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18Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and “The Morality System” (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1): 333-345. 2020.This paper explores one facet of Paul Russell’s unique “critical compatibilist” position on moral responsibility, which concerns his rejection of R. Jay Wallace’s “narrow construal” of moral responsibility as a concept tied exclusively to the Strawsonian reactive attitudes of resentment, indignation, and guilt. After explaining Russell’s critique of Wallace’s view, the paper considers a Wallace-inspired challenge based on the idea that questions of moral responsibility raise distinct issues of “…Read more
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Attitudes, Agency, and ResponsibilityDissertation, Harvard University. 1999.This thesis addresses the question whether, and if so in what way, we are responsible for our desires, emotions, beliefs, and other attitudes. Its central claim is that we are responsible for our attitudes for the same reason that we are responsible for our actions: namely, because they reflect and are in principle responsive to our judgments about reasons. ;This view of the matter runs against the grain of most traditional theorizing about questions of responsibility. It is commonly thought tha…Read more
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8Review of Nomy Arpaly, Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free Will (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (1). 2007.
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22Conflicting Attitudes, Moral Agency, and Conceptions of the SelfPhilosophical Topics 32 (1-2): 331-352. 2004.
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20Attitudes, Tracing, and ControlJournal of Applied Philosophy 32 (2): 115-132. 2015.There is an apparent tension in our everyday moral responsibility practices. On the one hand, it is commonly assumed that moral responsibility requires voluntary control: an agent can be morally responsible only for those things that fall within the scope of her voluntary control. On the other hand, we regularly praise and blame individuals for mental states and conditions that appear to fall outside the scope of their voluntary control, such as desires, emotions, beliefs, and other attitudes. I…Read more
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6Making a difference, making a statement and making conversationPhilosophical Books 47 (3): 213-221. 2006.
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12Who Knew? Responsibility Without Awareness (review)Social Theory and Practice 36 (3): 515-524. 2010.
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38Responsibility as AnswerabilityInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (2): 99-126. 2015.ABSTRACTIt has recently become fashionable among those who write on questions of moral responsibility to distinguish two different concepts, or senses, of moral responsibility via the labels ‘responsibility as attributability’ and ‘responsibility as accountability’. Gary Watson was perhaps the first to introduce this distinction in his influential 1996 article ‘Two Faces of Responsibility’ , but it has since been taken up by many other philosophers. My aim in this study is to raise some question…Read more
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39On Being Responsible and Holding ResponsibleThe Journal of Ethics 11 (4): 465-484. 2007.A number of philosophers have recently argued that we should interpret the debate over moral responsibility as a debate over the conditions under which it would be “fair” to blame a person for her attitudes or conduct. What is distinctive about these accounts is that they begin with the stance of the moral judge, rather than that of the agent who is judged, and make attributions of responsibility dependent upon whether it would be fair or appropriate for a moral judge to react to the agent in va…Read more
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11Character, blameworthiness, and blame: comments on George Sher’s In Praise of BlamePhilosophical Studies 137 (1): 31-39. 2008.In his recent book, In Praise of Blame, George Sher argues (among other things) that a bad act can reflect negatively on a person if that act results in an appropriate way from that person's "character," and defends a novel "two-tiered" account of what it is to blame someone. In these brief comments, I raise some questions and doubts about each of these aspects of his rich and thought-provoking account
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31Control, responsibility, and moral assessmentPhilosophical Studies 138 (3). 2008.Recently, a number of philosophers have begun to question the commonly held view that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of moral responsibility. According to these philosophers, what really matters in determining a person’s responsibility for some thing is whether that thing can be seen as indicative or expressive of her judgments, values, or normative commitments. Such accounts might therefore be understood as updated versions of what Susan Wolf has called “real self views,” insofar…Read more
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50Responsibility for attitudes: Activity and passivity in mental lifeEthics 115 (2): 236-271. 2005.
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14The Nature of Moral Responsibility: New EssaysOxford University Press. 2015.What is it to be morally responsible for something? Recent philosophical work reveals considerable disagreement on the question. Indeed, some theorists claim to distinguish several varieties of moral responsibility, with different conditions that must be satisfied if one is to bear responsibility of one or another of these kinds. Debate on this point turns partly on disagreement about the kinds of responses made appropriate when one is blameworthy or praiseworthy. It is generally agreed that the…Read more
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Washington and Lee UniversityProfessor
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Lexington, Virginia, United States of America