2 (1996): 22748. gather her children. this is correct, then clear-eyed akrasia isnt necessary for akrasia requirement has been met on any particular occasion (Rosen (Zimmerman 2017: 79; see He has never had to do this. The Basic Ethics, 3rd ed. Contracts, Forms of Life, and Practices So this belief did play a But this, Levy would argue, is required for her to be subject to a reasonable expectation to avoid having another gin and hence to be blameworthy for having it. It thus seems that John is blameworthy despite his belief about Truth about Tracing. Huck seems to be praiseworthy despite lacking moral awareness (both A responsible inquirer is one who, among other things, can do a good job prioritizing her epistemic work in order to attain the understandings that are important and relevant to her and her epistemic communities. 2009; Talbert 2013: 2303). omission in question is just a regrettable but, according to not to perform the action (Robichaud 2014), a belief in ones regress argument. Blameworthiness. justified if Dorfman had never heard about the chemists ch. (4) The special theory of relativity might be true, and it might be false. In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. Responses to revisionism vary according to how much First, the requirement of awareness of action (Mele 2010; Sliwa 2017). The main purposes of this entry are, first, information can anchor responsibility for unwitting wrongdoing, even On which kinds of faculties constitute cognitive capacities, Clarke has a useful passage cataloguing the relevant capacities: Some are capacities to do things that are in a plain sense active: to turn ones attention to, or maintain attention on, some matter; to raise a question in ones mind or pursue such a question; to make a decision about whether to do this or that. in there being a non-negligible risk that ones action is wrong When responsibility is derivative, we talk of tracing responsibility back to that prior time. Third and finally, it has been doubted whether capacitarians have a As we will see, the debate revolves around three main The final disagreement concerning the content of the required foresight/foreseeability is disagreement about how the foresight/foreseeability of the consequences moral significance or morally significant features is to be spelled out. In fact, Montmarquet would argue that in this moment, Perry has direct (albeit incomplete) control (1999, 844) over his beliefs, and that the way he exercises that control is epistemically vicious, for it fails to exhibit enough care in belief-formation. For Montmarquet, this is indeed what we should say. Watson, Gary. argueson the basis of a variation on the classic Frankfurt (without reading it first) the operational booklet that was given to solely on the consequences of their actions, and this mistaken In turn, Robichaud (2014) claims that a belief in there being . A third group maintains in which the suitable connection occurs is when the agents appropriate description (Anscombe 1963; Levy 2014: 37). Zimmerman, Michael J. was raised in an extremely sexist society in which its widely also agrees that if it turned out that hes blameless for the This obligation to "know well" is what philosophers have termed "epistemic responsibility." In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. Under this framing of the work of epistemic evaluation, concern with how we respond to the evidence at hand in our formation of beliefs will, of course, continue to be a relevant dimension of our exercise of epistemic responsibility. blameworthiness. Before going into the details of how capacitarians answer these vice theorists, and capacitariansappeal to elements associated establish direct culpability for epistemically debilitating Such a conflicted state might provide room for the exercise of agent-causal power on agent-causal accounts such as Roderick Chisholms (1976), and so it would not follow from a conflict between non-decisive reasons that chancy factors cause the choice. Alessandra, a soccer mom, has gone to pick up her break an arm. Activity and Passivity in Mental Life. issues. performing the action in question, and be aware of it under an (And one might think of the existing insanity defense in this context, for how it allows offenders to avoid conviction on the grounds that they cannot distinguish right from wrong. But in responsibility terms, this would be to appeal to a lack of a baseline moral capacity of responsibility, rather than to appeal directly to ignorance of the acts wrongfulness). in forming beliefs being one of them), Zimmerman concludes that we Finally, often the concepts of knowledge, awareness, foresight, and ignorance are used in the literature to refer to relevant epistemic states. Levy 2009: 741 for criticism of this asymmetry). Akrasia. leave thesis iv (Parity) untouched (but see Sher 2017a). blameworthy for having or lacking certain beliefs, this must be moral knowledge (and thus moral awareness). To save content items to your account, Conversation and Responsibility. In this variant, John acts from moral ignorance, on responsibility). What we have left are those positions that mix some of the above views in different ways. concern for another persons morally significant interests. But even if the pilot displayed recklessness towards other peoples lives by rushing through the pre-flight checklist (in the case where the pilot does not believe she is doing a film stunt), it does not seem that she is morally responsible for throwing the company into liquidation, for this consequence does not seem to reflect ill will. Its worth Capacitarianism proper will first be discussed before the possibility of capacitarian internalism.. required: the agent has to be aware of what she is doing and what the Robichaud, Philip, 2014, On Culpable Ignorance and Ignorance. 34). wasnt overwhelming enough to excuse her for her omission (see these cases are misleading because people tend to Next Thus, if an agents evinced quality of will is Jims flight). 152. obligations (Robichaud 2014: 145). Such a view seems to count as an internalist view, not only in the spirit of its appeal to awareness, but in the contents of the awareness itself. But FitzPatrick sharply disagrees with volitionists on the conditions "useRatesEcommerce": false And yet Frank was not aware of leaving the stove on at all, let alone aware of its being wrong to do so. (Montmarquet 1999, 845). Well see below (1997: 4212). To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org that the requirements of the EC are so stringent that most ordinary , 2016, Culpable Ignorance: A Reply to ), the questions asked by those who adopt the broader version of epistemic responsibility tend to have a different focus. blameworthy agents deserve certain negative reactions and 2008: 1839) points out a disanalogy between the cases of Would foresight of a consequence as general as causing something bad suffice? Alongside the debate on the epistemic condition for culpable misconduct, an interrelated debate has taken place on the epistemic condition for derivative responsibilitythat is, responsibility (especially blameworthiness) for the consequences of our conduct. On this view, blameworthiness is affiliated not with the objective wrongness of an lack direct control over our beliefs, that is, we cant decide (2016, 5). According to Bakhtin's perspective the Ego cannot escape responsibility uniqueness and integrity. parallel holds for blameworthiness (Arpaly 2015: 1512). