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Full download Ways to be Blameworthy: Rightness, Wrongness, and Responsibility Elinor Mason file pdf all chapter on 2024
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Ways to be Blameworthy
Ways to be
Blameworthy
Rightness, Wrongness,
and Responsibility
Elinor Mason
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Elinor Mason 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968142
ISBN 978–0–19–883360–4
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Contents
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lion and Praise会 and Blame,vorthiness 23
3. Subjective ObU萨tion and Action Guidance 27
4. Anchoring Subjective Obli胪tion: The True Morality 31
5. Grasping Morality 37
6. Formula血g SubjectiveObligation: Beli亟 42
7. Formulating SubjectiveObli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.ngto Try 71
8. Conclusion 73
4. Ordinary Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness 75
1. Compe血g Accounts of Subjective Obligation 76
2. Pure Subjectivism and Conscience Respectworthiness 78
3. The Moral Concern View. tbe Searchlight ViC\v,and 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eel Blame (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~edMotivations 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paired Agents 154
2. Culpable Ignorance 158
3. Moral Moti四tion and 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
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
at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. I am extremely
grateful for the opportunity.
I am heavily indebted to many people, but a few stand out as being
heroically helpful. Michael McKenna read several drafts and was unfail-
ingly generous: this book has benefited enormously from his astute
comments and suggestions. Gunnar Björnsson has not only discussed
these ideas with me on numerous occasions, and read various sections at
various points, but also arranged a workshop on the final draft in
Gothenburg. I am incredibly grateful to him and to the other commen-
tators on that occasion for their careful and insightful criticisms (Krister
Bykvist, Andreas Brekke Carlsson, Ragnar Francén, Robert Hartman,
Kristin Mickelson, and András Szigeti). I am also immensely grateful to
Guy Fletcher for organizing a reading group on an early draft at the
University of Edinburgh, and to the other participants (Matthew Chrisman,
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
various ways, and I feel very privileged to have had the chance to benefit
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
which I have gratefully incorporated into the final version.
There are many others who have helped me in various ways, reading
and commenting on chapters, discussing the ideas at various stages, and
providing general intellectual support and stimulation. I would particu-
larly like to thank Luc Bovens, Ruth Chang, Stewart Cohen, Ben Colburn,
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
Oxford University Press for advice and encouragement.
viii
1. Methodology
The methodology I use in coming to this account of how we should use
our concepts is a sort of reflective equilibrium. We need to think both
about the way we actually use these concepts and about what we want
from them. We want our concepts to be clear and well defined, we want as
many as we need, we want to be able to make some fairly fine-grained
distinctions, and of course we want them to serve the purpose that we
have them for. We might end up doing some conceptual engineering:
adjusting our concepts to better suit our needs. On one common view, a
view I share, both our moral concepts and our responsibility concepts
are there to regulate and make sense of our interpersonal engagement.
We should decide on which concepts to use, and how to use them, on the
basis of how those concepts function in our relationships.
¹ Throughout the book I assume that ‘rightness’, ‘obligation’, and ‘ought’ are corollaries,
and likewise for the converses, ‘wrongness’, ‘prohibition’, and ‘ought-not’. I am aware that,
pragmatically, ‘ought’ seems less strong than ‘obligation’, and similarly, ‘ought-not’ seems
less strong than ‘prohibition’, but I set that complication aside here.
³ Gary Watson and Michael Zimmerman have, in different ways, done a lot of work on
normative responsibility, though neither describes it as such. Michael McKenna (2012),
Manuel Vargas (2013), and David Shoemaker (2015) all have recent books that seem to me
to be clear examples of work on normative responsibility in my sense. McKenna focuses on
the overall shape of our responsibility concepts, arguing that they must be seen as part of a
communicative practice; Vargas likewise focuses on the overall shape, arguing that the
background justification for particular practices is consequentialist. Shoemaker focuses on
the correctness conditions for blame, giving a pluralist account of what sort of quality of will
is relevant to responsibility. I contrast my account with Shoemaker’s at various points, but
the main difference is that whereas Shoemaker’s is a sentimentalist account, arguing that
there are various reactive attitudes that are fitting in response to various qualities of will in
the blamee, mine is more radically pluralist. On my view there can be more to blame-
worthiness than quality of will, and more to blame than sentiment, and the fundamental
sorting issue is the way in which the agent acted wrongly.
⁴ See, for example Pereboom (2001) and elsewhere. Pereboom doubts that we can give
an account of the normative conditions for blame that are anything but consequentialist.
I do not address that head on in this book, but I give a non-consequentialist account.
⁵ Holly Smith is an exception; I discuss her work in what follows. I refer to her views as
presented in her published papers, but her arguments are developed in more detail in her
book, Making Morality Work, in press as I write this.
