MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

SUBMITTED TO:

DENNIS A. DE VERA

SUBMITTED BY:

JUDEA WARRI E. ALVIOR

PHILOSOPHY 120
 DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

CENTRAL LUZON STATE UNIVERSITY

Moral Responsibility

Do you believe in moral responsibility? Or do you think that in every action you fabricate
comprises moral responsibility? According to Michael Lacewing:

“If it makes no sense or praise someone when there was no other action they could have
performed, then moral responsibility depends on freewill. So if freewill is undermined by determinism, so
is moral responsibility. No one is responsible for natural events, such as earthquakes. But determinism
claims that actions are just like natural events in that they are all causally determined. If we don’t blame or
praise people. In other words, no one is every truly morally responsible for what they do.” (p.1)

I highly agree that we should never hold anyone morally responsible. Because moral
responsibility is void. Here’s what Galen Strawson said:

“There is an argument, which I will the Basic Argument, which appears to prove that we cannot
be truly or ultimately morally responsible for our actions. According to the Basic Argument, it makes no
difference whether determinism is true or false. We cannot be truly or ultimately morally responsible for
our actions in either case.” (p.5)

Basic Argument entails that no one is morally responsible whether the determinism is
true or false. If the determinism is really true we are not responsible for our actions. The Basic
Argument has various expressions in the literature of freewill, and its central idea can be quickly
conveyed. (1) Nothing can be “causa sui”—nothing can be the cause of itself. (2) In order to be
truly morally responsible for one’s actions one would have to be “causa sui,” at least in certain
crucial mental respects. (3) Therefore nothing can be truly morally responsible. (Strawson,
1994) Rejecting the moral responsibility is a genuine possibility. The disagreement over moral
responsibility is an old one, with many twists and turns. Some those twists have involved
disputes over exactly what is involved in saying that someone is morally responsible.

Basic argument is valid in showing that we cannot be morally responsible. But other
philosophers asked a fundamental question: “Is it ever morally justifiable to hold anyone morally
responsible?” Someone who thinks that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility
will either claim there is moral responsibility and determinism is false; or that determinism is
true, so there is moral responsibility. According to Michael Lacewing compatibilism about moral
responsibility has three options: (1) It can accept the “ought implies can” and argue that there is
a relevant sense in which a person could have acted differently, even though determinism is
true, so they are morally responsible. It is means that freewill involves choosing differently, it
would have acted differently. If determinism is true, they are morally responsible. (2) It can
argue that issues of determinism and “ought implies can” are irrelevant to moral responsibility.
This means that determinism and “ought implies can” are not important to moral responsibility (if
it is true). (3) It can reject the “ought implies can” principle, so the fact that a person cannot do
anything else does not mean that they are not morally responsible for it.

I put compatibilism about moral responsibility because I want you a clearer

understanding about it.

Let me use the example of Galen Strawson about impossibility of moral responsibility
using Basic Argument:

“Suppose you set off for a shop on the evening of a national holiday, intending to buy a cake with
your last ten pound note. On the steps of the shop someone is shaking an Oxfam Tin. You stop, and it
seems completely clear to you that it is entirely up to you what you do next that is, it seems to you that
you are truly, radically, free to choose; in such a way that you will be ultimately morally responsible for
whatever you do choose. Even if you believe that determinism is true, and that you will in five minutes
time be able to look back and say that what you did was determined, this does not seem to undermine
your sense of the absoluteness and inescapability of your freedom, and of your moral responsibility for
your choice. The same seems to be true even if you accept the validity of Basic Argument stated in
Section I1 which concludes that one cannot be in any way ultimately responsible for the way, one is and
decides.”

There are situations that you will think that you are morally responsible in everything that
you do but in the end you will realize that no matter what the consequences you are no longer
responsible for it because it what is it. But there is no doubt that within our culture, people do
make claims and ascriptions of moral responsibility. No one is morally responsible for being bad
or behaving badly but this does not mean that no one has a character with deep flaws.