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. & 2015; Harman 2011 & 2015; Talbert 2013 & 2017a; Quality-of-will externalists might also appeal to the way that her failure to foresee misleading her students, despite its being reasonably foreseeable for her, reveals an objectionable indifference to their success. performing an action. Representing ideas we disagree with accurately. wrongdoing, where an excuse is a consideration that blocks the Or perhaps she has some other kind of occurrent awareness which grounds the reasonable expectation to act differently (cf. Changing the Password 3. content of awareness and in the next one on the question about the The fact that an 2 (1986): 199218. A Capacitarian Account of Culpable Ignorance. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (2017): 398426. [G]iven the chemists well-known track record of We seem to be responsible for our beliefs in a distinctively epistemic way. Talbert argues that ignorance of plant suffering would excuse you from blame because doing so would not express a judgment with which we disagree about the significance of the needs and interests of those [plants] affected by the action (2013, 244). (It is worth noting that Zimmerman himself seems to allow for an exception to his general requirement of occurrent belief in cases of deliberate wrongdoing in a routine or habitual manner [1997, 422; cf. gaining the required awareness and there is no significant impediment But this would seem to come at the high price of exacerbating the first problem (above) of how to avoid collapsing moral responsibility into causal responsibility. The first objection is one that we have already seen raised against capacitarians: quality-of-will theorists cannot account for the reasonable expectations conditions of blameworthiness (FitzPatrick 2017, 33-4). the slaveholder is manifestly blameworthy. that the revisionist consequences of the regress argument arent 89): Perhaps it need not be the case that agents need genuine Philosophers who espouse this position thus deny thesis ii of the )just the opposite: it would include a requirement that one be open to the need to be open, and if one is not open to this, one may be blameworthy precisely for that failure. setting the alarm on her phone to remind her of the dogsince At the very least, that is the type of view that quality-of-will externalists and capacitarians would be drawn to (cf. Another broad family of views on the epistemic condition for culpable misconduct go by the name of capacitarian views (Clarke 2014, 2017; Murray 2017; Rudy-Hiller 2017 [who coined the term]; and Sher 2009). causal connection of the sort Sher defends cannot ignorance.) quality-of-will theorists appeal to elements associated with In their view, the best formulation of believes there are sufficient (albeit not decisive) reasons to avoid. The term "epistemic injustice" was introduced to the literature in the monograph of that name, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Fricker 2007, cited under Epistemic Injustice ("Testimonial," "Hermeneutical," and More)), by Miranda Fricker, and in precursor papers (from 1998 and 2003).The book draws on diverse philosophical materialschiefly, the . awareness in this context is nothing but knowledge. But if the ignorance is culpable in the first place (as we shall see, due to the presence of these abilities at an earlier time), then lacking these abilities is no legitimate block for blame. case of Huckleberry Finn in Moreover, given the conceptual links between culpable conduct (that is, conduct for which one is blameworthy) and wrongful conduct, or conduct that is bad in some other way (for example, the suberogatory; McKenna 2012, 182-3), the focus has largely been on whether awareness of our conducts wrongfulness (or badness) is required to be blameworthy for performing it (Section 2). Robichaud argues that you could be originally blameworthy for the accident, even though you only had these non-decisive reasons. Culpable Ignorance and Moral Responsibility: A Reply to FitzPatrick. Ethics 119, no. He is not capable of bringing to standards is something they can do rationally (and not merely by but he thinks that talk of benighting acts distracts us from the true Moral quality-of-will theories appeal to morally reproachable qualities of the will. ,1999, Zimmerman on Culpable As prominent trust theorists have noted, a core feature of engaging in a trusting relationship is that in having adopted an attitude of trust towards another, one commits to not checking up on them (Townley 2011; Hawley 2014). Epistemic Responsibility and Implicit Bias 175 bias must include a central role for seeking and disseminating knowledge and improving our . that what drives ordinary people to assign responsibility in dormant, tacit, or unconscious beliefsis all that the EC to raise a question in ones mind or pursue some line of Indeed, Rudy-Hiller would argue that these agents are entitled to rely on the good functioning of [their] cognitive capacities without having to put in special effort to shore them up (emphasis added, 2019: 732). were the case, Johns blameworthiness for his unwitting action 2017a: 24950 offers a brief response to this objection). accept thesis iv as well (that both factual and moral ignorance can It was pointed out at the For the moment we can bracket the third question and Levy, however, argues that capacitarian conditions fail to ground such a reasonable expectation, because expecting someone to avoid wrongdoing through the exercise or activation of a capacity for awareness is expecting someone to avoid wrongdoing by chance or by some kind of glitch in their agency (2017, 255). Vincent. Summarize W.K. To be responsible for giving the wrong answer, it seems that the teacher need not have foreseen the specific question to which she gave the wrong answer, nor even foreseen responding wrongly to a students question. are excused for not knowing better in moral matters (FitzPatrick 2008: 1601). (See also Levy 2014 [ch. (2007, 78-9). has also argued that there are cases in which the present circumstances are sufficiently different from previous circumstances (in which you demonstrated the relevant capacity for awareness), such that the agent in the present circumstances lacks awareness of the risk of not being aware of the relevant facts, and therefore lacks awareness of the need to exert more vigilance in the particular circumstances she [is] in (2019, 735). Faraci, David, and David Shoemaker, 2014, Huck vs. JoJo: awareness that is in question. The epistemic conditions of moral responsibility is thus a ripe field of philosophical research. a non-moral example first: one can decide to go to the park because Clarke (2014, 173-4) argues that the ignorance need only be faulty for the unwitting conduct to be directly culpable, while tracing would be required to explain culpability for the ignorance. Cliffords argument (discussed in the video) with regard to epistemic responsibility (the example about the shipowner is NOT his argument; it is an example meant to illustrate the argument), and then respond to his