Beyond Atomism and Monism: A Revisionist View of Moral Responsibility

FAIN: FB-53968-08

Manuel Vargas
Regents of the University of California, San Diego (San Francisco, CA 94117-1050)

My aim is to answer recent philosophical and scientific puzzles about when, whether, and how we can be morally responsible. My account emphasizes three distinctive claims. First, I reject ATOMISM, or the view that the proper analysis of responsibility proceeds from analysis of the characteristics of agents, isolated from the social and physical contexts of action. I argue that responsible agency is partly constituted by social and psychological contexts. Second, I reject MONISM about free will, or the view that there is some single capacity or structure of agency that marks responsible agency. Instead, I argue that such agency is constituted by a varied set of capacities, picked out by our diverse practical interests in ascribing responsibility. Finally, I argue for REVISIONISM, the idea that an adequate theory of responsibility will depart from some parts of common sense. Together, these ideas provide a new framework for resolving ancient and recent problems of responsibility.

Associated Products

Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Book)
Title: Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility
Author: Manuel Vargas
Abstract: Building Better Beings presents a new theory of moral responsibility. Beginning with a discussion of ordinary convictions about responsibility and free will and their implications for a philosophical theory, Manuel Vargas argues that no theory can do justice to all the things we want from a theory of free will and moral responsibility. He goes on to show how we can nevertheless justify our responsibility practices and provide a normatively and naturalistically adequate account of responsible agency, blame, and desert. Three ideas are central to Vargas' account: the agency cultivation model, circumstantialism about powers, and revisionism about responsibility and free will. On Vargas' account, responsibility norms and practices are justified by their effects. In particular, the agency cultivation model holds that responsibility practices help mold us into creatures that respond to moral considerations. Moreover, the abilities that matter for responsibility and free will are not metaphysically prior features of agents in isolation from social contexts. Instead, they are functions of both agents and their normatively structured contexts. This is the idea of circumstantialism about the powers required for responsibility. Third, Vargas argues that an adequate theory of responsibility will be revisionist, or at odds with important strands of ordinary convictions about free will and moral responsibility. Building Better Beings provides a compelling and state-of-the-art defense of moral responsibility in the face of growing philosophical and scientific skepticism about free will and moral responsibility.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/building-better-beings-a-theory-of-moral-responsibility/oclc/800035304&referer=brief_results
Secondary URL: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Better-Beings-Theory-Responsibility/dp/0198709366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468946951&sr=8-1&keywords=building+better+beings
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0198709367
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

American Philosophical Association Book Prize
Date: 10/28/2015
Organization: American Philosophical Association
Abstract: The APA alternates giving an award to the best article and book published by a younger scholar in the previous two years. The Book and Article Prizes replace the former Matchette Foundation Book Prize.

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