⁶ The idea that we should understand moral responsibility practices in terms of inter-
personal interactions is of course due to P. F. Strawson (1962). See Shabo (2012) for a
defence of the Strawsonian view that responsibility practices and relationships are deeply
intertwined. Recent commentators have pointed out and developed Strawson’s emphasis on
the moral community, and the communicative aspects of our moral responsibility
practices—see Watson (2004 and elsewhere), Hiernonymi (2004), Darwall (2006),
Scanlon (2008), McKenna (2012), and Macnamara (2015a). I draw on much of this work
in what follows.
⁷ Strawson is often interpreted as arguing that our reactions to quality of will in others
are what make sense of our moral responsibility practices. Bennett (1980) certainly takes
Strawson to be a projectivist, as do later commentators who take themselves to be improv-
ing on Strawson’s projectivism by giving an account of when it is appropriate to have the
reactive attitudes—Wallace (1994), Fischer and Ravizza (1998). My own view is that
Strawson’s most interesting contributions here should not be read as a contribution to
the compatibilism/incompatibilism debate at all; rather, they are a contribution to norma-
tive responsibility theorizing.
I think Williams is right about this. In the end, we cannot expect the four
elements he speaks of, cause, intention, state of mind, and appropriate
response, to relate in exactly the same way in every circumstance. I argue,
in a Williams-esque vein, that we can be blameworthy for more than just
what we intend, and for more than just what comes from our deep
motivations. I argue that sometimes people should take responsibility
for what they do through glitches or automated psychological processes.
2. The Arguments
In Chapter 2 I introduce the responsibility constraint, which is a way to
put the claim that our normative concepts, rightness and wrongness, are
essentially related to responsibility concepts. The responsibility con-
straint is vague as it stands, and in this chapter I explore various ways
to cash out the fundamental thought.
I argue that there is a sensible objective account of rightness and
wrongness that meets a fairly weak version of the responsibility con-
straint. The point of an objective account of rightness is to provide a
general benchmark for behaviour, a standard that we should strive to
meet. The account of objective rightness I favour, prospective rightness,
does not abstract away from all uncertainty, but takes into account
reasonable factual ignorance. Thus, when we look at what is prospect-
ively right, we are thinking about what it would be reasonable to do in the
circumstances. We are not just thinking about what would be best, but
about what agents like us might be expected to do.
I then turn to the concept of rightness that I am really interested in,
subjective rightness. I argue that the point of an account of subjective
obligation is to give us a story about what makes the agent praise- or
blameworthy. Objective obligation specifies a target, which the agent
may or may not hit. Hitting the target would be good, but sometimes
agents miss through no fault of their own. So even if we know that an
agent fulfilled (or failed to fulfil) her objective obligation, we do not
In the book I use a capital letter to denote that I am talking about the one
true Morality, ‘The True and the Good’, as Susan Wolf calls it (1990).
I talk of this as if it is an objective meta-ethical fact, but that is just a
way of talking. The view is not that this must be metaphysically real,
rather the view is that we need to refer to our shared understanding of
the moral facts. I leave it open to fill in the meta-ethical account of the
status of these facts. All I need here is that it makes sense to us to talk
about getting morality right and getting it wrong—and it clearly does, in
sharp contrast to our views about the tastiness of Marmite, for example,
which we obviously take to be a non-factive issue.
It is important to point out that my account of Morality is broad, and
allows for reasonable error. One can ‘have a grasp of Morality’ in my sense
without getting everything right. There is room for reasonable disagree-
ment (I defend that in Chapter 2). Also, although I think that most people
do have a grasp of Morality, I do not want to imply that people have all the
answers at their fingertips. The claim is rather that people would assent to
the main tenets of Morality if they thought through their most seriously
held convictions and commitments, and that they can use their knowledge
of Morality to figure out what to do on particular occasions.
In Chapter 3 I give an intuitive account of the sense of trying that I am
interested in here. Acting subjectively rightly and trying are both subject
to some sort of accessibility requirement. I argue that in the case of
trying, this is best understood as a reflexivity requirement: the agent
must know what she is doing.Trying to do something involves having
the goal as a conscious aim. A flower is not trying to turn towards the
sun and similarly, I argue, human behaviour may be causally affected by
an aim without its being the case that the agent is trying to achieve that
aim. At the same time, we can be trying to do things that we are not
aware, at the time, of trying to do. Thus, surprisingly, it may sometimes
be the case that we are acting subjectively rightly and do not know it, or
believe that we are acting subjectively right but are not. I defend this
consequence of my view by arguing that there is no theory that can fully
meet an accessibility requirement, and so the accessibility requirement
must be relaxed.