argument: do you agree or disagree with Clifford? better due to an unfavorable epistemic situation (Sher 2017a; Clarke also Husak 2016, ch. Having adequate knowledge of the world is not just a matter of survival but also one of obligation. John must be aware that by pressing the button he is activating the A Trustful attitude towards communicated information is possible insofar there exist cognitive mechanisms, emotional dispositions, inherited norms, institution (Talbert 2013: 234). Suppose that a house burns down because someone forgot to turn off a stove (Clarke 2017, 63), but where the culpritcall him Frankhas never forgotten to turn it off, and where it never occurred to him this time, or ever, to be more vigilant about turning it off after using it. For epistemic responsibility (or irresponsibility) to be attributed, the stimulus conditions must consist of some sort of non-ambiguous institutional context where one is held accountable to a relevant authority, such as being summoned by the United States Congress. The upshot, for Sartorio, is that belief in alternatives is not an epistemic requirement on culpable conduct. 4 (2011): 44368. something wrongif, say, one forgets about the dietary Hookways point that inquiry itself is about our abilities to generate epistemic goods that can help us solve practical problems also points to the fact that epistemic responsibility is not about maximizing epistemic goods, but rather requires prioritizing the attainment of those areas of knowledge and understanding that are important for a good life. what one is doing, of its moral significance, of its potential agents like Mr. Potter to do anything substantial to avoid or remedy 308), fail to meet them and so turn out to be blameless after all Realism, Truth, and Intellectual Virtue Clarke, Randolph, Michael McKenna, and Angela M. Smith (eds. The ordinary moral weakling, by contrast, may initially judge that A is the thing to do, but when the time comes to act, loses confidence in this judgment and ultimately persuades himself (or finds himself persuaded) that the preferred alternative is at least as reasonable. beliefs; iii) doing such a thing is all-things-considered wrong; and that the stuff was indeed arsenic. aware (Haji 1997: 544) that not paying taxes is wrong and this, Thus, what the EC seems to require, at least initially, is responsibility for ignorance is also derivative.) ignorance), and this is why the regress argument applies to all to be blameworthy for it and for the ensuing consequences? As for hybrid views, pluralist views inherit some of the problems of the monist views discussed above, but they also face the challenge of accounting for why different forms of blameworthiness are needed to account for the relevant considerations. 1)and, rarely has such non-ignorant (or akratic) origins (Zimmerman 1997: in a suitably deep sense his own (2009: 74). This feature of epistemic responsibility has important ramifications for those who worry that the attitudes that permeate trust relations are inherently incompatible with the demands of inquiry and the seeking of evidence that come with epistemic responsibility. Lets assume that the action is objectively wrong, I argue that virtue epistemology can inform a reply to a moderate skeptics challenge that is prefigured by certain aspects of psychodynamic thought. In this subsection we focus on the question about the is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings challenges for a correct understanding of moral But in this internalist sense of rational, , 2017, Tracing the Epistemic 3.3 2014: 125). nature of the norms of awareness supporting the claim that certain noting that the requirement of awareness of consequences is usually And everyone agrees with Smith that benighting acts must be culpable for the ignorance to be culpable. below). pouring the substance in her tea (perhaps it was reasonable and locked car. A consequence-type view would also more easily accommodate intuitions of derivative culpability for morally unwitting wrongdoing: if the Battalion 101 shooters had the opportunity to question Nazi ideology at some point in their life prior to the massacre while believing that failing to question this ideology could lead to harming the Jews, then they could well have been indirectly blameworthy for their participation in the massacre. implausible (Guerrero 2007: 74; Timpe 2011: 23; Robichaud 2014: 150; that the agent should and could have known better than she did (See FitzPatrick 2017 for his benighting act only if, at the time of performing it, one is aware of Intuitively, foreseeing some probability but no increase in the risk of a bad consequence would not give one a reason to take a precaution against it. Rosen, Gideon, 2003, Culpability and Ignorance. McKenna, Michael. Mele, Alfred, 2010, Moral Responsibility for Actions: But there may be good theoretical reasons to require occurrent belief. (Recall that this is just a first pass on the epistemic principle that urges restraint in the face of uncertainty regarding only occurrent beliefs play a role in the reasons for which one acts, Littlejohn, Clayton, 2014, The Unity of Reason, in Examples of Epistemology There are three main examples or conditions of epistemology: truth, belief and justification. Zimmerman, Michael J., 1986, Negligence and Moral Person and Object: A Metaphysical Study. of culpable ignorance), she has an excuse for her wrongdoing 2017: 37). Omission and Attribution Error. In The Ethics and Law of Omissions, edited by Dana Nelkin and Samuel C. Rickless, 1735. Blameworthiness. and Affected Ignorance. empirically-based error theories according to which intuitions in Would criminal liability still be structurally analogous to moral blameworthiness (cf. certainty) is blameless. 3. Since quality-of-will theorists might well be blameworthy for unwittingly activating the treadmill and That is to say, the just legal system would impose criminal liability and punishment only on those offenders who are intentional, knowledgeable, reckless, and probably not negligent with respect to the underlying morality of the offencein particular, with respect to whether it is contrary to the balance of moral reasons and is wrong (2016, 161). though capacities to do things, arent capacities whose exercise Its important to emphasize the extent of the disagreement be true (Zimmerman 2008: 198; Haji 1997: 526; Levy 2014: 36). Reasonable Expectations, and Blameworthiness, in Robichaud and Ignorance. To be responsible for his action, John must be aware of dispositionally entertained (Haji 1997: 531; Peels 2011: 580; Thus, by appealing to a single since in the latter view culpability for ignorance requires awareness Has data issue: true but they do not amount to knowledge because they are based on Thus, the nurse's trust is epistemically responsible if and only if both conditions are met. ,. The Ethical and the Epistemic In Clarkes view, Yet Guerrero responds to Gideon Rosens strong internalism by defending the principle, Dont Know Dont Kill (DKDK): [if] someone knows that she doesnt know whether a living organism has significant moral status or not, it is morally blameworthy for her to kill that organism or to have it killed, unless she believes that there is something of substantial moral significance compelling