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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Distinction Between Expectations And Demands: Towards A Wider Conception Of Accountability, Christiana Eltiste
A Distinction Between Expectations And Demands: Towards A Wider Conception Of Accountability, Christiana Eltiste
Theses and Dissertations
In the literature on responsibility and blame, ‘expectations’ and ‘demands’ are often used interchangeably. Specifically, R. Jay Wallace construes expectations and demands as equivalent ways of expressing strict prohibitions or requirements. However, expectations and demands are not identical concepts and treating them as such glosses over important nuance. By using these concepts synonymously, Wallace is unable to account for how we blame and hold others responsible for actions that do not violate strict prohibitions or requirements, actions that are merely considered morally bad. In this paper I explore the distinction between expectations and demands and how ignoring this distinction ultimately …
Reactive Attitudes & The Value Of Responsibility, Andrew Lichter
Reactive Attitudes & The Value Of Responsibility, Andrew Lichter
Theses and Dissertations
This paper argues against the family of “reactive accounts” of moral responsibility. On such accounts, which take their cue from P.F. Strawson’s influential “Freedom and Resentment,” being morally responsible is properly understood in terms of being held responsible, which in turn is properly understood in terms of a set of moral emotions and their associated practices. This way of understanding responsibility re-frames apparently metaphysical questions about whether we are responsible in normative terms, as questions about whether and why these practices are permissible or required. I argue that we are responsible because we in some sense affirm the value of …
Attributability And Agency: Moral Attributability For Mental States As Possession Of Care-Constitutive Desires, Thomas Vincent Yamilkoski
Attributability And Agency: Moral Attributability For Mental States As Possession Of Care-Constitutive Desires, Thomas Vincent Yamilkoski
Theses and Dissertations
A prominent line of thought owed originally to the work of Harry Frankfurt is that it is our identifying, in a certain technical sense, with our mental states which makes these states and the actions which emerge from them our own in a way distinctive of agents. Separately, moral attributability, a sort of responsibility located first by T. M. Scanlon, has recently attracted the attention of many philosophers. In this paper I will argue that we ought to aim to adopt theories of identification and moral attributability such that our capacity for the sort of agency involved in identification is …
Reading Others Well And Being Well Read, Nathan Louis Engel-Hawbecker
Reading Others Well And Being Well Read, Nathan Louis Engel-Hawbecker
Theses and Dissertations
The conceptual problem of other minds is over how we can so much as form thoughts or beliefs about (let alone know) mental lives other than our own. What I call the conceptual problem of other conscious minds restricts this question to others’ phenomenally conscious experiences. Past appeals to an individual’s inferential, imaginative, or perceptual faculties all more plausibly presuppose than provide a solution to this problem: such faculties allow us to form thoughts about others’ experiences only if we already have some prior means of doing so (§§2-5). This is not the case with testimony, which I introduce and …
Nietzsche's Autonomy, Responsibility, And Will Unification, Waylon Jennings Smith
Nietzsche's Autonomy, Responsibility, And Will Unification, Waylon Jennings Smith
Theses and Dissertations
The modern analytic’s conception of morality usually grounds the agent’s mo-rality in some conception of responsibility and autonomy. Friedrich Nietzsche agrees that morality should be grounded in responsibility and autonomy, however his con-ceptions of responsibility and autonomy are quite different from the modern analytic literature. In this paper, I present Nietzsche’s account of autonomy and responsibility. In part one, I describe Nietzsche’s beliefs about human nature and how the human psyche became disparate. The sovereign individual is also introduced as the Nie-tzschean ideal capable of autonomy and responsibility. The second part of the paper refines Nietzshce’s ideas concerning both the …
Solving The Problem Of Resultant Luck: Extrapolating From Hegel, Constance Sutter
Solving The Problem Of Resultant Luck: Extrapolating From Hegel, Constance Sutter
Theses and Dissertations
The problem of resultant luck leaves us with a dilemma: Reject the intuition that agents should be blamed only to the extent that events depend on factors within their control, or reject the pre-theoretical intuition that agents should be blamed in cases of negligence. Although many potential solutions have been put forth, the problem remains unsolved. In this paper, I diagnose why the problem has been recalcitrant, and I describe what a genuine solution must explain. To illustrate what such a solution would look like, I defend an interpretation of Hegel's concept of action and moral responsibility, and I show …