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Forward-looking approaches to moral responsibility justify responsibility practices by focusing on the beneficial consequences that can be obtained by engaging in these practices. This approach was influential in the earlier parts of the twentieth century as well as before , had fallen out of favor by the closing decades of that century, and has recently been the subject of renewed interest. If this is true, then, regardless of the truth of determinism, it may be useful to offer certain incentives to agents—to praise and blame them and generally to treat them as responsible—in order to encourage them to make certain choices and thus to secure positive behavioral outcomes.
According to some articulations of the forward-looking approach, to be a responsible agent is simply to be an agent whose motives, choices, and behavior can be shaped in this way.
Thus, Moritz Schlick argued that. The question of who is responsible is the question concerning the correct point of application of the motive …. It is a matter only of knowing who is to be punished or rewarded, in order that punishment and reward function as such—be able to achieve their goal.
Instead, punishment ought to be. Analogously, in the case of reward we are concerned with an incentive. Smart also defended a well-known, forward-looking approach to moral responsibility in the mid-twentieth century.
And, for Smart, an ascription of responsibility merely involves taking an agent to be such that he would have omitted the behavior if he had been provided with a motive to do so. Whatever sanctions may follow on an ascription of responsibility are administered with eye to giving an agent motives to refrain from such behavior in the future. For one thing, as R. But a forward-looking approach, with its focus on bringing about desirable outcomes. Wallace 56; emphasis added.
In exceptional cases, a focus on beneficial outcomes may provide grounds for treating as blameworthy those who are known to be innocent Smart This last feature of some forward-looking approaches has led to particularly strong criticism. Recent efforts have been made to develop partially forward-looking accounts of responsibility that evade some of the criticisms mentioned above.
These somewhat revisionary accounts justify our responsibility practices by appeal to their suitability for fostering moral agency and the acquisition of capacities required for such agency. Some responsibility skeptics have also emphasized the forward-looking benefits of certain responsibility practices. In contrast to some of the forward-looking approaches described above, Pereboom proposes that only those agents who have in fact acted immorally should be open to forward-aiming blaming practices.
In contrast with forward-looking accounts such as J. Strawson [ 49]. The second case is likely to arouse a type and intensity of resentment that would not be appropriately felt in the first case. Corresponding points may be made about positive responses such as gratitude: you would likely not have the same feelings of gratitude toward a person who benefits you accidentally as you would toward one who does so out of concern for your welfare. When someone explains that the injury she caused you was entirely unforeseen and accidental, she indicates that her regard for your welfare was not insufficient and that she is therefore not an appropriate target for the negative attitudes involved in moral blame.
Note that the agent who excuses herself from blame in the above way is not calling into question her status as a generally responsible agent: she is still open to the demand for due regard and liable, in principle, to reactive responses.
Other agents, however, may be inapt targets for blame and the reactive emotions precisely because they are not legitimate targets of a demand for regard. In these cases, an agent is not excused from blame, he is exempted from it: it is not that his behavior is discovered to have been non-malicious, but rather that he is seen to be one of whom better behavior cannot reasonably be demanded.
For Strawson, the most important group of exempt agents includes those who are, at least for a time, significantly impaired for normal interpersonal relationships. Strawson [ 51]. Strawson [ 52]. These agents are not candidates for the range of emotional responses involved in our personal relationships because they do not participate in these relationships in the right way for such responses to be sensibly applied to them.
Rather than taking up interpersonally-engaged attitudes that presuppose a demand for respect toward exempt agents, we instead take an objective attitude toward them.
We may be able, in limited circumstances, to take up a detached, objective perspective on the behavior of normal that is, non-exempt agents. But Strawson argues that we cannot take up with this perspective permanently, and certainly not on the basis of discovering that determinism is true:.
The human commitment to participation in ordinary interpersonal relationships is, I think, to thoroughgoing and deeply rooted for us to take seriously the thought that a general theoretical conviction [e. More specifically, the truth of determinism would not show that human beings generally occupy excusing or exempting conditions that would make the attitudes involved in holding one another responsible inappropriate.
Strawson [ 53]; emphasis in original ; nor would it follow from the truth of determinism. Strawson [ 59]. Various objections have been raised regarding P. As noted in the previous subsection, Strawson argues that learning that determinism is true would not raise general concerns about our responsibility practices.
Strawson [ 54]. In reply, it has been noted that while the truth of determinism might not suggest universal abnormality, it might well show that normal human beings are morally incapacitated in a way that is relevant to our responsibility practices Russell — Strawson 84—; Watson [ —].
The explanatory priority is the other way around: It is not that we hold people responsible because they are responsible; rather, the idea our idea that we are responsible is to be understood by the practice, which itself is not a matter of holding some propositions to be true, but of expressing our concerns and demands about our treatment of one another. But there is something to be said from the other side of the debate.
