Publication Cover
Inquiry
An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy
Latest Articles
104
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Article

A puzzle about excuses

Received 26 Apr 2023, Accepted 19 May 2023, Published online: 26 May 2023
 

ABSTRACT

An excuse is an event or condition that exonerates an agent for a wrongdoing. An excuse may be an event or condition that interferes with the exercises of a person’s rational capacities, thereby preventing them from doing the right thing. I argue that a person who fails to do the right thing always has an excuse for their failure. This puzzle has troubling consequences, for it means that we are never to blame for our wrongdoings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See, among others, (Adams Citation1985), (Hieronymi Citation2008) and (Smith Citation2005).

2 See, among others, (Fischer and Ravizza Citation1998), (Sher Citation2009), (Smith Citation2003), (Vihvelin Citation2013) and (Wolf Citation1990).

3 See also (Fara Citation2008), (Fischer and Ravizza Citation1998), (Lewis Citation1997) and (Vihvelin Citation2013).

4 Strawson (Citation2003) defends an extreme version of this argument. See (Coates Citation2017) for a discussion of that argument, and (Kane Citation1996) and (Mele Citation2006) for moderate variants.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 53.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 169.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.