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Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility
Resultant moral luck occurs whenever aspects of an agent’s moral responsibility are affected by luck pertaining to the outcomes of their actions. Many authors reject the existence of moral luck in this sense, but they do so in different ways. Michael Zimmerman argues that resultant luck affects the...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer Netherlands
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10415498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37575893 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01994-8 |
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author | Rolffs, Matthias |
author_facet | Rolffs, Matthias |
author_sort | Rolffs, Matthias |
collection | PubMed |
description | Resultant moral luck occurs whenever aspects of an agent’s moral responsibility are affected by luck pertaining to the outcomes of their actions. Many authors reject the existence of moral luck in this sense, but they do so in different ways. Michael Zimmerman argues that resultant luck affects the scope of moral responsibility, but not its degree. That is, it affects what agents are responsible for, but not how responsible they are. Andrew Khoury takes a more resolute approach, arguing that both the scope and the degree of moral responsibility are free from resultant luck. In this paper, I criticize both accounts and develop an alternative. I argue, first, that Khoury’s approach leads to an implausibly far-reaching error-theory about moral responsibility. Second, Zimmerman’s account cannot account for all the ways in which moral responsibility comes in degrees. Third, these problems can be overcome by introducing a distinction between two concepts of responsibility that both come with scope and degree. The first concept I call internal responsibility, as it applies exclusively to agent-internal factors. The second concept I call external responsibility, as it applies to (partly) agent-external factors such as actions and their outcomes. Given this distinction, we can avoid the problems of Khoury’s as well as Zimmerman’s accounts while preserving the central intuition behind the rejection of resultant moral luck. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10415498 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer Netherlands |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104154982023-08-12 Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility Rolffs, Matthias Philos Stud Article Resultant moral luck occurs whenever aspects of an agent’s moral responsibility are affected by luck pertaining to the outcomes of their actions. Many authors reject the existence of moral luck in this sense, but they do so in different ways. Michael Zimmerman argues that resultant luck affects the scope of moral responsibility, but not its degree. That is, it affects what agents are responsible for, but not how responsible they are. Andrew Khoury takes a more resolute approach, arguing that both the scope and the degree of moral responsibility are free from resultant luck. In this paper, I criticize both accounts and develop an alternative. I argue, first, that Khoury’s approach leads to an implausibly far-reaching error-theory about moral responsibility. Second, Zimmerman’s account cannot account for all the ways in which moral responsibility comes in degrees. Third, these problems can be overcome by introducing a distinction between two concepts of responsibility that both come with scope and degree. The first concept I call internal responsibility, as it applies exclusively to agent-internal factors. The second concept I call external responsibility, as it applies to (partly) agent-external factors such as actions and their outcomes. Given this distinction, we can avoid the problems of Khoury’s as well as Zimmerman’s accounts while preserving the central intuition behind the rejection of resultant moral luck. Springer Netherlands 2023-06-17 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10415498/ /pubmed/37575893 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01994-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Rolffs, Matthias Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility |
title | Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility |
title_full | Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility |
title_fullStr | Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility |
title_full_unstemmed | Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility |
title_short | Resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility |
title_sort | resultant moral luck and the scope of moral responsibility |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10415498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37575893 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01994-8 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT rolffsmatthias resultantmoralluckandthescopeofmoralresponsibility |