Download or read book Against Moral Responsibility written by Bruce N. Waller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vigorous attack on moral responsibility in all its forms argues that the abolition of moral responsibility will be liberating and beneficial. In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms—including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts—is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want—natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities—would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition.
Download or read book The Nature of Moral Responsibility written by Randolph K. Clarke and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent philosophical work reveals considerable disagreement about what it is to be morally responsible for something. Indeed, some theorists claim to distinguish several varieties of moral responsibility, with different conditions that must be satisfied if one is to bear responsibility of one or another of these kinds. This volume presents twelve original essays from participants in these debates. The contributors include prominent established figures as well as influential younger philosophers.
Download or read book The Nature of Moral Responsibility written by Stephen David Ross and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Moral Responsibility and the Problem of Many Hands written by Ibo van de Poel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-12 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the ‘problem of many hands.’ This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of moral responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking (accountability, blameworthiness, and liability) and forward-looking (obligation, virtue). Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings.
Download or read book Building Better Beings written by Manuel Vargas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manuel Vargas presents a compelling and state-of-the-art defense of moral responsibility in the face of growing philosophical and scientific skepticism about free will and accountability. He shows how we can justify our responsibility practices, and provides a normatively and naturalistically adequate account of agency, blame, and desert.
Download or read book Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts written by Tracy Isaacs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts is a philosophical investigation of the complex moral landscape we find in collective scenarios such as genocide, global warming, organizational negligence, and oppressive social practices. Tracy Isaacs argues that an accurate understanding of moral responsibility in collective contexts requires attention to responsibility at the individual and collective levels.
Download or read book Essays on Free Will and Moral Responsibility written by Daniel Cohen and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of free will has fascinated philosophers since ancient times: Do we have free will, or at least the kind of free will that seems necessary for moral responsibility? Does determinism – the idea that everything that happens is necessitated to happen, given the past and the laws of nature – threaten the commonly held assumption that we are indeed free and morally responsible? Although these questions have been widely discussed in the past, the present volume offers a variety of new perspectives from philosophers who have made significant contributions to this debate over recent years, including Derk Pereboom, Robert Kane, Ishtiyaque Haji, Michael McKenna, John Martin Fischer, David Widerker and Saul Smilansky. The emphasis in these essays is not merely on free will, but on allied notions such as moral responsibility, moral obligation, fairness and meaningfulness, and on whether any room can be made for these notions in a deterministic or an indeterministic universe.
Download or read book Relative Justice written by Tamler Sommers and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on research in anthropology, psychology, and a host of other disciplines, this book argues that cross-cultural variation raises serious problems for theories that propose universally applicable conditions for moral responsibility. It develops a way of thinking about responsibility that takes cultural diversity into account.
Download or read book The Nature of Moral Responsibility written by Stephen D. Ross and published by . This book was released on with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Responsibility and Control written by John Martin Fischer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-10-13 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive, systematic theory of moral responsibility. The authors explore the conditions under which individuals are morally responsible for actions, omissions, consequences, and emotions. The leading idea in the book is that moral responsibility is based on 'guidance control'. This control has two components: the mechanism that issues in the relevant behavior must be the agent's own mechanism, and it must be appropriately responsive to reasons. The book develops an account of both components. The authors go on to offer a sustained defense of the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism.
Download or read book Perspectives on Moral Responsibility written by John Martin Fischer and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores aspects of responsibility, including moral accountability; hierarchy, rationality, and the real self; and ethical responsibility and alternative possibilities.
Download or read book Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments written by R. Jay Wallace and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-08 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R. Jay Wallace advances a powerful and sustained argument against the common view that accountability requires freedom of will. Instead, he maintains, the fairness of holding people responsible depends on their rational competence: the power to grasp moral reasons and to control their behavior accordingly. He shows how these forms of rational competence are compatible with determinism. At the same time, giving serious consideration to incompatibilist concerns, Wallace develops a compelling diagnosis of the common assumption that freedom is necessary for responsibility.
Download or read book Conversation and Responsibility written by Michael McKenna and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Michael McKenna advances a new theory of moral responsibility, one that builds upon the work of P. F. Strawson. As McKenna demonstrates, moral responsibility can be explained on analogy with a conversation. The relation between a morally responsible agent and those who hold her morally responsible is similar to the relation between a speaker and her audience. A responsible agent's actions are bearers of meaning--agent meaning--just as a speaker's utterances are bearers of speaker meaning. Agent meaning is a function of the moral quality of the will with which the agent acts. Those who hold an agent morally responsible for what she does do so by responding to her as if in a conversation. By responding with certain morally reactive attitudes, such as resentment or indignation, they thereby communicate their regard for the meaning taken to be revealed in that agent's actions. It is then open for the agent held responsible to respond to those holding her responsible by offering an apology, a justification, an excuse, or some other response, thereby extending the evolving conversational exchange. The conversational theory of moral responsibility that McKenna develops here accepts two features of Strawson's theory: that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal--so that being responsible must be understood by reference to the nature of holding responsible--and that the moral emotions are central to holding responsible. While upholding these two aspects of Strawson's theory, McKenna's theory rejects a further Strawsonian thesis, which is that holding morally responsible is more fundamental or basic than being morally responsible. On the conversational theory, the conditions for holding responsible are dependent on the nature of the agent who is responsible. So holding responsible cannot be more basic than being responsible. Nevertheless, the nature of the agent who is morally responsible is to be understood in terms of sensitivity to those who would make moral demands of her, thereby holding her responsible. Being responsible is therefore also dependent on holding responsible. Thus, neither being nor holding morally responsible is more basic than the other. They are mutually dependent.
Download or read book Free Will and Moral Responsibility written by Justin Caouette and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Determinism is, roughly, the thesis that facts about the past and the laws of nature entail all truths. A venerable, age-old dilemma concerning responsibility distils to this: if either determinism is true or it is not true, we lack “responsibility-grounding” control. Either determinism is true or it is not true. So, we lack responsibility-grounding control. Deprived of such control, no one is ever morally responsible for anything. A number of the freshly-minted essays in this collection address aspects of this dilemma. Responding to the horn that determinism undermines the freedom that responsibility (or moral obligation) requires, the freedom to do otherwise, some papers in this collection debate the merits of Frankfurt-style examples that purport to show that one can be responsible despite lacking alternatives. Responding to the horn that indeterminism implies luck or randomness, other papers discuss the strengths or shortcomings of libertarian free will or control. Also included in this collection are essays on the freedom requirements of moral obligation, forgiveness and free will, a “desert-free” conception of free will, and vicarious legal and moral responsibility. The authors of the essays in this volume are philosophers who have made significant contributions to debates in free will, moral responsibility, moral obligation, the reactive attitudes, philosophy of action, and philosophical psychology, and include John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Michael McKenna, Alfred Mele, and Derk Pereboom.
Download or read book My Way written by John Martin Fischer and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2006-03-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of John Martin Fischer's essays on free will and moral responsibility. Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that moral responsibility does not require free will in the sense that implies alternative possibilities and a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility.
Download or read book Hegel s Theory of Responsibility written by Mark Alznauer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-19 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length treatment of a central concept in Hegel's practical philosophy - the theory of responsibility. This theory is both original and radical in its emphasis on the role and importance of social and historical conditions as a context for our actions.
Download or read book Aristotle on Moral Responsibility written by Susan Sauvé Meyer and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-11-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a reissue, with new introduction, of Susan Sauvé Meyer's 1993 book which presents a striking interpretation of Aristotle's accounts of voluntariness in the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics. She argues that they constitute a distinctive theory of moral responsibility, and provides powerful responses to notorious puzzles in the account.
