My 4th substantive post is up over at Flickers. You can find it here. I’ve copied and pasted it below for those who don’t feel like clicking the link.
Does Moral Responsibility Come in Degrees?
Many have assumed either implicitly or explicitly that moral responsibility comes in degrees, but why? For me, it seems quite natural to say that I am either morally responsible or I am not. I either meet the conditions of one’s particular view, or I do not. Oddly, this has been assumed often times with little explanation as to why moral responsibility is a degree concept and not a binary concept (by binary I simply refer to an either/or concept). Consider this quote from a paper by Al Mele:
Moral responsibility is very commonly and very plausibly regarded as a matter of degree. If young children and adults are morally responsible for some of what they do, it is plausible, on grounds of the sort I mentioned, that young children are not as nearly *as responsible* (my emphasis) for any of their deeds as some adults are for some of their adult deeds. (2008, p. 274)
He states further:
Normal parents eventually come to view their children as having some degree of moral responsibility for what they do. The word degree is important here. Normal four-year-olds are not as well equipped for impulse control as normal eight-year-olds, and they have less developed capacity for anticipating and understanding the effects of their actions (2008, pg. 271-272)
I think Mele is right to say that moral responsibility is commonly regarded as a matter of degree, but I’m not so sure that such an assumption is warranted. And, if the assumption is warranted, I think it’s worthwhile to get clear on why this is so. Investigating this so-called degree feature might help to shed light on the nature of moral responsibility itself. Further, if one holds that moral responsibility does come in degrees it might limit what one can say about the nature of moral responsibility and this conclusion could be fruitful as well for those trying to uncover the the root of the differences between competing views.
The only published paper that I have come across that has tried to make sense of this degree talk in depth is a recent paper by Coates and Swenson (2013, Phil. Studies) though I have read a few unpublished manuscripts that have focused on this assumed feature of moral responsibility in depth (by Manual Vargas, Brandon Warmke, and Gwen Bradford). So, feel free to suggest further work on this topic that I may have missed.
So, the purpose of posting on this topic is simply to get a sense of how can we make sense of moral resposnibility as coming in degrees. Must we assume that blameworthiness and moral responsibility is the same thing to make sense of this? And, what does it even mean to say that moral responsibility comes in degrees?
At last year’s Pacific APA I had the opportunity to comment on Gwen Bradford’s very nice paper “Difficulty and Degrees of Praise and Blame”. In that paper, she argued that one of the most natural ways to make sense of degree talk is to posit what she calls the Blame-Mitigating Thesis (BMT): the difficulty of a morally required action can mitigate the blameworthiness for failing to perform it. She ultimately rejects (BMT) claiming that difficulty can’t do the work on it’s own (she also discusses a similar thesis with regards to praise). I agreed with her on this point but I took this point to be a knock against the degree feature altogether, a line she did not explore in her paper. If difficulty can’t do the work to make sense of when someone is *more or less* morally responsible for doing A then what can? Buildng off Fischer and Ravizza’s account of reasons responsiveness Coates and Swenson suggest that to make sense of the degree feature of moral responsibility we could appeal to the degree in which an agent can respond to reasons. But, for those who do not hold a reasons-responsive view how are they to make sense of degree talk? Further, should they try? I’d be curious to see how you all think about moral responsibility. Does it come in degrees? Overt blame surely does but does moral responsibility proper? I’m not sure why I find this degree talk puzzling, but I do nonetheless. I suggest that we can understand moral responsibility instead as a binary concept; we are either morally responsible for some act A or we are not. Am I wrong to think of MR in this way? If so, what would be a downfall for thinking of it in this way? Further, is such a project worthwhile?
So, I ask those that are compelled by this degree talk: what is moral responsibility such that it*could* come in degrees, and further, what is lost if we give up such talk? Notice that in the quoted passage from Mele he says “The word degree is important here”. Should we think that degree talk is important and what would change if we gave it up?
Anyway, I raised lots of questions in this post. Feel freeto answer them all or none at all. I’m hoping to get at least one more post up this week and a handful more before the month is over.
