Benjamin Matheson

On the margins of normative competence, matters of responsibility become ambiguous. Can a 6-year-old be considered responsible for stealing? Is a 14-year-old blameworthy for plagiarizing on a test? Parents, educators, and philosophers provide different and seemingly conflicting answers to these types of questions. The ages at which children can be considered legally culpable also vary widely between democratic states. One reason for this is that, for evolving agents, it is difficult to assess whether they are insufficiently able to do what is expected of them, or whether they are able but unwilling to do what is expected of them. This gives rise to what I will refer to as a ‘can’t-or-won’t dilemma’. The two options are to either exculpate the person on the basis of insufficient ability, or to consider them responsible for wrongdoing. But neither option seems entirely satisfactory or appropriate in the light of uncertainty about a person’s level of normative competence. Recent alternative approaches to responsibility aim to address this problem by providing accounts of responsibility which do not rely on capacity criteria. On these accounts so called ‘marginal agents’ are in some way considered responsible for what they do. I discuss these solutions and argue that they do not resolve or dissolve the dilemma. Instead, their real contribution lies in how they can alleviate the dilemma. This insight helps move the debate forward, and has implications for how we think about adults too.

Benjamin Matheson has recently argued that blameworthiness is terminable: in at least some cases, one's blameworthiness for a given offense can be diminished or even eliminated. Although Matheson presents a forceful challenge to those who deny this view—interminability theorists, he calls them—he misconstrues their position and fails to come to grips with several considerations that favor it. This paper aims to clarify key aspects of the debate and defend the claim that blameworthiness is interminable.

According to what may be called the Debt Model, blameworthiness is defined in terms of deserved suffering. The Debt Model has a significant implication: one is less blameworthy if one has experienced some of the suffering one deserves, and no longer blameworthy once one has experienced the full amount of suffering one deserves. Blameworthiness, according to the Debt Model, is not forever. In recent papers, Clarke (2022) and Howard (2022) independently criticize the Debt Model and argue for the opposite conclusion: if one is blameworthy, one will remain blameworthy forever. In this paper, I respond to this criticism as well as a recent argument against the Debt Model from Tierney (2022). I then present a prima facie case for the Debt Model. I argue that Clarke’s attempt to accommodate the intuitions elicited by this and similar cases has unwelcome implications. I will end the paper with some remarks about what roles we want our conceptions of blameworthiness to play. If Clarke’s account were right, the fact that an agent is blameworthy would play a far less significant role in our moral life than we often tend to assume. The Debt Model, I will suggest, makes better sense of our blaming practices.