I use the concept of trying in a broad sense, so that it applies to doings
as well as ‘setting oneself ’. When an agent is trying to do well by
Morality, she must seek more information when necessary, including
about the nature of Morality. It is essential that she has a good grasp of
⁸ The terminology is contested, but I will use the term ‘attributionist’ to refer to views that
base moral responsibility for acts on the agent’s deep character and motivations rather than on
what she does knowingly. I am referring here to Arpaly and Schroeder’s work on praise- and
blameworthiness—see Arpaly and Schroeder (1999) and Arpaly (2003) in particular. As well as
Arpaly and Schroeder’s work, attributionism is developed (in various different ways) by
Watson (1996, reprinted in 2004), Angela Smith (2005 and elsewhere), Scanlon (1998 and
elsewhere), Sher (2009 and elsewhere), and Talbert (2008 and elsewhere).
Another random document with
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un combattimento navale di tremila uomini, che susseguito fu da una
pugna di fanti. Perciocchè gli Ateniesi, superato avendo i Siracusani
(giacchè sotto questo nome pugnato avevano), scesero nell’isola, ed
assalito avendo certo muro che intorno al monimento di quel luogo
era condotto, lo presero. Per cento giorni [178] durarono quegli
spettacoli atti a pascere la vista. Ma utile riuscì ancor questo alla
plebe, perchè Tito piccioli globi di legno da luogo eminente nel teatro
gettava, i quali tessere contenevano coll’indicazione di qualche
vivanda, di una veste, e di un vaso d’argento o d’oro, di cavalli, di
giumenti, di bestiami e di servi. Chiunque, alcuno di quei globetti
coglieva, portavalo al dispensatore de’ donativi, e la cosa che dentro
era scritta, conseguiva».
Tito dedicò l’Anfiteatro in nome proprio e non in quello del padre; ed
a questa dedicazione, nonchè alle sontuose feste e giuochi in
quell’occasione celebrati, alludono due medaglie, portanti nella parte
dritta la figura di Tito, assisa sopra trofei ed in atto di presentare un
ramoscello d’olivo; e, sul rovescio, l’Anfiteatro con la Mèta Sudante a
sinistra [179], ed un portico a doppio ordine di colonne a destra:
prospetto che corrisponde alla parte dell’edificio che guarda il Celio,
il cui arco, prossimo al centrale del primo ordine esterno, portava il
numero I [180]. Che il cono che osservasi a sinistra dell’Anfiteatro
rappresenti la Mèta Sudante, checchè ne dica il Maffei [181], non v’ha
ormai chi dubiti. Ma che cosa sia quel portico a doppio ordine di
colonne che si scorge a destra, è ancora molto disputabile. Se col
Guattani [182] e col Nibby [183] si volesse ritenere che quel portico
abbia comunicato col palazzo di Tito sull’Esquilino, noi non ci
sapremmo spiegare come esso si potesse vedere dal lato opposto
dell’Anfiteatro. Il prospetto dell’edificio rappresentato nella medaglia
corrisponde, come si è detto, alla parte che guarda il Celio. Ma a
destra di chi guarda l’arco centrale, prossimo al fornice che portava il
numero I, non v’è certamente l’Esquilino. Che cosa adunque
potrebbe rappresentare quel portico? Forse un luogo ove
s’intrattenevano le persone di riguardo, allor chè i raggi del sole eran
troppo ardenti, facendovi combattere qualche coppia di
gladiatori? [184] — Forse un luogo coperto destinato al ritiro di chi
voleva sollevarsi un poco dall’incomodo di stare nell’Anfiteatro molto
tempo per tornarvi tosto, o per ristorarsi, giacchè nell’Anfiteatro era
proibito il bere, ecc.? [185] — Forse un apoditerio, o finalmente un
propilèo? [186].
Fra tante opinioni, anch’io mi permetto esprimere la mia.
Sappiamo che l’Anfiteatro è opera dei Flavî: Vespasiano lo
incominciò, Tito proseguì l’edificio e lo dedicò, Domiziano lo portò a
compimento. Sappiamo inoltre che Tito costrusse presso l’Anfiteatro
le sue Terme, e che, finalmente, Domiziano ristabilì la Mèta Sudante,
facendola assai bella e decorata [187]. Non potremmo adunque
congetturare che in quelle medaglie si siano volute commemorare
simultaneamente le tre famose opere dei Flavî, vale a dire,
l’Anfiteatro, le Terme e la Mèta Sudante? E questa congettura non si
rende ancor più verosimile se si rifletta che solamente nelle
medaglie dei Flavî vediamo effigiato il portico a doppio ordine di
colonne? Se così fosse, il portico di cui parliamo sarebbe una parte
delle Thermae Titianae [188]. Le ragioni poi che ci spingono a ritenere
le Terme di Tito verso il Laterano piuttosto che sull’Esquilie, le
esporremo a suo luogo [189].
La prima di queste medaglie ha l’iscrizione:
ESA VST
V M VRA
VI
(C. I, l. IV, parte 4, 32254).