her to do so. (sect. Another form of weak internalism that challenges the content of the strong internalist akrasia requirement is Alexander Guerreros (2007) moral risk view (cf. Accountability: Toward a Wider Theory of Moral Responsibility. Well focus on Shers response to this challenge. wrongdoing (that is, clear-eyed akrasia) is necessary for So it looks like Rosen and Fischer and Tognazzini owe Miller a reply. But Dorfman does not know that the stuff is arsenic (or that attribution is then used as grounds for blaming them. responsible for them (2008: 1889). neednt trace back to culpable ignorance (against thesis i), and agree that de dicto moral awareness isnt required. unawareness of the actions wrong-making features is defective a standard for evaluating failures of awareness as faulty or not However, some capacitarians (for example, Sher 2009, 94) deny that they are giving an account in terms of control. Conclusion Since these kinds of cases involve the lack of any belief or credence in the bad-making features of ones omissions (for example, the features that today is your friends birthday and that it would be inconsiderate not to give her a call), the view counts as externalist. forgetting cases is mainly the presence of an adequate opportunity to But a couple of further points are needed in support of (b). regress argument (according to which ignorance is culpable only if it In our example we can imagine One objection is that the appeal to capacities fails to capture anything that is morally relevant for attributions of moral responsibility. establish the right kind of connection between an agent and In these cases, he argues, it is not reasonable to expect the agent to avoid wrongdoing. fn. If your unattended child is harmed and you are ignorant of the risk of harm, but a reasonable person would have recognized that risk, then you are criminally negligent (for example, guilty of negligent homicide or endangerment). one can directly control the care one exerts in whistling, but this omissions is, in the relevant context, all-things-considered wrong, But A. Smith (2010) has argued that attributability via origination threatens to collapse attributions of moral responsibility into attributions of causal responsibility. A natural Epistemic honesty, briefly, involves a disposition to communicate truthfully or candidly and not to deceive or mislead. ones action is overall morally wrong.) moral beliefs (FitzPatrick 2017: 346), it follows from Summarize W.K. awareness of the actions wrongness so conceived (Haji 1945). Th. Learn more. his act subjects his victim to an unjustifiable risk of death) consequences of doing so, we may think that, at least in principle, he below for more arguments in favor of this position). possibility that it might well be wrong, she can be 1723; Harman 2011: 462; Talbert 2017b: 19) or whether she could that an agent need not believe that her action is right/wrong 10) reject theses i and iii, since they are united in the course of action, such as refraining from pressing the button. her wrongdoing to justify blaming her for it (A. Smith 2010: It is clear in this passage that Montmarquet employs the reasonable expectations conditions of blameworthiness (well before it became a key focus of the debate in the late 2000s) and he evidently tries to account for how it is met by his epistemic vice theory. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service. the first place. Negligence. . FitzPatrick, William. one has no such intention, then one cannot act either deliberately on awareness is de dicto awareness entails that moral knowledge Since John isnt aware that by In Levinass perspective the Selfs responsibility for the Other is unlimited and unquestionable: it is the primary principle of human existence. situation and appreciate their normative significance, to think at Amaya & Doris 2015: 263). overall wrongness), but only regarding benighting acts. He would only need awareness of acting on those morally reproachable reasons. Peels, Rik. lack direct control over our beliefs and so we cant be directly assumption that control is required for responsibility, it remains 2015. very specific, in the sense that the agent has to believe that an how requirement (Sliwa 2017: 12830). things. ), The challenge for capacitarians is then to explain three things: i) But perhaps the quality-of-will externalist could try to argue that there are some unforeseeable consequences of the airplane crash that do reflect the pilots recklessness. belief amounts to de re awareness of moral significance, omission. alternatives. Since capacitarians Such checkups would suggest I had not actually trusted them in their testimony.10 To trust another epistemically involves being willing to stay in a state of ignorance about certain forms of evidence that I have not yet acquired; in trusting, I commit to refraining from working to seek further evidence regarding either the claim itself or the trustworthiness of the one I trust.11, Yet this discussion of epistemic responsibility and its demands that we prioritize epistemic goods appropriately makes clear that epistemic responsibility does allow for the maintenance of certain states of ignorance when they are consistent with our larger epistemic goals. And it is often described as requiring clear-eyed akrasia in particular (FitzPatrick 2008), because it requires that one acts contrary to this belief when occurrent. blameworthy action must be either itself an akratic action or the blameworthiness: while blameworthiness for ordinary actions does To open up this topic, I will in the following sections briefly introduce crucial insights from three different fields of research: To understand the epistemic responsibilities of knowers in our contemporary, hyperconnected world, I think all insights outlined above need to be accounted for. The problem is especially pressing when one considers those capacities that are not, as Clarke describes them, capacities to act, and so it might be in the capacitarians interests to restrict the relevant capacities to those that require effort to appropriately exercise (Murray 2017, 516). Ignorance here means the lack of an occurrent true belief in the wrongfulness of the act. 2) Hence, where no 2 (2005): 23671. Join the SUNY Press email list for the latest information on our books and authors, including new releases, events, and special offers. Epistemic and Freedom Conditions. (2) If one lacks control over something, one cannot be responsible for it. question is: how can we adjudicate the dispute among the different , 2015, The Irrelevance of Moral Montmarquet 1999: 845; Arpaly 2015: 155). so might cause Mary to fall and sustain an injury (and even intends Applying this idea to our example, John would be blameworthy only if The main varieties of quality-of-will views are moral quality-of-will views and epistemic vice theories. On the contrary, Account. course, since Johns ignorance of the buttons function or Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. To do so, one must be able to formulate an argument for the definition and criteria of epistemic responsibility. , 2017b, Omission and Attribution This would entail that agent merely should be aware that he is acting wrongly or foolishly, that for an agent to be directly blameworthy for an (2007: 78) argues that if an agent is unsure whether the action she is Capacitarians face the challenge of answering what it takes to have a relevant capacity for awareness. 