Varieties of responsibility

Boston University Law Review

Volumn 90, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 603-610

  Scanlon, T M ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 77954341975     PISSN: 00068047     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (31)

1. I have explored these distinctions m T.M. SCANLON, MORAL UIMENSIONS: PERMISSIBILITY, MEANING, BLAME 198-204 (2008)
2. (drawing a distinction between two types of moral responsibility: the type to which moral praise and blame attach, and substantive obligations to others);
3. T.M. Scanlon, The Significance of Choice, in 8 THE TANNER LECTURES ON HUMAN VALUES 149, 152-58 (Sterling M. McMurrin ed., 1988) (describing the importance of "choice" to personal responsibility, moral blameworthiness, and substantive responsibility).
4. This threat is discussed in ROBERT KANE, THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREE WILL 79-101 (1996) (discussing the "significance" of an incompatibilist conception of free will to our creativity, autonomy, and understanding of desert for one's achievements).
5. This threat is particularly important for Dworkin because his view of equality places great weight on the distinction between inequalities resulting from the choices of the disadvantaged person and inequalities unavoidable due to innate differences in talent, genetic luck, etc.
6. See, e.g., RONALD DWORHN, JUSTICE FOR HEDGEHOGS (forthcoming 2010) (Apr. 17, 2009 manuscript at 221-25, on file with the Boston University Law Review);
7. Ronald Dworkin, What Is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources, 10 PHIL. & PUB. AFF. 283,312-13 (1981).
8. DWORHN, supra note 3 (manuscript at 140).
9. See id.
10. Id. (manuscript at 150-51).
11. Id.
12. See, e.g., id. (manuscript at 139) (describing both compatibilists and incompatibilists). As I am using the term, an incompatibilist is someone who holds that one or more of the forms of responsibility I have mentioned (typically, it is moral responsibility that is emphasized) is ruled out if our actions are caused by factors outside us, over which we have no control. A compatibilist is someone who holds that this is not the case: that responsibility of the relevant kind is compatible with causation by outside factors.
13. See id. (manuscript at 169) (arguing that the concept of responsibility is entirely consistent with a causally determined world).
14. Id. (manuscript at 121).
15. Id. (manuscript at 128).
16. Id.
17. Id. (manuscript at 132).
18. Id. (manuscript at 132-33).
19. Id. (manuscript at 143).
20. See id.
21. Id. (manuscript at 137-61).
22. Id.
23. Also convincing, but more controversial, is the view, which is part of Dworkin's thesis, that the crucial relations between an agent's decisions need not be causes of his or her subsequent actions and other mental states. Id. (manuscript at 157). They could as well be epiphenomenal. Id. (manuscript at 146, 157). What is crucial is that the underlying neural causal mechanisms, whatever they may be, are such as to produce the relevant conformity between desires, beliefs, decisions, plans, and actions.
24. DAVID HUME, A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE, bk. 2, pt. 3, § 1, at 407 (L.A. SelbyBigge ed., Oxford Univ. Press 1960) (1739).
25. DWORHN, supra note 3 (manuscript at 132-33).
26. Id. (manuscript at 143).
27. See id. (manuscript at 158-60) (suggesting, in the context of discussing the insanity and duress defenses, that reasonable people can disagree about whether someone is truly responsible, and thus deserves punishment, for his or her actions).
28. Id. (manuscript at 158).
29. Id. ("When someone claims that he committed his criminal act in a blind range or when overcome by an irresistible impulse or under extreme duress of some kind ... we would ask: were these forces or influences strong enough, in the circumstances, so that they displaced his will's normal causal role like a drunken sailor pushing the helmsman aside and taking the wheel?").
30. Id. (manuscript at 143).
31. I defended this view in T.M. Scanlon, Reasons and Passions, in CONTOURS OF AGENCY: ESSAYS ON THEMES FROM HARRY FRANKFURT 165 (Sarah Buss & Lee Overton eds., 2002).