Ability, Responsibility, and Global Justice

Buckwalter, Wesley

doi:10.1007/s40961-017-0120-z

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…His empirical results also supported previous experimental findings (e.g. Buckwalter, 2017;Miller & Feltz, 2011;Murray & Lombrozo, 2017;Willemsen, 2018Willemsen, , 2020Woolfolk et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Variations of the vignettes discussed in this paper and in Turri (2017) significant impact on the philosophical debate (Kissinger-Knox et al, 2018;Kurthy et al, 2017;Streumer, 2003;Willemsen & Wiegmann, 2017). In addition, most experimental studies rely on experimental stimuli that resemble the two vignettes described in this study, in that an agent is described as determined in conducting and acting in a specific situation (Buckwalter, 2017;Miller & Feltz, 2011;Murray & Lombrozo, 2017;Willemsen, 2018Willemsen, , 2020Woolfolk et al, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Direct and Derivative Moral Responsibility: An Overlooked Distinction in Experimental Philosophy

Willemsen¹

2022

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Free Will and Responsibility

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Moral philosophers draw an important distinction between two kinds of moral responsibility. An agent can be directly morally responsible, or they can be derivatively morally responsible. Many scholars in the debate believe that direct moral responsibility for an action presupposes that the agent could have acted other than she actually did. However, in some situations, we hold agents responsible even though they could not have acted differently, such as when they recklessly cause an accident or do not take adequate precautions to avoid harmful consequences. Moral philosophers often argue that what we ascribe in these cases is derivative moral responsibility for the action, which results from direct moral responsibility for some other, earlier action. In this paper, I apply this conceptual distinction to the experimental debate about so-called folk-compatibilism or, more precisely, to the question of whether the folk reject the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. I argue that experimental philosophers have failed to consider this distinction when designing experiments and interpreting their results. With the help of three experiments, I demonstrate that intuitions which seem to conflict with the Principle of Alternative Possibilities are best explained by the attribution of derivative moral responsibility. For this reason, these studies do not speak in favour of compatibilism.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Direct and Derivative Moral Responsibility: An Overlooked Distinction in Experimental Philosophy

Willemsen¹

2022

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Free Will and Responsibility

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“…This intuition was recently confirmed in a series of experimental studies in moral psychology on ability and obligation judgments (Buckwalter 2017b;Turri 2014, 2015;Chituc et al 2016;Mizrahi 2015;Turri 2017). In one series of experiments, for example, researchers presented participants with materials similar to the case originally presented by Sinnott-Armstrong above (Chituc et al 2016…”

Section: The Ability Condition On Moral Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 81%

Implicit attitudes and the ability argument

Buckwalter¹

2018

Philos Stud

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According to one picture of the mind, decisions and actions are largely the result of automatic cognitive processing beyond our ability to control. This picture is in tension with a foundational principle in ethics that moral responsibility for behavior requires the ability to control it. The discovery of implicit attitudes contributes to this tension. According to the ability argument against moral responsibility, if we cannot control implicit attitudes, and implicit attitudes cause behavior, then we cannot be morally responsible for that behavior. The purpose of this paper is to refute the ability argument. Drawing on both scientific evidence in cognitive science and philosophical arguments in ethics and action theory, I argue that it is invalid and unsound because current evidence is insufficient to establish the premises that (1) implicit attitudes are uncontrollable, (2) that they significantly cause behavior, (3) that responsibility always requires ability, and (4) that even if uncontrollable attitudes did fully cause behavior, this entails that the behavior they cause is uncontrollable. The rejection of the ability argument questions the priority of the unconscious over the conscious mind in cognitive science, deprioritizes ability in theories of moral responsibility in ethics, and provides a strong reason to uphold moral responsibility for implicitly biased behavior.

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“…Recent work in experimental cognitive science has demonstrated that the "ought implies can" principle does not accurately describe judgments in some normative domains, such as moral judgment (for a review, see Buckwalter 2017). Several teams of researchers have identified circumstances in which participants attribute moral responsibilities, obligations, and duties to agents for outcomes that they are unable to produce (Buckwalter and Turri 2015;Mizrahi 2015;Chituc, Henne, Sinnott-Armstrong, and De Brigard 2016;Turri 2017a;Turri 2017b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inability and Obligation in Intellectual Evaluation

Buckwalter¹,

Turri²

2018

Episteme

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If moral responsibilities prescribe how agents ought to behave, are there also intellectual responsibilities prescribing what agents ought to believe? Many theorists have argued that there cannot be intellectual responsibilities because they would require the ability to control whether one believes, whereas it is impossible to control whether one believes. This argument appeals to an "ought implies can" principle for intellectual responsibilities. The present paper tests for the presence of intellectual responsibilities in social cognition. Four experiments show that intellectual responsibilities are attributed to believe things and that these responsibilities can exceed what agents are able to believe. Furthermore, the results show that agents are sometimes considered responsible for failing to form true beliefs on the basis of good evidence, and that this effect does not depend on the seriousness of the consequences for failing to form a belief. These findings clarify when and how responsibilities for belief are attributed, falsify a conceptual entailment between ability and responsibility in the intellectual domain, and emphasize the importance of objective truth in intellectual evaluations.

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Ability, Responsibility, and Global Justice

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 publications

Direct and Derivative Moral Responsibility: An Overlooked Distinction in Experimental Philosophy

Direct and Derivative Moral Responsibility: An Overlooked Distinction in Experimental Philosophy

Implicit attitudes and the ability argument

Inability and Obligation in Intellectual Evaluation

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