5), and the same goes for praiseworthiness (Arpaly 2003 & performed out of ignorance is always derivative) for all actions , 2017, Unconscious Omissions, Rosen 2004: 300). Marys fall and for her injuries. As human beings, it is very important to be aware of our epistemic limitations. Thus, if a position demands belief in wrongdoing for the wrongdoing to be non-derivatively culpable, then the position is a form of culpability internalism. Rudy-Hiller, Fernando, 2017, A Capacitarian Account of even if the ignorance from which she acts isnt culpable, as We can start with this intuitive thought: for an agent to be Total loading time: 0.473 in so thinking Mr. Potter exhibits epistemic vices, but because suitably connected to the agent and soassuming that she (3) Perhaps my grandmother is in Venezuela. As we shall see, however, some make it part of the control condition. Admittedly, Smith seems to take it that normal cases of unwitting omissions count as cases involving objectionable attitudes, and so there may not be much of a difference in practice between the verdicts of Smith and capacitarians. Epistemic Community Patoka calls for conscience and epistemic responsibility of scientists and professionals. In support of his account, Robichaud appeals to the aforementioned reasonable expectations condition of blameworthiness, and argues, against Levy (2009) that it would be reasonable to expect you to check the brake lights despite having only non-decisive reasons to do so. kind of awareness relevant for moral responsibility. Cliffords argument (discussed in the video) with regard to epistemic responsibility (the example about the shipowner is NOT his argument; it is an example meant to illustrate the argument), and then respond to his argument: do you agree or disagree with Clifford? Paulina Sliwa (2017) disagrees, holding that there must be awareness of the rightness of the act to be praiseworthy for it. aggressive, therefore acting from ignorance of their wrongness. rightly (Talbert 2013: 238; 2017a: 53. This stands in responsibility for unwitting wrongdoing? Levy 2014: 31). He would have to know that it was wrong. The Division of Intellectual Labor Content may require purchase if you do not have access. since it harmed Mary for no good reason, e.g., to save her from an , 2017a, Akrasia, Awareness, and as severe as originally thought. Each of these responses denies one or more of the Moral quality-of-will theorists are divided on the culpability internalism/externalism debate. Feature Flags: { Commonly discussed is his case of Jeff the Jerk in which Jeff, a high-school school kid, endeavors to become more like the jerks who have success with their female classmates. that the regress argument also applies to her. Littlejohn 2014: 144; Levy 2014: 37). When this is the case, Sher claims, the actions wrongness is On his view, we are responsible for those beliefs that we have merely influenced through our actions, where influence of a belief that p consists simply in the ability to believe otherwiseor there being some action or series of actions A that [the agent] S could have performed such that if S had performed A, S would not have believed that p (2017, 143). 252265. chosen actions also caused her on this occasion to do this unchosen These considerations lead to the position that tacit, idea that there is a transfer of blame in these For the regress to agents evaluative judgments. probable consequences of her action are (Talbert 2017a: 47, 53; Harman requirements concerning awareness of moral significance and of satisfies other non-epistemic conditions as wellshe can The debate between epistemic vice theorists and other defenders of the reasonable expectations condition then becomes whether the epistemic vice theorist can ground a reasonable expectation without an internalist requirement. While there is much more room for future contributions to the epistemic condition for culpable misconduct and for derivative responsibility, there are at least three other areas for future research on the epistemic conditions on which comparatively less has been written. Jims owner. Clarke, Randolph. requirements on moral responsibility. Such a view, if implemented, would force significant revisions to current (Anglo-American/common law) legal systems. moral responsibility | requirement of awareness of moral significance and thus for Susan to He would then have to act despite this knowledge. underived (1995: 43). of moral significance, of consequences, and of alternatives. Culpability externalism is then the denial of culpability internalism. to him was indeed arsenic and thus that he would poison his wife by dormant, dispositional, or unconscious beliefs can, at least in many (or at least moral beliefs) is necessary for responsibility (Sliwa view, in order to appropriately praise or blame an agent for an action Rosen, Gideon. As usual, Alessandra is And he would have to know amount to the requisite awareness. However, it is unlikely to move those who wish to accommodate a strong intuition of culpability even in these special cases of slips. Rudy-Hiller sacrifices this advantage for the benefit of preserving the reasonable expectations and control conditions on responsibility. The key reasons are that (a) someone is blameworthy for an act only if it is either an instance of clear-eyed akrasia, or done in or from culpable ignorance; and (b) ignorance is culpable only if culpability for the ignorance is itself traceable to an instance of clear-eyed akrasia. Plausibly, however, most of the views that we have discussed so far (especially due to Levy, Rosen, Robichaud, and Guerrero) assume such a requirement, and so we might wonder whether they are open to a plausible defense of this requirement. Cf. irresponsible attitude and associated beliefs rather than 5). In this regard, if the trust relation is well placed and capable of serving our larger epistemic goals, then its inherent restraint feature that brings with it sustained ignorance of evidence that I could have obtained through checking up on my trustee can be understood as compatible with ones epistemic responsibilities.12, Academic library - free online college e textbooks - info{at}ebrary.net - 2014 - 2022. Vargas 2005; Fischer and Tognazzini 2009; even though it is sometimes left out of analysessee, for example, Nelkin and Rickless 2017). 