Resisting Tracing's Siren Song

Abstract

Drunk drivers and other culpably incapacitated wrongdoers are often taken to pose a problem for reasons-responsiveness accounts of moral responsibility. These accounts predicate moral responsibility upon an agent having the capacities to perceive and act upon moral reasons, and the culpably incapacitated wrongdoers lack exactly those capacities at the time of their wrongdoing. Many reasons-responsiveness advocates thus expand their account of responsibility to include a tracing condition: The culpably incapacitated wrongdoer is blameworthy despite his incapacitation precisely because he is responsible for becoming incapacitated. As some skeptics have suggested, it is not clear that we need tracing. Here, however, I make a stronger case against tracing: I show that tracing gets things wrong. I consider a new sort of case, the case of the Odysseus agent, whose incapacitation is non-culpable (sometimes merely permissible and sometimes praiseworthy). Tracing would have us hold responsible and therefore blame unlucky Odysseus agents, Odysseus agents who commit a wrongdoing in the throes of their non-culpably induced incapacitation. But we should not hold these unlucky Odysseus agents responsible for their incapacitated wrongdoing. Because tracing gets these cases wrong, we should reject tracing.

Customised Institutional Experiences’ Use in Curbing Unwanted Occupational Incidents and Accidents

“…Some scholars have pointed to the influence of drugs as a cause for concern. Intoxication can culminate in improper or even criminal acts [1]. Such acts under the influence of drugs, with some possibility, account for disjunctions.…”

“…Such acts under the influence of drugs, with some possibility, account for disjunctions. Intoxication also brings moral responsibility challenges [1].…”

“…These may pit someone to making unethical decisions. On the other hand, intoxication can lead to criminal acts and need to be checked [1]. Then there is the issue of testimonies.…”

Being Sympathetic to Bad‐History Wrongdoers

“…The tracing element does not bear substantially on the arguments here, so I set it aside. For skepticism about tracing, refer to Vargas (2005), Andrew Khoury (2012), Matt King (2014), and my own prior work (Agule, 2016).…”

Ideal Theory and ‘Ought Implies Can’

“…We don’t need to know how that inability or inability came about. This avoids the complications of tracing views (see Vargas, , and Agule, ).…”