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Desert, Responsibility, And Justification, Manuel R. Vargas

Manuel Vargas

The idea of moral responsibility is central to a wide range of our moral, social, and legal practices. It underpins our basic notion of culpability. Yet the idea of moral responsibility is regarded with considerable skepticism by researchers and scholars in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the law. So, it is a social practice in want of justification.

This article defends the picture of moral responsibility first presented in BUILDING BETTER BEINGS: A THEORY OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY (Oxford University Press, 2013). On that account, the normative basis for moral responsibility depends on the effects that participation in the practice has upon …