If someone asserts that the moral responsibility system works well in preventing crimes
and improving character, there would remain the more basic question: yes, but it is really just? If
we could keep a wonderful system of a law and order by sacrificing one person chosen at
random every year, that might be a tempting tradeoff, indeed if God offer us such a system, we

1
Section I is interested in free action, we are interested in actions that are performed for a reason.
might well sign on (especially when we consider that otherwise more people will be wrongly
killed each year.) But we would still have the question: yes, but it is really just? Did the punished
person genuinely deserve punishment? Perhaps the longer benefits of this system would
outweigh the injustice done to the innocent person who is sacrificed, but that would not change
the fact that the innocent person is punished unjustly. The practice of moral responsibility is not
an effective way of producing either a safer or better behaved individuals. To the contrary (it will
be argued): moral responsibility blocks implementation of much better systems and causes
enormous sufferings. But even if the practice of moral responsibility were effective in making a
better society, this effectiveness would not prove that the system is just.2

Moral responsibility views that shift the focus away from morally justified punishment and
reward fail to capture our basic notion of moral responsibility. Some claim that moral
responsibility is about applying punishment and reward where they will produce the greatest
social benefit. Others claim that moral responsibility involves only the making of moral
judgments: when we say that Beverly did something morally wrong, that necessarily involves
the judgment that she is morally responsible for her bad behavior. If you are morally responsible
for an act, then it is legitimate to require you to give an account or justification for your act.
When we say that Cassandra is morally responsible for an act, we mean that she is accountable
for that act: she must be capable of giving an account of why she acted.3

Even in the cases in which an individual gives a correct account of why she acted badly,
that does not establish that she is morally responsible for that act. Suppose that Anne makes a
bad decision and commits a morally bad act because she decides hastily and fails to consider
important moral factors that would have led her to a better choice.4

According to Shaun Nichols and Joshua Knobe, when people are confronted with a story
about an agent who performs a morally bad behavior, this can trigger an immediate emotional
response, and this emotional response can play a crucial role in their intuitions about whether
the agent was morally responsible. In fact, people may sometimes declare such an agent to be

2
MIT Press. Against Moral Responsibility, p.5
3
MIT Press. Against Moral Responsibility, p.7
4
MIT Press. Against Moral Responsibility, p.7
morally responsible despite the fact that they embrace a theory of responsibility on which the
agent is not responsible.5

Here’s example of Nichols and Knobe;

“Consider, for example, Watson’s (1987) interesting discussion of the crimes of Robert Harris.
Watson provides long quotations from a newspaper article about how Harris savagely murdered innocent
people, showing no remorse for what he had done. Then he describes, in equally chilling detail, the
horrible abuse Harris had to endure as he was growing up. After reading all of these vivid details, it would
be almost impossible for a reader to respond by calmly working out the implications of his or her theory of
moral responsibility. Any normal reader will have a rich array of reactions, including not only abstract
theorizing but also feelings of horror and disgust. A reader’s intuitions about such a case might be
swayed by her emotions, leaving her with a conclusion that contravened her more abstract, theoretical
beliefs about the nature of moral responsibility.” (p.664-665)

Such example is just a manifestation that people’s emotion and beliefs about of what
they have believed may change. But the main point here is what the people think about Harris
for not being radically responsible for the people he had killed, then eventually people knew
about abusive experiences Harris endured when he was growing up, then people will break
violate their beliefs about Harris being responsible for the crimes he did. Then people think that
he is not morally held responsible for what he did.

Galen Strawson restate the Basic Argument in order to comprehend the impossibility of
moral responsibility. It is follows6;

(1) You do what you do, in any situation in which you find yourself, because of the way you are.
So
(2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do must be truly responsible for the way you are
–at least in certain crucial mental respects.

