhood, to genetics, early conditioning, environmental factors. When you give the full picture, it seems there is no room for freedom.

Exactly. As in a lot of other familiar philosophical problems, critical reflection and self-consciousness about our commitments erodes our natural easy confidence, or, if you want, our complacency.

The entire interview is here.

US courts see rise in defendants blaming their brains for criminal acts

By Ian Sample, Science Correspondent in San Diego
The Guardian, Sunday 10 November 2013

Criminal courts in the United States are facing a surge in the number of defendants arguing that their brains were to blame for their crimes and relying on questionable scans and other controversial, unproven neuroscience, a legal expert who has advised the president has warned.

Nita Farahany, a professor of law who sits on Barack Obama's bioethics advisory panel, told a Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego that those on trial were mounting ever more sophisticated defences that drew on neurological evidence in an effort to show they were not fully responsible for murderous or other criminal actions.

Lawyers typically drew on brain scans and neuropsychological tests to reduce defendants' sentences, but in a substantial number of cases the evidence was used to try to clear defendants of all culpability.

The entire story is here.

Moral signals, public outrage, and immaterial harms

David Tannenbaum, Eric Luis Uhlmann, & Daniel Diermeier
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 1249–1254

Abstract

Public outrage is often triggered by “immaterially” harmful acts (i.e., acts with relatively negligible consequences). A well-known example involves corporate salaries and perks: they generate public outrage yet their financial cost is relatively minor. The present research explains this paradox by appealing to a person-centered approach to moral judgment. Strong moral reactions can occur when relatively harmless acts provide highly diagnostic information about moral character. Studies 1a and 1bfirst demonstrate dissociation between moral evaluations of persons and their actions—although violence toward a human was viewed as a more blameworthy act than violence toward an animal, the latter was viewed as more revealing of bad moral character. Study 2 then shows that person-centered cues directly influence moral judgments—participants preferred to hire a more expensive CEO when the alternative candidate requested a frivolous perk as part of his compensation package, an effect mediated by the informativeness of his request.

The entire article is here.

The Drug Made Me Do It: An Examination of the Prozac Defense

By J. Marshall
The Neuroethics Blog
Originally posted September 10, 2013

The plot of a recent Hollywood thriller, Side Effects, revolves around many pressing legal and ethical questions surrounding the use of anti-depressant medications. The movie explores the life of a supposedly depressed woman—Emily Taylor—who seeks treatment from her psychiatrist. Emily’s doctor prescribes her an anti-depressant—Ablixa. Emily then proceeds to murder her husband in cold blood while under the influence of the drug. The movie seeks to explore the culpability of this depressed woman in a legal sense. During the trial, the psychiatrist argues that neither he nor Emily Taylor is responsible; rather, Emily Taylor was simply “a hopeless victim of circumstance and biology.” Is it possible that a drug could be responsible for one’s actions as argued by the psychiatrist in the movie? The answer is not clear. Nonetheless, the possibility that someone could escape criminal punishment due to a certain anti-depressant represents a serious ethical quandary that should be examined.

The entire blog post is here.