Responsibility for Wrongdoing Without Blameworthiness

How it Makes Sense and How it Doesn't

Bibliographic Data

ID10691905
AuthorsKyle G Fritz (0000-0003-2961-384X, Florida A&M University - Florida State University College of Engineering, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume64
Issue257
Pages569-589
Publication date2014-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pq/pqu045
OpenAlexW2034012140
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited13

Some writers, such as John Fischer and Michael McKenna, have recently claimed that an agent can be morally responsible for a wrong action and yet not be blameworthy for that action. A careful examination of the claim, however, suggests two readings. On one reading, there are further conditions on blameworthiness beyond freely and wittingly doing wrong. On another innocuous reading, there are no such further conditions. Despite Fischer and McKenna's attempts to offer further conditions on blameworthiness in addition to responsibility for wrongdoing, I argue that only the innocuous reading is plausible. Once we distinguish between blame being deserved and blame being all-things-considered appropriate, we need not appeal to further conditions on blameworthiness. This discussion has important upshots regarding how compatibilists respond to certain manipulation arguments and how proponents of derived responsibility respond to criticism that agents are responsible even for outcomes that are not reasonably foreseeable.

Action (physics) · Appeal · Blame · Compatibilism · Criminology · Criticism · Culpability · Epistemology · Law and economics · Moral responsibility · Political science · Reading (process) · Sociology · Wrongdoing · Free Will and Agency · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · War, Ethics, and Justification

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