Or:

(1) What you intentionally do, given the circumstances in which you (believe you) find
yourself, flows necessarily from how you are.

Hence,
(2) You have to get to have some responsibility for how you are in order to get to have some
responsibility for what you intentionally do, given the circumstances in which you (believe
you) find yourself.

5
Nichols, Shaun & Joshua Knobe. Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions,
p.664
6
Strawson, Galen. Impossibility of Moral Responsibility, Aug.1994.
 Comment: Once again the qualification about ‘certain mental respects’ is one I will take for
granted. Obviously one is not responsible for one’s sex, one’s basic body pattern, one’s height
and so on. But if one were not responsible for anything about oneself, how one could be
responsible for what one did, given the truth of (1)? This the fundamental question, and it seems
clear that if one is going to be responsible for any aspect of oneself, it had better be some aspect
of one’s mental nature.

I take it that (1) is incontrovertible, and that it is (2) that must be resisted. For if (1) and (2) are
conceded the case seems lost, because the full argument runs as follows;

(1) You do what you do because of the way you are.

So
(2) To be truly morally responsible for what you do must be truly responsible for the way are. At
least in certain crucial mental respects.
But
(3) You cannot be truly responsible for the way you are, so you cannot be truly responsible for
what you do.
Why can’t you be truly responsible for the way you are? Because
(4) To be truly responsible for the way you are, you must have intentionally brought it about that
you are the way you are, and this is impossible.
Why is it impossible? Well suppose it is not, suppose that
(5) You have somehow intentionally brought it about that you are the way you now are, and that
you have brought this about in such a way that you can now be said to be truly responsible
for being the way you are now.
For this to be true
(6) You must already have had a certain nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it
about that you are as you now are.
But then
(7) For it to be true and you alone are truly responsible for how you now are, you must be truly
responsible for having had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about
that you are the way you now are.
So
(8) You must have intentionally brought it about that you had that nature N, in which case you
must have existed already with a prior nature in the light of which you intentionally brought it
about that you had the nature N in the light of which you intentionally brought it about that you
are the way you now are. . . .

Galen Strawson adopts the extreme view that ultimacy requires being the ultimate
source or cause of oneself, a causa sui, which is a metaphysical impossibility. According to
Strawson, our ordinary concept of moral responsibility has this exceedingly high standard built
right into it, a standard that reveals an incoherence in so far as it is thought to apply to finite
creatures like ourselves.7 The argument goes roughly like this:

“A person is morally responsible for what she does only if she is ultimately morally
responsible for the way that she is mentally as this bears on what she does. No person can be

7
Levy, Neil & Michael McKenna. Recent Work on Freewill and Moral Responsibility. Journal Compilation. Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. 2009, p.96-133
ultimately morally responsible for the way she is mentally. Therefore, no person is morally
responsible for what she does.”

Notice that Strawson’s version does not turn on the thought that determinism is true and
that due to this we are not ultimate sources of our actions and therefore not morally responsible.
Rather, irrespective of determinism, what moral responsibility demands is simply incoherent—
that we be ultimate creators of our very selves, he claims. For if we are not, then we act from
reasons that ultimately we did not fashion, but that were fashioned for us. In the latter case, we
are not responsible for acting on these reasons. Rather, we are simply the hapless victims (or
beneficiaries) of the contingencies that led to our possession of them.8

But on the other hand, Thomas Nagel points out that our ordinary views about moral
responsibility turn out to be much more problematic than one might have thought. Thomas
Nagel explained:

“The problem develops out of the ordinary conditions of moral judgment. Prior to reflection it is intuitively
plausible that people cannot be morally assessed for what is not their fault, or for what is due to factors
beyond their control. Such judgment is different from the evaluation of something as a good or bad thing,
or state of affairs. The latter may be present in addition to moral judgment, but when we blame someone
for his actions we are not merely saying it is bad that they happened or bad that he exists: we are judging
him, saying he is bad, which is different from his being a bad thing. This kind of judgment takes only a
certain kind of object. Without being able to explain exactly why, we feel that the appropriateness of moral
assessment is easily undermined by discovery that the act or attribute, no matter how good or bad, is not
under the person’s control, produced by involuntary movement, physical force, or ignorance of the
circumstances, excuses what is done from moral judgment.”