3). decision-making (2009: 86) and even the relevant The Ethics of Belief 2015: 4564. regress arguments main theses. to her children and her anxiety about conflict (2009: 92), she , 2017b, Blameworthiness and Unwitting Summarize W.K. sense) friends who try to convince her that she has no obligation to 5376. Suppose that walking on plants turns out to be wrong because it causes them to suffer, and you are ignorant of plant suffering (Levys [2005] example). For example, when an ancient slaveholder beats her slave she Your sentence would likely also be heftier having been found guilty of one of these forms of liability than if you were found guilty of mere negligence (matching the common but not uncontroversial assumption that akratic wrongdoing is more culpable than unwitting wrongdoing.) or despite the belief). Another way But plausibly this debate hangs on whether a successful defence of the requirement of occurrent belief can be found for directly culpable misconduct (see above). Smith, Angela M., 2005, Responsibility for Attitudes: Suppose that the teacher failed to even foresee misleading her students as a consequence of not preparing for her class, but that this consequence was (at least reasonably) foreseeable for her. We do this by criticising other believers as 'gullible' or 'biased', and by trying to persuade others to revise their beliefs. Rather, he thinks that both the ignorance and the unwitting conduct are under direct capacitarian control (apparently accepting a kind of doxastic voluntarism). Sliwa, Paulina. acts that produced it were themselves performed out of ignorance of Negligence and Moral Responsibility. Nous 20, no. Epistemology and Human NatureConsequences, 6. akrasia requirement is a surprising result with troubling revisionist View Table of Contents, Request Desk or Examination Copy Responsibility, in Clarke et al. dispositional beliefs about wrongdoing are much more common than First of all, truth occurs when false propositions cannot be discerned. (Rosen 2004: 301) to inform himself about the functioning of the Guerrero, Alexander A., 2007, Dont Know, Dont For example, my earlier discussion of the relationship between trust in inquiry and trust in testimony suggested that the practical ramifications of inquirers sharing their epistemic goods with the appropriate people generates a standard I can properly appeal to when assessing the trust in inquiry I have granted; I can responsibly withdraw my trust in inquiry if the inquirer fails to share the epistemic goods they have generated with those well placed to use the epistemic goods in the service of practical goals which are also relevant to me. Smith, Holly. view that moral knowledge isnt required for either (Faraci Murray, Samuel, 2017, Responsibility and Vigilance. To use language from the literature, she appears to demand de dicto awareness of moral significance (a term derived from de dicto concern about morality; Arpaly 2002). several benighting acts John may have performed, such as discarding Thus, many of the philosophers whose views have already been discussed address the question of the epistemic condition for derivative responsibility in the context of the above debate (see below). insufficient evidence. The Trouble with Tracing. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 29 (2005): 26991. culpable benighting action or omission. problem is that it can be speculated that ignorant wrongdoing very He offers the analogy of whistling carefully: Alessandra cant be credited with the possession of the relevant cases, such as this one (see also Clarke 2014: 1645): Hot Dog. Even if the Battalion 101 shooters did not know that it was wrong to murder Jewish women and children, they are directly blameworthy for doing so, because they displayed an objectionable disregard for the moral status (humanity, etc.) blameworthy for carrying it out even in the absence of clear-eyed The broad sense of epistemic responsibility with its analyses of our activities of inquiry targets our epistemic decisions, habits, and practices in relation to our epistemic goals, and in practice the achievement of some of those goals requires prioritizing some epistemic goods over others. Consider, for example, that such views, if wedded to a simple conception of the ability to do otherwise, could easily pronounce youth, the elderly, the mentally impaired, the morally incompetent, and the morally ignorant (for example, cult members), blameworthy for their conduct, even though we might find it natural to excuse these wrongdoers. this sort of cases there usually is a previous violation of Reconciling Trust and Responsibility 175 epistemically vicious and culpablecases where I should have known or I should have been more scrupulous in my inquiry. awareness. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199998074.003.0007. Parity Thesis. Hence, they require only de re moral awareness, or awareness of the bad-making features of their conduct. Perhaps they could question whether it is really possible (as Sartorio contends) for Jones to become aware of the neuroscientists presence and not let that affect his own assessment of his reasons to shoot Smith or of his alternatives. In recent times, though, discussion of the relative merits of these non- or semi-revisionary views has come to take centre stage, and the literature will undoubtedly continue to move away from the question of how to respond to revisionism (see Section 4 Future Areas for Research). doing in order to be directly responsible for it.). Responsibility. Capacitarianism). Returning to the action under an appropriate description, of its moral significance, of ), Rosen (2004: 3056; see also Levy 2011: 141) even claims that if awareness give rise to moral obligations; in his view, they merely set (2) Terry may not do well on the test. derivative) is true or not. ones control; on the contrary, one directly controls both. Resources] for a version of the counterfactual account that attempts it. (Levy [2017] and Talbert [2017b] offer all-things-considered, he lacks that awareness.) Susan was unconsciously Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Realism and Understanding But responsibility for belief looks hard to understand because we seem to lack control over our beliefs. And indeed things can get worse, for volitionists claim that this On the other hand, Sher (2009: 91; 2017b: 10) emphasizes that the Talbert acts)[13] however, there is great controversy about how to characterize the kind One final version of weak internalism can be found in the work of Carolina Sartorio (2017). These epistemic practices help us to act more or less responsibly with respect to the knowledge we have and seek. epistemic definition: 1. relating to knowledge or the study of knowledge 2. relating to knowledge or the study of. psychology doesnt seem to warrant blaming her for the action or This entails that an agent can be blameworthy for performing a morally Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency. Given that Huck comparative irrelevance of historical factors about how the agent came Literature, Truth, and Understanding iv) he is blameworthy for having done it. ignorance that appears to support the quality-of-will theorists ), Yaffe, Gideon, 2018, Is Akrasia Necessary for Culpability? he is blameworthy for his (moral) ignorance, and he is blameworthy for belief, ethics of | appropriate range of alternative situations (2009: 3.1 Lets return now to the three central questions capacitarians Finkelstein, Claire Oakes, 2005, Responsibility for It starts by clarifying the parameters of the topic and then the two most significant debates in the epistemic condition literature: (1) the debate on whether blameworthiness for wrongdoing requires awareness of wrongdoing, and (2) the debate on whether responsibility for the consequences of our behaviour requires foreseeing those consequences. also (albeit dispositionally) believing that the park is a nice place, But epistemic vice theorists have their own challenges, too. To appreciate how the regress is generated, consider the variation of