Reactive Senses of Responsibility
  • Causal                           • Capacity
      – Physical motions produce         – Determining the conditions 
        an event                           under which someone can 
                                           be held responsible for 
                                           their actions
  • Role
      – individual stands            • Blame
        committed to carry out 
        common goods around              – Praising or blaming 
        which a social or                  someone for what they 
        professional role is               have done
        oriented
           Proactive Senses of Responsibility
      • Sharing                              • Responsibility as a 
         Responsibility                         Virtue
          – Answering for the actions of     •  When responsibility becomes proactive 
             others within one’s group.         and supererogatory (i.e., goes beyond 
                                                what is minimally required)
             (Share action-causing 
             attitudes)                      •  Uncovering risk and preventing harm
                                             •  Recognizing and taking advantage of 
                                                opportunities to promote value, 
          – Providing moral support to       •  Expanding range of control, 
             group members when they         •  Caring for stakeholders and their goods, 
             have gone astray.                  and …
                                             •  Also indignation, shame, guilt, pride and 
                                                other participatory, self-referential 
                                                emotions
          – Does not entail accepting        •  Developing overlapping  role 
             blame for their actions            responsibilities
   Where one falls below the moral 
           minimum
        Prerequisites for Blaming
      Capacity Responsibility
  • Conditions that connect an agent with an 
   action for moral evaluation
  • When one is capacity responsible, one is 
   –…capable of acting freely and knowingly in a given 
    situation
             Acting Freely…
   • When we act freely, we act without compulsion
   • Compulsion is the production of a state of mind or 
    body independently of the will  (F. H. Bradley)
     – Overwhelming fear compels me to do something that I 
      would not do in a calm state of mind
     – When somebody pushes me, they create a state of body 
      (my falling toward the floor) which runs contrary to my 
      actual will (remaining standing)