This captures the idea that people cannot be blame for actions which are caused by things that
are not their fault. Intuitively, this principle seems true—even obvious. But as Nagel points out, it
has some surprising consequences. This principle is what we so called ‘condition of control’.
Nagel first considers an example involves ‘condition of control’

“The driver, if he is entirely without fault, will feel terrible about his role in the event, but will not have to
reproach himself. Therefore this example of agent regret is not yet a case of moral bad luck. However, if
the driver was guilty of even a minor degree of negligence—failing to have his brakes checked recently,
for example—then if that negligence contributes to the death of the child, he will not merely feel terrible.
He will blame himself for the death. And what makes this an example of moral luck is that he would have
to blame himself only slightly for the negligence itself if no situation arose which required him to brake
suddenly and violently to avoid hitting a child. Yet the negligence is the same in both cases, and the
driver has no control over whether a child will run into this path.”

8
Levy, Neil & Michael McKenna. Recent Work on Freewill and Moral Responsibility. Journal Compilation. Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. 2009, p.96-133
Why would this sort of example pose a challenge to the condition of control? Is the driver right to
regard himself as more blameworthy in the case where his brakes fail and he runs over a child,
than the case in which he fails to check the brakes, but nothing further bad happens? Other
similar cases are easy to come by: running a red light, or failing to shovel the side walk in front
of one’s house well enough, or failing to put on the parking brake when parked on a hill, or the
difference between successful and unsuccessful murder attempts. The condition of control says
that, in each of these cases, the relevant agents are morally equivalent. Is this right? Does this
indicate that we should make the corresponding changes to our legal system?

A second, very different sort of case puts yet more pressure on the condition of control;

“An envious person hates the greater success of others. He can be morally condemned as envious even
if he congratulates them cordially and does nothing to denigrate or spoil their success. Conceit, likewise,
need not be displayed. It is fully present in someone who cannot help dwelling with secret satisfaction on
the superiority of his own achievements, talents, beauty, intelligence, or virtue. To some extent such a
quality may be the product of earlier choices; to some extent it may be amenable to change by current
actions. But it is largely a matter of constitutive bad fortune. Yet people are morally condemned for such
qualities, and esteemed for others equally beyond control of the will: they are assessed for what they are
like.”

It is hard to deny that our personality traits or tendencies are often beyond our control. In these
cases, the condition of control implies that we ought not to be blamed (or praised) for these
traits can this be right? Imagine that you have a child whom you raise to be determined in the
face of adversity. Is it a mistake to regard them as praiseworthy when they exhibit determination
of that sort?

Nagel’s third example is called luck in one’s circumstances, for which he provides the following
example:

”A conspicuous of this is political. Ordinary citizens of Nazi Germany had an opportunity to behave
heroically by opposing the regime. They also had an opportunity to behave badly, and most of them are
culpable for having failed this test. But it is a test to which the citizens of other countries were not
subjected, with the result that even if they, or some of them, would have behaved as badly as the
Germans in like circumstances, they simply did not and therefore are not similarly culpable. Here again
one is morally at the mercy of fate, and it may seem irrational upon reflection, but our ordinary moral
attitudes would be unrecognizable without it. We judge people for what they actually do or fail to do, not
just for what they would have done if circumstances had been different.”

It is very clear that, in the standard case, we do not have control over the circumstances
we face in our lives. It is also clear that many people who have done things for which we blame
them would have done no such things had they not been placed in those circumstances.