It may seem obvious that people are appropriately held responsible only if there are independent facts about their responsibility. But on reflection—and following R. Such an interpretation requires an investigation into our practices, and what emerges most conspicuously, for Wallace, from this investigation is the degree to which our responsibility practices are organized around a fundamental commitment to fairness Wallace develops this commitment to fairness, and to norms of fairness, into an account of the conditions under which people are appropriately held morally responsible for their behavior — For a more recent defense of the response-dependent approach to responsibility, see Shoemaker b; for criticism of such approaches, see Todd Reasons-responsiveness approaches to responsibility have been particularly attentive to these issues.
Interpreted broadly, reasons-responsiveness approaches include a diverse collection of views, such as David Brink and Dana Nelkin , John M. Jay Wallace , and Susan Wolf Fischer and Ravizza begin with a distinction between regulative control and guidance control. Guidance control, on the other hand, does not require access to alternatives: it is manifested when an agent guides her behavior in a particular direction and regardless of whether it was open to her to guide her behavior in a different direction.
A number of factors can undermine guidance control. Thus, Fischer and Ravizza characterize possession of guidance control as partially dependent on responsiveness to reasons. Guidance control also requires that an agent owns the mechanism on which she acts. In a Frankfurt case, an agent is responsible for an action even though his so acting is ensured by external factors. But the presence of these external factors means that the agent in a Frankfurt case would have acted the same no matter what reasons he was confronted with, which suggests that the responsible agent in a Frankfurt scenario is not responsive to reasons.
A strongly reasons-responsive mechanism would both recognize and respond to any sufficient reason to act otherwise But strong reasons-responsiveness cannot be required for guidance control since many intuitively responsible agents—i. On the other hand, weak reasons-responsiveness is not enough for guidance control. Fischer and Ravizza settle on moderate reasons responsiveness as the sort that is most germane to guidance control 69— Some critics focus on the contrast just noted between the conditions they impose on receptivity to reasons and those they impose on reactivity to reasons McKenna , Mele a, Watson Do our responsibility practices accommodate distinct forms of moral responsibility?
Are there different senses in which people may be morally responsible for their behavior? Contemporary interest in these possibilities has its roots in a debate between Susan Wolf and Gary Watson. According to these views, a person is responsible for behavior that is attributable to her real self, and.
Wolf The basic idea is that a responsible agent is not simply moved by her strongest desires, but also, in some way, approves of, or stands behind, the desires that move her because they are governed by her values or because they are endorsed by higher-order desires.
According to Wolf, one point in favor of Real Self views is that they explain why people acting under the influence of hypnosis or compulsive desires are often not responsible Since these agents are typically unable, under these conditions, to govern their behavior on the basis of their valuational systems, they are alienated from their actions in a way that undermines responsibility.
But, for Wolf, it is a mark against Real Self views that they tend to be silent on the topic of how agents come to have the selves that they do. However, Wolf argues that ascriptions of moral responsibility go deeper than such attributions can reach:.
When…we consider an individual worthy of blame or of praise, we are not merely judging the moral quality of the event with which the individual is so intimately associated; we are judging the moral quality of the individual herself in some more focused, noninstrumental, and seemingly more serious way.
This latter ability will be impaired or absent in an agent whose real self is the product of pressures such as a traumatic childhood that have distorted her moral vision. Anderson and J. Dean, is a more plausible position than radical autonomism; it recognises that moral merits or defects can feature in the content of certain art forms and that sometimes moral judgments of artworks are pertinent.
However, moderate autonomism is still an autonomist position in the sense that it maintains that the aesthetic value and the moral value of artworks are autonomous.
An artwork may invite an audience to entertain a defective moral perspective and this will not detract from its aesthetic value.
All this is granted when we agree that art is properly subject to moral evaluation. But why is this value aesthetic value? What is really at issue in the debate over ethical criticism is how broadly we define the aesthetic. But this is not simply arbitrary — what in fact are the boundaries of the aesthetic? Even if moderate moralism is not the best way to explain the moral value of narrative artworks, Carroll is wise to turn to critical analysis of actual examples to support his argument, for this is where we can most clearly see the problems with moderate autonomism.
In other words, Carroll argues that in some cases the reason a work is morally flawed is the same reason the work is aesthetically flawed, and so in these cases the judgment that the work is morally flawed is also an aesthetic evaluation of that work. According to Devereaux, Triumph of the Will is morally problematic because it presents the Nazi regime as appealing.
So, the very feature that makes the film morally defective is also one of most significant aesthetic defects in the film. Hence, the moral defectiveness and the aesthetic defectiveness are due to a common reason in this particular case. Anderson and Dean focus their objection to MM on the fact that the one premise the moral defect argument and the aesthetic defect argument share 1 is not sufficient to establish either moral defectiveness or aesthetic defectiveness.
There may be other reasons that contribute to both the aesthetic evaluation and the moral evaluation of artworks, but in some cases these two groups of reasons overlap; where a reason is common to both groups, and is a central, if not sufficient, reason for both the conclusion that a work is morally defective, and the conclusion that the work is aesthetically defective.
