Moral Responsibility and Ignorance

Abstract

Doris has just driven her car into a tree. She's unconscious, slumped over the steering wheel. Perry comes upon the scene. He's shocked at what he finds. He looks around to see if anyone can help, but there's no one else there. He's wondering whether he should try to find a phone to call for aid, but visions of wrecked cars catching fire and exploding into roiling balls of flame fill his mind, and he feels that he must rescue the driver now or else she'll surely die. So, with considerable trepidation, Perry rushes in and quickly drags Doris free from the wreck, thinking that at any moment both he and she might get caught in the explosion. At last, when he judges that they are far enough away from the car, he collapses, exhausted, onto the ground, with Doris lying in his arms. As it happens, the car does not explode. Within a couple of minutes, Perry hears sirens wailing. Soon after, some emergency vehicles screech to a halt. Paramedics jump out. They run over to Perry and Doris. Perry tells them what happened. The paramedics take a look at Doris, and they arrive at a chilling conclusion: Perry has paralyzed Doris. Is Perry morally responsible for what he has done? (Here, and henceforth, by "morally responsible" I shall mean "morally culpable," for other types of moral responsibility will not be at issue. Also, I shall omit the qualifier "moral(ly)," although it will always be implicit.) That depends. One thing it depends on is whether Perry acted freely in paralyzing Doris. There are some who deny that freedom is a prerequisite of responsibility but, while this view deserves attention, I shall not attend to it here. 1 It is surely very plausible to assume, as indeed the vast * My thanks to Terry McConnell, Jim Montmarquet, the members of the Research Triangle Ethics Circle, and the editors of Ethics for astute comments on earlier drafts. 1.

Evidence One Does Not Possess

“…Philosophers such as Zimmerman (1997) and Rosen (2004) endorse the awareness condition and so they cannot say that George (and comparable lazy agents of the second type) can be blameworthy.…”

Assertion, Knowledge and Rational Credibility: The Scoreboard

“…For discussion, see e.g. Haji (1998), Zimmerman (1997 (1997)) distinguishes between direct and indirect blameworthiness for performing an action. One is indirectly blameworthy for something x, if and only if one is blameworthy for it by way of being blameworthy for something else, y, of which x is the consequence.…”

“…19 See e.g. Haji (1998), Zimmerman (1997. People working in this field disagree whether a belief or a knowledge condition is appropriate for blameworthiness.…”

Market Processes and the Ethics of Consumption

“…His unethical act of consumption "falls within the known risk" of his ignorance because the risk involved is self-evident: The conditions of production under which cheap clothing is manufactured in developing countries are widely known, and the deplorable working conditions in textile factories are, as it were, internally related to the production of the T-shirts (and to their low prices), for low wages and poor working conditions are a fillip, perhaps necessary, to the production of cheap clothing. In Michael Zimmerman's (1997) words, there is a straightforward "cognitive connection" between the existence of cheap T-shirts in retail stores and the sort of pay and conditions which the workers who produce them suffer (p. 420). If a consumer were to plead that he had no inkling that purchasing these items were likely to perpetuate injustices, his words are unlikely to convince.…”