Does the condition of control imply that they are not responsible for what they have
done? Or just that they are not more responsible than anyone else who would have done what
they did, were they placed in those circumstances?
 Suppose that 40% of current American citizens are such that, if they had been living in
Germany in, say, 1938, they would have become enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party. Does
that mean that those people are now as morally blameworthy as those citizens of Nazi,
Germany who were, in fact, enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party?9

The fourth and last example is what we so called luck determination by antecedent conditions.

The problem is this: If determinism is true, then all of our actions are due only to factors
outside of our control, since they are all due to the state of the world before our birth in
conjunction with the laws of nature. And in fact the two main views about freewill which we
discussed—that is compatible determinism, and that it is incompatible with determinism—are
closely related to different responses to Nagel’s four sorts of examples. Suppose that one is a
compatibilist about freewill and determinism. What should the proponent of such a view say
about examples of luck in determination by antecedent circumstances?

Now suppose that you are an incompatibilist. How should you think about luck in
determination by antecedent circumstances?10

Incompatibilism may also have consequences for our view of luck in one’s
circumstances. Recall the example of Nazi Germany used above all illustrate this sort of moral
luck. That example relied on the following being true of many Americans:

If they had been in Nazi Germany and been subjected to the pressures to which ordinary
Germans were subjected, then they would have freely joined the Nazi Party.

Let Bob be such an American. Then what we are saying is that the following statement is
true:

If Bob had been in Nazi Germany and been subjected to the pressures to which ordinary
Germans were subjected, then Bob would have freely joined the Nazi Party.

This statement is what is sometimes called a counterfactual of freedom. It says that if a

certain person had been in certain circumstances, then they would have done such-and-such.

9
Nagel’s examples and condition of control was found in
https://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&source=web&crt=j&url=https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2008-
9/10100-spring/_LECTURES/22-moral-luck.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiE1cucv-
jQAhVMtl8KHftOCfgQFggYMAA&usg=AFQjCNHY4L2YnT2aTBGv5V1VBtbkt_Qz8g
10
This explanation found in
https://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&source=web&crt=j&url=https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2008-
9/10100-spring/_LECTURES/22-moral-luck.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiE1cucv-
jQAhVMtl8KHftOCfgQFggYMAA&usg=AFQjCNHY4L2YnT2aTBGv5V1VBtbkt_Qz8g
 Moreover, almost everyone has the strong intuition that there should be a legal
difference between a pair of examples of luck in how things turn out. Surely the person who
drives drunk and runs over a child should be punished more stringently than someone who
drives drunk, but arrives home uneventfully. But how can this legal difference be justified, if
there is no moral difference—if the is really no more blameworthy than the other?

Nagel thinks that examination of these cases shows that our habits of blaming and
praising each other –of holding each other morally responsible—are incoherent.

“I believe that in a sense the problem has no solution, because something in the idea of agency is
incompatible with actions being events, or people being things. But as the external determinants of what
someone has done are gradually exposed, in their effect on consequences, character, and choice itself, it
becomes gradually clear that actions are events and people things. Eventually nothing remains which can
be ascribed to the responsible self, and we are left with nothing but a portion of the larger sequence of
events, which can be deplored or celebrated, but not blamed or praised.”

Many people think that this is an overreaction. But it is hard to disagree with Nagel’s
point that we are at least initially inclined towards an incoherent position which combines
endorsement of the condition of control with a belief in the moral significance of luck in how
things turn out.

The challenge which Nagel’s examples pose is to move from this initial position to a
coherent view of moral responsibility which explains what we should think about the sorts of
cases he discusses.11

Harry G. Frankfurt commented about the “principles of alternate possibilities.” This

principle states that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have
done otherwise. But according to him this principle is false.