As Carroll puts it in his response to Anderson and Dean:. But why suppose that the relevant sense of reason here is sufficient reason? Admittedly a number of factors will contribute to the moral defectiveness and the aesthetic defectiveness of the work in question. The moderate moralist need only contend that among the complex of factors that account for the moral defectiveness of the artwork in question, on the one hand, and the complex of factors that explain the aesthetic defectiveness of the artwork, on the other hand, the evil perspective of the artwork will play a central, though perhaps not sufficient, explanatory role in both.
Carroll, a, p There seems no reason to object to MM simply because the common reason shared the aesthetic defect argument and the moral defect argument is not a sufficient reason in either case. Since MM holds that moral judgments about artworks can be aesthetic evaluations in some cases , it is only necessary to show that the reason a work is morally defective is the same as the reason that work is aesthetically defective in a few actual cases in order to support MM.
Carroll does give us some convincing examples, and Anderson and Dean do not show why Carroll is wrong in these particular cases. However, they are incorrect about this. Notice that this argument, in particular step 2 , commit Gaut to the thesis that whenever a narrative artwork displays moral features, either merits or defects, these will always impact on the aesthetic value of that work to some degree. The most significant of these will be examined a little later. Early in his article, Gaut explicitly outlines the scope of ethicism.
The claim could also be put like this: manifesting ethically admirable attitudes counts toward the aesthetic merit of a work, and manifesting ethically reprehensible attitudes counts against its aesthetic merit.
Nor does the ethicist thesis hold that manifesting ethically good attitudes is a sufficient condition for a work to be aesthetically good. Ethicism does not claim that every artwork, or even every narrative artwork, does contain moral features, only that when they do, these impact on the aesthetic value of the works to some extent. As previously noted, not only do the arguments for MM and ethicism differ in scope, but they also differ in detail; and in the detail of each arguments there are possible flaws.
He tries, but fails. And he fails because there is something wrong with the structure of the artwork. It has not been designed properly on its own terms. This clarification also avoids the problem of explaining the moral and aesthetic value of artworks simply in terms of popular opinion.
Hence, the appeal to the normative notion of an ideal audience, rather than actual audiences avoids relativism. That, one takes it, is what makes them morally sensitive. The central point is that, to the extent that it relies on the notion of the ideal audience, MM collapses into ethicism, because in actual fact moral features merits or defects will always be aesthetic features also merits or defects.
However, although there are valuable aspects to MM — in particular, the common reason argument has its merits — it nevertheless seems more plausible to claim, as the ethicist does, that the moral features of narrative artworks are always aesthetically relevant, i. One reason for this is that since MM states that moral features will only sometimes also be aesthetic features, there must be some moral features of artworks that are not aesthetically relevant, whereas no such category is required by ethicism.
I have previously mentioned that MM is more limited in scope than ethicism. Carroll claims that there is a problem with what exactly is built into the notion of an unmerited response. While much of the recent research on ethical criticism has wrangled over what should and should not count as an aesthetic feature, a more commonplace concern about literary, or narrative, art and morality would be concerned with the possible effects those works might have on their audiences.
For example, the popular Ben Elton novel Popcorn is a black comedy dealing with the issue of the effects of violent films portraying killers as attractive and powerful.
One of the main objections to ethical criticism made by radical autonomists is the anti-consequentialist objection that there is no evidence for causal claims about either the harmful or edifying effects of art. An expectational-consequentialist version of ethical criticism would hold that the moral value of art is determined by its likely effects on its audience. More work could certainly be done on the effects of artworks, however it is an area where empirical research would be required, and this is another reason causal claims have not figured highly in recent work on ethical criticism, although it should be mentioned that there is an imbalance is the extent to which positive and negative causal claims about the effects of narrative art have featured in this research.
Hence, it comes as no surprise that many of those who attempt to defend ethical criticism distance themselves from the causal thesis that morally bad art corrupts, and its counterpart, that art with high moral value morally improves its audience.
Although most advocates of ethical criticism successfully avoid the negative causal thesis that bad art corrupts, many do in fact defend a version of the positive causal thesis that good art morally improves its audience. Thus, the negative thesis is avoided more assiduously than the positive, and the positive causal thesis has been more thoroughly developed.
I think there are two main reasons for this. The first is that the negative thesis is not only more difficult to prove conceptually, but work in this area leads to fears about censorship of works deemed harmful. As discussed later, this fear need not preclude research on the negative effects of artworks, as the discovery that a work can have negative, or even harmful, effects on its audience does not necessarily entail that it should be censored. Another reason for the imbalance between the two sides of the causal thesis is that the positive causal thesis is more obviously relevant to discussions of the role, and value, of art in society.
It should be remembered that both the positive and negative sides of the causal thesis comprise a set of claims varying in degree.
The strongest causal claims about art would be that bad art always corrupts its audience, while good art always brings about moral improvement; but any thesis this strong is intuitively implausible, and would be difficult to prove. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.
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