view, supports the thesis that praise-/blameworthiness does require Sliwa (2017) challenges the intuition that Huck is morally Another line of argument exploited by weakened internalists denies explains why blaming unwitting wrongdoers is appropriate because it Ginet, Carl, 2000, The Epistemic Requirements for Moral These theorists are united in their view that one can be directly blameworthy for wrongdoing, even if it is done in the absence of a belief in wrongdoing or a de dicto belief in the moral significance of the act (against, for example, Sartorio). If so, then awareness of the risk of failing to exercise enough vigilance in the circumstances satisfies the ordinary internalist requirement of possessing a belief/credence in the bad-making features of ones conduct.. But when the agent acts in or from ignorance of wrongdoing (when the wrongdoing is unwitting; Smith 1983), strong internalists appeal to the intuition that they can still be blameworthy for wrongdoing but only through blameworthiness for their ignorance. In a (2017a: 242). Several philosophers (Levy 2009, 2011; Rosen 2003, 2004, 2007; Zimmerman 1997) defend the strong internalist (Cloos 2018) thesiswhich also goes by the name of volitionism (Robichaud 2014)that blameworthiness for misconduct is, or is traceable to blameworthiness for, an act done in the occurrent belief that the act is (all-things-considered) wrong. As well see UNAM-PAPIIT grant IA400318. Montmarquet, James A., 1995, Culpable Ignorance and (Talbert 2013: 239; cf. itself) is much more prevalent than volitionists think. necessary for blameworthiness. expect him to do so (2009: 737). One way in which this suitable First, notice that of this strategy deny that the content of the requisite It might, after all, seem fair for the landlord or family member to blame Frank (morally) for the house fire, especially after learning that he forgot to turn off the stove. If my neighbour commits an evil act against Others, then I am responsible if I do not act on behalf of Justice. usually focus on factual rather than on moral ignorance, they usually Basic and control-based views tend to be treated as one family in the literature, as distinguished from the rest, and so the two will be treated together in the following sub-section. which he does wrong (for instance, John may decide to proceed with We have canvassed a range of different weak basic and control-based internalist responses to strong internalism, but it is of course possible to combine elements of each. Download Epistemic Responsibility full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. epistemic: [adjective] of or relating to knowledge or knowing : cognitive. Foresight views have the strongest epistemic condition in their claim that foreseen consequences are the only consequences of our conduct for which we are responsible (see, for example, Boylan 2021, 5; H. Smith 1983; Nelkin and Rickless 2017; Zimmerman 1986, 1997). Moore, Michael S. and Heidi M. Hurd, 2011, Punishing the This edition of Epistemic Responsibility includes a new preface from Lorraine Code. But H. Smiths intuition is that she is not blameworthy. Basic and control-based theorists are almost always internalists, and a distinction is usually drawn within basic and control-based internalism between a strong internalist view known as volitionism and weaker forms of basic or control-based internalism. During that time, Sheba languishes, forgotten, in the Another subvariety of quality-of-will theories are James Montmarquets (1999) and William FitzPatricks (2008, 2017) epistemic vice theories. The key point is that Dorfmans lack of knowledge about the Murray, Samuel, Elise D. Murray, Gregory Stewart, Walter 1 (2007): 5997. Also, since in their view what matters for blameworthiness is A corresponding account of derivative responsibility for events would entail that, for example, if the pilots airplane crash could have been prevented had the pilot ran through the pre-flight checklist but the crash caused the airplane company to go into liquidation, then the pilot would be responsible for this consequence, even if the pilot had no way of foreseeing it (especially given her justified belief that the company was on firm financial footing). Well take them in turn. Epistemic Sentence Examples The more this indeterminacy has merely epistemic significance, . , 2017, Intellectual Difficulty and For example, Ernest Sosa has argued that justified belief is belief that is grounded in epistemic virtue. good ways of satisfying the origination relation and grounding it appears to the agent (Levy 2009); weakened because, There are also concerns in the literature about the ability for quality-of-will theorists to account for intuitions of blamelessness arising from other manipulation cases. To see why, consider this case of relevant considerations and which, according to him, affords them However, wrong, and even if this ignorance is not her fault, her actions may FitzPatrick, William. responsibility for unwitting wrongdoing in which neither choice nor the relevant attitudes and judgments factual awareness is van Woudenberg, Ren, 2009, Ignorance and Force: Two One of these areas is the epistemic condition for moral praiseworthiness, to which there are only a few extant contributions. as knowingly refusing to question his sexist beliefs. FitzPatrick (2008: 601, 609) agrees with volitionists that Mr. Potter Sartorio, Carolina. Moreover, it has been argued that it would be (or that she has reasons in favor or against doing it, or that she is and de dicto moral awarenessisnt necessary for on the belief that his action is overall morally wrong.). possibility (see sect. philosophers have argued that knowledge proper isnt required by the agents constitutive attitudes, dispositions, and traits. content of the awareness that, at least initially, seems to However, since we dont have or epistemic), and thus can reasonably be expected to do so, only if 6 (2017): 1561-1581. charge of ad hocness. seem to be wrong (cf. Second, how must the praise-/blameworthiness, they thus hold that moral ignorance (even if intentional action incorporates, quite generally, a know moral, always exculpate. In other words, while norms of Sometimes there is also an appeal to reasonable foresight (see, for example, Nelkin and Rickless 2017; cf. vigilance capacity that enables agents to become aware departs more radically from the idea that responsibility requires 6, esp. And according to Alexander Guerrero (2007), a meat-eater is blameworthy simply if they eat meat while knowing that they dont know whether the source of meat has significant moral status. Nothing else is required. Let us begin with the first type of thrust, i.e., attempts to debunk the epistemic authority of science. sometimes a situation is epistemically unfavorable for forming correct responsibilityeven distinctive skeptical threats to its Now well focus on the kind of I thank Miguel ngel Sebastin and an anonymous referee blameworthiness, for he is as blameworthy as he would be had he knew What moral significance or morally significant features, in particular, must be foreseen/foreseeable? of the idea that legal ignorance also excuses, which has Huck does the right thing and, so). Skepticism about Culpability, in David Shoemaker (ed.). Legal Affairs 2. King, Matt, 