“This, then, is why the principle of alternate possibilities is mistaken. It asserts that a person bears
no moral responsibility—that is, he is to be excused—for having performed an action if there were
circumstances that made it impossible for him to avoid performing it. But there may be circumstances that
make it impossible for a person to avoid performing some action without those circumstances in any way
bringing it about that he performs that action. It would surely be no good for the person to refer to
circumstances of this of this sort in an effort to absolve himself of moral responsibility for performing the
action in question. For those circumstances, by hypothesis, actually had nothing to do with his having
done what he did. He would have done precisely the same way to do it, even if they had not prevailed.”
p.838

11
https://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&source=web&crt=j&url=https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2008-
9/10100-spring/_LECTURES/22-moral-luck.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiE1cucv-
jQAhVMtl8KHftOCfgQFggYMAA&usg=AFQjCNHY4L2YnT2aTBGv5V1VBtbkt_Qz8g
 Frankfurt also said that the revision of the “principles of alternate possibilities” does not
seriously affect the argument of those who believed that moral responsibility and determinism
are incompatible.

“What I have said may suggest that the principle of alternate possibilities should be revised so as to
assert that a person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it because he could not
have done otherwise. It may be noted that this revision of the principle does not seriously affect the
arguments of those who have relied on the original principle in their efforts to maintain that moral
responsibility and determinism are incompatible. For if it was causally determined that a person
performed certain action, then it will be true that the person performed it because of those causal
determinants. And if the fact that it was causally determined that a person perform certain action means
that person could not have done otherwise, as philosophers who argue for the incompatibility thesis
characteristically suppose, then the fact that it was causally determined that a person performed it
because he could not have done otherwise. The revised principle of alternate possibilities will entail, on
this assumption concerning the meaning of ‘could have done otherwise’, that a person is not morally
responsible for what he has done if it was causally determined that he do it. I do not believe, however,
that this revision of principle is acceptable.” p.838

According Harry G. Frankfurt, the principle of alternate possibilities should thus be

replaced, in his own opinion, by the following principle: a person is not morally for what he has
done if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise. This principle does not appear
to conflict with the view that moral responsibility is compatible with determinism.

The following may all be true: there were circumstances that made it impossible for a
person to avoid doing something; these circumstances actually played a role in bringing it about
that he did it, so that it is correct to say that he did it because he could not have done otherwise;
the person really wanted to do what he did; he did it because it was what he really wanted to do,
so that it is not correct to say that he did what he did only because he could not have done
otherwise. Under these conditions, the person may well be morally responsible for what he has
done. On the other hand, he will not be morally responsible for what he has done if he did it only
because he could not have done otherwise, even if what he did was something he really wanted
to do.12

12
Frankfurt, Harry G. Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 66, No. 23
(Dec.04,1969), pp.829-839.
REFERENCES:

Frankfurt, Harry G, 1969. ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibilities’ The Journal of
Philosohy, Vol. 66, No. 23. (Dec. 4, 1969), pp.829-839

Inwagen, Peter Van, 1997. ‘Fischer on Moral Responsibility’ The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol.
47 No. 188 (July 1997), pp. 375-381

Lacewing, Michael, ‘Moral Responsibility’ Routlegde Taylor and Francis Group. Retrieved in
www.alevelphilisophy.co.uk.

Levy, Neil & Michael McKenna. Recent Work on Freewill and Moral Responsibility. Journal Compilation. Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. 2009, p.96-133

Nichols, Shaun & Joshua Knobe. Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk
Intuitions, p.664

Strawson, Galen, 1994. ‘The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility’ Philosophical Studies: An

International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, Vol. 75, No. ½, Free Will,
Determinism and Moral Responsibility (Aug., 1994), pp. 5-24

andrewmbailey.com

https://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&source=web&crt=j&url=https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2008-
9/10100-spring/_LECTURES/22-moral-luck.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiE1cucv-
jQAhVMtl8KHftOCfgQFggYMAA&usg=AFQjCNHY4L2YnT2aTBGv5V1VBtbkt_Qz8g

www.jeffsnapper.org

www.pgrim.org
www.jesp.org.>PDF> moral_responsibilities