On being and holding responsible

Abstract

In his Responsibility and the moral sentiments, Wallace develops the idea that we should think of what it is to be morally responsible for an act in terms of norms for holding someone responsible for that act. Smith has recently claimed that Wallace's approach and those like it are ‘fundamentally misguided’. She says that such approaches make the mistake of incorporating conditions for ‘actively blaming’ others into the basic conditions for being responsible, when in fact the conditions for active blame ‘go beyond’ the basic conditions. In this essay, I argue that Smith's otherwise illuminating discussion of these ‘Normativist’ approaches does not undermine them. Specifically, I maintain that being actively blamable by certain persons with the relevant standing is actually constitutive of being responsible for at least some acts. By distinguishing between persons with different sorts of standing, a Normativist approach can avoid Smith's challenge. My larger aim is thus to clarify and defend the Normativist approach.

Keywords:

• agency
• moral responsibility
• blame
• normativity

Acknowledgements

For helpful discussions on earlier drafts of this article, I would like to thank Coleen Macnamara, Lauren Fleming, Christian Golden and Alexander Pruss.

Notes

Although this kind of approach to the issue of moral responsibility might derive proximally from Strawson's essay, it has clear precursors in the work of Fichte and Hegel. For recent discussions making these connections, see Darwall (2006), Kukla and Lance (2008), and Pippin (2009). The Normativist approach also bears some resemblance to the approaches of Dennett (1984) and Bok (1998), both of which emphasize differences in ‘stances’ or ‘standpoints’ for understanding what it is to be ‘free’ or morally responsible. McKenna (2004) suggests this connection.

Wallace himself says his type of account ‘reflects a conviction that the question of what it is to be a morally responsible agent should be given what I call a normative interpretation’ (1994, 1).

I am following Smith in using ‘B’ and ‘X’. I am also following Smith in talking of actions or attitudes.

Wallace himself first articulates this two-part structure on p. 1. It then functions as the guiding structure of the whole book.

Smith targets Korsgaard (1996), as well as Wallace (1994).

Macnamara (forthcoming) discusses carefully what is needed for a proper understanding of ‘holding’ someone responsible.

I am treating ‘actively blame’ and ‘merely judge’ as complex verbs, which hopefully excuses the appearance of the split infinitives.

Wallace, for his part, is clear that ‘positive’ responses have a place in the story. Their place derives, however, from the negative responses. See, for instance, p. 61. It is an interesting question whether the positive responses have derivative or secondary importance. I am inclined to think they do not, but will not take up that argument here.

Watson (1975), for instance, suggests this way of talking.

This formulation lets us bear in mind the power of Strawson's essay. We can think of that essay as making two bold suggestions. First, the essay suggests that we should think of what it is to be responsible in terms of the recognition of others. Second, there are rich emotional or attitudinal dimensions to such recognition; it is not merely a matter of idly and inertly entertaining a thought about someone. (Strawson himself ultimately emphasizes certain attitudes and not others. But that does not detract from the point that much of the power of the essay is in the two suggestions I identify.)

Wallace expresses his alternative ‘normative’ approach in this ‘schema’: S is morally responsible (for an action x) if and only if it would be appropriate to hold S morally responsible (for x) (Wallace 1994).

For a discussion of methodology on this topic that focuses instead on the contrast between individualism and anti-individualism, see Sneddon (2005).

I say ‘part of what constitutes’, not ‘wholly constitutes’ because I am not making a sufficiency claim. Sometimes I will say ‘…partly constitute…’ or ‘…partly constitutive of…’.

For further helpful discussions of constitutive rules see Haugeland (1998) and Schapiro (2003).

Consider legal responsibility. Only certain officials are in a position to charge any citizen with a crime, or to bring them before a judge and jury. But the fact that such actions are permissible only for certain officials does not imply that being legally responsible for an act is not partly constituted by the permissibility of those acts. Like baseball, however, legal responsibility is governed by explicitly stated rules and so might be equally questionable as an analogy. Thanks to an anonymous referee for the suggestion.

I am thinking primarily of teachers as teachers in schools. Clearly, there are teachers outside of such settings and not everything I say extends to them.

Just as being a runner is constituted in part by rules that govern the conduct of certain other participants in the game of baseball toward the runner, so being a student is in part constituted by norms that govern the conduct of teachers (and other participants in the various institutions of education) toward the student.

One might think that being a runner and being a student are statuses defined in terms of relations to others, while being an agent concerns only ‘intrinsic’ or ‘non-relational’ features of individuals. Thanks to an anonymous referee of this journal for this way of putting the point.

Think here of the younger couple in Edward Albee's Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Even though the older husband and wife (played by Richard Burton and Liz Taylor in the film version) are relentlessly brutal to one another, the younger man and woman do not think they are in a position to intervene to stop it.

In Searle's terminology: it does not follow that these are merely regulative rules. Showing that a rule is regulative is not sufficient to show that it is not constitutive, since rules can be both regulative and constitutive; and showing that a rule is relativized to a restricted range of people is not sufficient to show that it is not constitutive.