Nikolai Popow

Nick Popow Fri, Jun 13, 2:13 PM to me This paper examines the complex role of moral responsibility in the treatment of drug addiction, focusing on Hannah Pickard’s proposal to separate moral responsibility from blame. While Pickard’s approach aligns with clinical practices that emphasize encouragement over condemnation, it raises conceptual challenges regarding the coherence of responsibility without blame. We argue that retaining praiseworthiness without blameworthiness risks diluting the concept of moral responsibility. To address this, we propose an alternative framework grounded in the distinction between epistemic and practical rationality: encouraging addicts to believe they are morally responsible may be epistemically irrational but practically rational, serving as a therapeutic tool that fosters agency and recovery. We further defend the ethical permissibility of such encouragement by clarifying that it need not constitute deception in the strict sense and, even if it does, may be justified within the moral context of addiction treatment. This analysis offers a nuanced understanding of responsibility’s role in rehabilitation.