A Philosopher's Take 
Lage
January 14, 2015
It seems that this all depends on how one defines “moral responsibility”, and what moral axioms we are starting with in the first place. Since I don’t believe in free will, I don’t see “moral reponsibility” in the traditional sense, as even possible to exist. That is, nobody really “deserves” praise or punishment other than for the resultant causal effect that such an action or behavior produces on their resultant behavior, and the behavior of others. In the interest of this topic, and since the illusion exists, let’s assume that we have free will. Obviously, there are better or worse ways for a person to conduct themselves, and if the moral axiom was to try and increase the well-being of conscious creatures (even if we limit this to only conscious human beings for the purposes of simplifying this topic), then the capabilities that a person has to accomplish such a goal certainly must come into play. Since it doesn’t seem that moral aptitudes or any of our capabilities simply appear out of nowhere during our ontogenic evolution/development from children to adults (that is, they don’t appear to be binary), I would argue that any moral responsibility that is based off of these individual capabilities is likewise an analog process (i.e. come in “degrees” as you say), moving along a continuum until we get to some minimum threshold that we classify as an “adult” level of understanding and capability. Likewise, just as we would classify someone with a brain tumor pressing on his amygdala, thus causing him to have an uncontrollable emotional outburst (perhaps even causing him to start gunning down people), we wouldn’t hold him as responsible as someone without such a condition. We can think of all human beings as having some “idiosyncratic condition” if you will, even if we don’t all have brain tumors, and each and every one of us thus has some different level of capability in responding to a particular situation differently. Free will can’t help but creep it’s way into this kind of topic, but even leaving it aside, we can see how different levels of autonomy based on individual brain differences (child vs. adult, or even one same-aged person vs. another), makes this a gray issue — in my opinion anyway.
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Clement Loo
January 23, 2015
I wonder if this debate could be reframed in different terms. Currently the debate is framed in terms of degree of moral responsibility but it seems to me that it could be also framed less controversially in terms of what specific actions (or what sorts of actions) are one morally responsible for. One could be an absolutist (to perhaps coin a term) in regards to moral responsibility and believe that one is either morally responsible or not morally responsible without any intermediary degrees and yet reasonably ask something like, “I know I am morally responsible to x but am unsure what sort of duties I have to x.”
Concordantly, it seems to me that one could be an absolutist and think that people with different capabilities may have different specific duties even if they are equally morally responsible. That is, one could say that both children and adults if they are adequately rational are fully moral agents and their actions are all either morally right or morally wrong. However, you might still think that child has fewer duties because they are less capable at decision making or have lesser autonomy than an adult. So while the child may be fully a moral agent that child may not be reasonably expected to make certain choices or take certain actions that an adult might be reasonably expected to. As such, it might not be reasonable to expect a child to have duties related to those decisions or actions.
Does that make any sense or is it something that just seems to work within my head?
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Joe
January 27, 2015
“Must we assume that blameworthiness and moral responsibility is the same thing to make sense of this?”
I tend to see them as related. Those who are more blameworthy are more morally responsible.
I agree someone is either morally responsible for something or not. But I also think people can have degrees of responsibility.
In tort law in the U.S. we have comparative fault and contribution law. Whoever is most at fault for the damage is also going to be most responsible to pay for it.
For example lets say you have a person who is injured when a defective brake part in an automobile causes the vehicle to crash into building she was standing in. The person injured was just standing in the building. Now she has medical bills and losses. From a moral perspective can we not say that different people might have differing responsibilities to pay for those losses?
Lets say we have the manufacturer of the part and they actually did tests so they knew the part was faulty and could cause this sort of injury. Then you have the manufacturer of the car who knew this was an important safety part and should have perhaps insisted that the manufacturer of the part produce tests showing the part was safe. But they were not aware of the tests that the part was unsafe.
The owner of the car who maybe noticed something about the brakes but never bothered to check. Again how much he knew and how bad it got would all be relevant.
And then you have the injured person who was just standing at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Since in this case the person who was injured did nothing wrong its clear that she should not be saddled with the loss. So it seems to me that most of the moral responsibility for this loss goes to the part manufacturer. It would seem most just if they paid for the loss or at least more of the loss than the others. Don’t you agree? If the part manufacturer pays should they be able to be *fully* reimbursed from say the owner of the vehicle whose moral blame was more limited on the basis of well you had some fault as well?
Now if the part manufacturer is bankrupt or can’t be pursued then we move on to the other involved parties. Because they are more at fault and therefore more responsible for the loss.
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