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Browsing All Posts filed under »Moral Responsibility«
Mental Illness and Moral Responsibility
January 25, 2015 by Justin Caouette
My 6th post is up over at flickers. I have copied and pasted it below for those not interested in clicking again. Mental illness affects how we perceive the actions of others and with good reason. Consider two scenarios. In scenario 1 a person crashes into you because they had a non-epileptic seizure while driving. […]
Psychopaths and Moral Responsibility: The State of the Debate
January 20, 2015 by Justin Caouette
My 5th post over at Flickers is up, check it out here. I’ve copied and pasted it below for those not interested in clicking (and following comments). Cheers! In the last post I suggested that moral responsibility may not come in degrees and based on the discussion that ensued it seems that we are pretty […]
Does Moral Responsibility Come in Degrees?
January 14, 2015 by Justin Caouette
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 […]
Luck, Choice, and Rationing Health Care
January 12, 2015 by Ray Aldred
According to some philosophers, a feature that matters for assessing inequalities is how the inequality comes about. One theory that assesses inequalities in this way is presented by Ronald Dworkin in a position called “luck egalitarianism.” According to the luck egalitarian, a factor that matters when assessing inequalities in a given situation –and whether these […]
On a Freedom Requirement for Forgiveness
January 10, 2015 by Justin Caouette
My 3rd post over at Flickers of Freedom is up. You can find it here. I’ve copied and pasted it for those of you not interested in seeing how the conversation develops over at Flickers. We have all forgiven someone before. In fact, forgiveness can often serve as a key ingredient in our most cherished […]
Optimistic Skepticism and Forward-Looking Blame
January 8, 2015 by Justin Caouette
Below you can find the post in its entirety. Click here to see the original at flickers of freedom and to join in the discussion if you see fit. OPTIMISTIC SKEPTICISM AND FORWARD-LOOKING BLAME Many philosophers (1) have spent substantial time wrestling with, expanding on, and arguing against the central ideas put forth in P.F. Strawson’s […]
Free Will Skepticism and ‘Ought’ Judgments
January 3, 2015 by Justin Caouette
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You can find the link to my first post at Flickers here. It’s titled “Free Will Skepticism and ‘Ought’ Judgments”. For those of you who have been following APT for some time I posted on this topic here in late 2013. The posts are very different but are on the same topic. In this later […]
CFA: Workshop on the Epistemic Dimension of Moral Responsibility
November 11, 2014 by Justin Caouette
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This looks to be an excellent workshop! I will be submitting an abstract. Find the Workshop info here. For a summary of the workshop see below. Workshop 2015 Responsibility – The Epistemic Dimension II When: May 12-13 2015 Where: VU University Amsterdam It is generally agreed that moral responsibility has an epistemic dimension. Moral responsibility and […]
Sam Harris Still Needs to Read More Philosophy
February 12, 2014 by Justin Caouette
In a scathing review of Sam Harris’ pamphlet Free Will , Daniel Dennett rightfully calls out Harris for some obvious missteps that Harris has taken (once again). Harris responds here. Though I am more aligned with incompatibilism these days, Harris again makes some serious missteps in his response. First, he forwards his compatibilist thesis with regards to […]
Calgary Woman Gets 18 More Months In Prison (36 Total!) For Killing 2 Children?
January 30, 2014 by Justin Caouette
My initial reaction when reading the headline today was, WHAT!?! (see article here) Meredith Borowiec just killed two babies by putting them in the dumpster (leaving them for dead) and she can walk the streets in 18 months? I think my reaction is telling. To me, this woman ought to get punished with more severity. Why? Because […]
Romantic Dysfunction, BPD, and Moral Responsibility
January 22, 2014 by Ray Aldred
It is commonly argued that for one to be morally responsible, one must have control over one’s actions (see here for a run-down on arguments for that claim). Now, one does not generally concede that a person is moral pariah simply because the person is in the deepest stages of love, even if we do tend to […]
Martha Nussbaum, “What is Anger, and Why Should We Care?”
January 16, 2014 by Justin Caouette
Martha Nussbaum has given a very nice talk on why anger is “of dubious value in both life and the law“, the talk can be found here. Although it seems obvious that anger can be bad for our well-being and is often associated with acts of malice and bad intent (and rightfully so), I do […]
Do Incompatibilists Have Inconsistent Intuitions?
December 20, 2013 by Justin Caouette
Incompatibilism, for our purposes here, is the view that the sort free will required for moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism. In a few recent studies there seems to be an apparent disconnect between incompatibilist intuitions when asked compatibility questions in a different way. On the one hand, in abstract cases the folk seem […]
Moral Responsibility and PAP: Can we uphold PAP and advance a “quality of the will” account of moral responsibility?
December 20, 2013 by Justin Caouette
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Recently, over at PEA Soup, Heath White blogged about an important question concerning moral responsibility and control. The question was: Does moral responsibility require the ability to do otherwise? PAP (or, the “principle of alternative possibilities) is the principle that says: If S is blameworthy for doing X, S must have been able to do otherwise than […]
Moral Responsibility and Volunteer Soldiers
December 3, 2013 by Justin Caouette
When considering one’s moral responsibility we often take voluntariness into account and with good reason. If one was forced to commit some action against their will we usually claim that they are not morally responsible for what they did. We say this because, all things being equal, they didn’t voluntarily commit the act. Similarly, if […]
Book Release: Free Will and Moral Responsibility
November 4, 2013 by Justin Caouette
It brings me great pleasure to announce the release of my first edited volume, Free Will and Moral Responsibility (co-edited with Ish Haji). For those interested in purchasing the book here is a link to amazon and here is the publisher’s press release. Below you can find a summary to the book. “Determinism is, roughly, the […]
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June 2, 2016 by James DiGiovanna
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