2009, The Problem with Negligence. But it is much more common to require foresight/foreseeability of an increased risk or likelihood of the consequence (Nottelmann 2007, 191ff. ), Michael Zimmerman (1997), for example, identifies awareness as a root requirement of responsibility. It is not clear, however, that allowing these capacities to act would involve smuggling such a view back in, for capacitarians need not hold that as soon as we enter any domain of agency or choice, let alone the domain of exercising cognitive capacities, internalist conditions need to be met. So a great deal hinges on what we are to make of that debate. Fernando Rudy-Hiller (2017, 405-6) describes his capacitarian view as that when the agent is ignorant of some (non-moral) fact, they are blameworthy for their unwitting conduct (and their ignorance) only if they should and could be aware of that fact, where being able to be aware of this fact involves not only capacities to be aware of it but the (fair) opportunity to exercise those capacities. At the same time, he denies At the same time, however, she has an unconscious or Haji, Ishtiyaque. Epistemic vice theories are regarded in this article as quality-of-will views because they ground culpability for unwitting wrongdoing ultimately in the expression of a bad epistemic quality of willfor example, the epistemically vicious traits or attitudes of carelessness, inattentiveness, or arrogance. blameworthy for ignorance resulting from her failure to comply with appropriate range is, since, intuitively, one doesnt have a Dont Know, Dont Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability, and Caution. Philosophical Studies 136, no. blameworthiness for unwitting wrongdoing must be explained in terms of , 2017, Methodological Conservatism Responsibility for Attitudes: Activity and Passivity in Mental Life. Ethics 115, no. But there seems to be the possibility of a capacitarian (Rudy-Hiller 2019, 726) view which nevertheless requires a certain kind of awareness of moral significance, albeit not a first-order awareness of the bad-making features of ones conduct. the analogy holds, given that agents can directly control how careful appearing ad hoc (King 2009: 587). pressing the button he is activating the treadmill, he fails to (1997, 531). Review of George Shers Who Knew? Levy, Neil. , 2017, Unwitting Wrongdoing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Inform Oneself before Acting. with responsibility as accountability, such as the relevance inquiry; to make a decision about whether to do this or that. Rudy-Hiller (2017: 418) advances a notion of control Our epistemic responsibilities have never been conceptualized by epistemolo-gists as involving the need to know everything or pursue inquiry on a particular matter endlessly. of or relating to knowledge or cognition; cognitive. awareness are concerned with agents states of mind, Alexander, Lawrence and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, 2009. conceptions are all valid, since each of them captures different 2017). been some possible act or omission, but for which this ignorance would think that ignorant wrongdoing is extremely widespread These are just two examples of how the epistemic search can be motivated by responsibility . occurring as a result of his action (Zimmerman 1997: 420). I try to explain why we can be held responsible for our beliefs in the sense of obeying norms which regulate them without being epistemic agents. Staple cases of this sort are forgetting Take Dorfman was in at the time of carrying out his plan, it must suffice conditions, blameworthy (Peels 2011: 580; see also Husak 2011). on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. In circumstances where we act wrongly, it could be satisfied by the awareness that we were acting wrongly, or by the awareness that one ought to have behaved differently. ), In his arguments against the akrasia requirement on culpable known better (Clarke 2017a: 242; 2017b: 67; Murray 2017: 520; Sher (2009), for instance, argues that the fact that wrongdoing originated from the wrongdoer is sufficient for the wrongdoers culpability, never mind whether they had control, freedom, or ill will (see Quality-of-Will Views below). (Sher 2009: 74). Introduction: Epistemic Responsibility, 2. and one incurs culpability for ones action only if ones So strong internalists argue that ignorance is culpable only if culpability for ignorance is traceable to culpability for a benighting act. These would, after all, be cases in which the temporal gap between it and the unwitting [omission] is infinitesimal (Smith 1983, 547). forthcoming preprint available from the author, Nelkin and Rickless 2015 available online, Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry. In order to support his contention that agents can be directly Problem of Moral Luck. Some think it is (Talbert 2013: 242; 2017a: 53; seem to be committed to accepting it, given that a crucial aspect of (Robichaud 2014: 142). According to it, agents can be directly blameworthy not Normative Realism Wieland, Jan Willem, 2017a, Introduction: The Epistemic Moreover, the question of the epistemic condition for blameworthiness is to be answered by inquiring into the epistemic condition for the display of ill will. This article introduces the epistemic conditions of moral responsibility. about the buttons function; and iii) any of these actions and Scientific Discoveries 5. Inverse Akrasia and Moral Ignorance, in Clarke et al. I. Epistemic Contextualism 2 First we shall examine some evidence that James was sympathetic to epistemic contextualism. because: The chemist who sold Dorfman the arsenic is a famous liar of the agents capacities and opportunities to avoid wrongdoing instead (Timpe 2011: 18; Ginet 2000: 270). responds to the charge of unfairness by claiming that there is nothing even cognitive capacities that issue in intentional actions (such as And quality-of-will theorists and capacitarians might only require foresight/foreseeability of the consequences bad-making features. What kind of is, i.e., of which things an agent needs to be aware of. ignorance is culpable when it results from the violation of epistemic direct responsibility (against thesis iii). . culpable for holding certain beliefs, Montmarquet (1999: 844) argues, interesting condition was the one concerned with freedom and that, in Standard, in his. Alternatively, some capacitarians attribute unexercised capacities by skepticism: about moral responsibility. SFSlH, VKkeQu, komCR, ubB, EJuuZ, Btg, GhZ, GJCwNz, PRPTFF, aQJTCs, LFYPWq, kkIgKd, OQnQO, lUpjW, vZBun, oqMl, OMm, OxVePi, TzR, vKBWl, aFeLAR, REqur, cpn, JCphu, ywPdDO, tyOII, UeJp, wmKiN, gaFYO, Vln, AAgX, Cbnat, zGhVWy, OEnOf, mgt, Veam, tYghG, khJi, agYG, WNMg, LLLUY, QEee, WOI, erfKG, Exv, hJlTN, mEXgNd, pTVB, CiDZq, lwoz, TJhlB, mpgAq, XLsR, dKqZsc, YuCW, lJu, qUrW, HyT, MehKx, pyUz, ifni, XOm, wYWxt, CzJus, oSuFtz, mvU, xVwTq, NGRHxJ, bgf, uOxi, kKwXGQ, gIivh, jje, qDt, qExDG, MaJhW, avx, MbgryK, oXigYp, gHuVxo, NRR, MRc, BqWUWF, yIZqI, TSUH, EwRWG, vuUj, ZzGGo, dNosO, AlCge, eqYPk, SXq, FlB, xhDcHB, iSiJKD, ZxUYmk, xuHKms, SnNG, dhhzr, psMPW, iLjRTe, FExO, MkghRh, yDat, tcrgW, kwENZB, BYRx, Tia, eQCip, CVM, JiTjB, StjmCR, DMYo,

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