MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

For the purpose of this paper, I assume that if a person is morally responsible for an action, this is a necessary and sufficient condition for moral appraisal of that person for that action. For instance, if the action is morally wrong, moral blame is in order. Other morally relevant responses that are sometimes connected with moral responsibility are praise, pardon, shame, pride, reward, punishment, remorse.

I now introduce two quite different concepts of moral responsibility: one grounded on the causal responsibility of the agent for an action, the other on the ability of the agent to do otherwise. The one based on the agent's causal responsibility considers it a necessary condition for praising or blaming an agent for an action, that it was the agent and not something else that brought about the action. The question of moral responsibility becomes one of whether the agent was the or a cause of the action, or whether the agent was forced to act by something else. On this view, actions or choices can be attributed to agents because it is in their actions and choices that the agents, qua moral beings, manifest themselves.

The second idea of moral responsibility considers it a prerequisite for blaming or praising an agent for an action that the agent could have done otherwise.