Moral Responsibility for Unwitting Omissions

Abstract

Unwitting omissions pose a challenge for theories of moral responsibility. For common-sense morality holds many unwitting omitters morally responsible for their omissions, even though they appear to lack both awareness and control. People who leave dogs in their car on a hot day or forget to pick something up from the store as they promised seem to be blameworthy. If moral responsibility requires awareness of one’s omission and its moral significance, it appears that the protagonists of these cases are not morally responsible. This chapter considers and rejects a number of influential views on this problem, including a view that grounds responsibility for such omissions in previous exercises of conscious agency, and “Attributionist” views that ground responsibility for such omissions in the value judgments or other aspects of the agents’ selves. The chapter proposes a new tracing view that grounds responsibility for unwitting omissions in past opportunities to avoid them.

Keeping It Simple: Rethinking Abilities and Moral Responsibility

“…The simple abilities view is a proposal, not a fully fleshed-out theory of responsibility, as it stands, but it is a firm foundation on which to build. 19 Department of Philosophy University of Arizona NOTES 1 For recent discussions of ability-based accounts of moral responsibility, see, for example, Clarke (1994Clarke ( , 2014Clarke ( , 2015, Fara (2008), Nelkin and Rickless (2017), Vihvelin (2013Vihvelin ( , 2004, and Whittle (2010).…”

“…1 1For recent discussions of ability‐based accounts of moral responsibility, see, for example, Clarke (1994, 2014, 2015), Fara (2008), Nelkin and Rickless (2017), Vihvelin (2013, 2004), and Whittle (2010). …”

Thinking Outside the (Traditional) Boxes of Moral Luck

“…For some foundational discussions of tracing, see Ravizza (1998), Vargas (2005), and Fischer and Tognazzini (2009). 17. More formally: whether an agent is morally responsible for an unwitting omission at time T2 depends entirely and solely on whether there was a prior time, T1, at which the agent had the opportunity to do something that, as she reasonably believed, would significantly raise the likelihood of avoiding later omission (Nelkin and Rickless 2017). Notably, Clarke (2014) provides an example of a Quality of Opportunity view that is even less demanding; not only does it not require an exercise of control, it does not require awareness of risk either.…”

“…So, control views that require an earlier choice or exercise of agency (even if just a choice not to act) would seem ill‐equipped to accommodate many cases of unwitting omissions that intuitively we take to be ones for which people are responsible and blameworthy. In work with Samuel Rickless (Nelkin and Rickless ), I have argued that an opportunity of high enough quality, and one in which one has the requisite control, need not be one in which one exercises agency or makes a choice. One simply must have had the opportunity to do so, and this, in our view, requires awareness of the risk of not acting.…”

Direct and derivative moral responsibility: An overlooked distinction in experimental philosophy

“…The distinction also plays a key role in explaining how an agent can be morally responsible for unwitting omissions(Nelkin & Rickless, 2017;Rosen, 2003Rosen, , 2004Sartorio, 2007). Suppose that I promise to buy groceries on my way home from work.…”