Moral responsibility
Encyclopedia
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral
obligation
s in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics
.
People who have moral responsibility for an action are usually called moral agents. Agents are creatures that are capable of reflecting on their situation, forming intention
s about how they will act, and then carrying out that action. Many believe that agency, and thus moral responsibility, requires free will. Thus, free will is an important issue in the debate on whether individuals are ever morally responsible for their actions—and, if so, in what sense. Incompatibilists think that determinism is at odds with free will, whereas compatibilists think the two can coexist.
Society
generally holds people responsible
for their actions, and will say that they deserve praise
or blame
for what they do. However, moral responsibility is not necessarily the same as legal responsibility. A person is legally responsible for an event when it is that person who is liable to be penalised in the court system for an event. Although it may often be the case that when a person is morally responsible for an act, they are also legally responsible for it, the two states do not always coincide.
, they will have different views on moral responsibility.
Phenomenological considerations are sometimes invoked by incompatibilists to defend a libertarian position. In daily life, we feel as though choosing otherwise is a viable option. Although this feeling does not firmly establish the existence of free will, some incompatibilists claim the phenomenological feeling of alternate possibilities is a prerequisite for free will.
Jean-Paul Sartre
suggested that people sometimes avoid incrimination and responsibility by hiding behind determinism: "...we are always ready to take refuge in a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs upon us or if we need an excuse". Of course, whether individuals really hide behind the doctrines of determinism
has no bearing on the truth of those doctrines.
A similar view has it that individual moral culpability lies in individual character. That is, a person with the character of a murderer has no choice other than to murder, but can still be punished because it is right to punish those of bad character. How one's character was determined is irrelevant from this perspective. Robert Cummins, for example, argues that people should not be judged for their individual actions, but rather for how those actions "reflect on their character". If character (however defined) is the dominant causal factor in determining one's choices, and one's choices are morally wrong, then one should be held accountable for those choices, regardless of genes and other such factors.
In law, there is a known exception to the assumption that moral culpability lies in either individual character or freely willed acts. The insanity defense — or its corollary, diminished responsibility
(a sort of appeal to the fallacy of the single cause
) — can be used to argue that the guilty deed was not the product of a guilty mind. In such cases, the legal systems of most Western societies assume that the person is in some way not at fault, because his actions were a consequence of abnormal brain function.
The argument from luck is a criticism against the Libertarian conception of moral responsibility. It suggests that any given action, and even a person's character, are the result of various forces outside that person's control. It may not be reasonable, then, to hold that person solely morally responsible. Thomas Nagel
suggests that four different types of luck (including genetic influences and other external factors) end up influencing the way that a person's actions are evaluated morally. For instance, a person driving drunk may make it home without incident, and yet this action of drunk driving might seem more morally objectionable if someone happens to jaywalk along his path (getting hit by the car).
This argument can be traced back to David Hume
. If physical indeterminism is true, then those events that are not determined are scientifically described as probabilistic or random. It is therefore argued that it is doubtful that one can praise or blame someone for performing an action generated randomly by his nervous system (without there being any non-physical agency responsible for the observed probabilistic outcome).
in practical moral considerations, rather than a notion of a free will. Indeed, faced with the possibility that determinism requires a completely different moral system, some proponents say "So much the worse for free will!". Clarence Darrow
, the famous defense attorney, pleaded the innocence of his clients, Leopold and Loeb
, by invoking such a notion of hard determinism. During his summation, he declared:
St. Paul
, in his Epistle to the Romans
addresses the question of moral responsibility as follows: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" In this view, individuals can still be dishonoured for their acts even though those acts were ultimately completely determined by God.
Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, researchers in the emerging field of neuroethics
, argue, on the basis of such cases, that our current notion of moral responsibility is founded on libertarian (and dualist
) intuitions. They argue that cognitive neuroscience
research (e.g. neuroscience of free will
) is undermining these intuitions by showing that the brain is responsible for our actions, not only in cases of florid psychosis
, but even in less obvious situations. For example, damage to the frontal lobe
reduces the ability to weigh uncertain risks and make prudent decisions, and therefore leads to an increased likelihood that someone will commit a violent crime. This is true not only of patients with damage to the frontal lobe
due to accident or stroke, but also of adolescents, who show reduced frontal lobe activity compared to adults, and even of children who are chronically neglected or mistreated. In each case, the guilty party can, they argue, be said to have less responsibility for his actions. Greene and Cohen predict that, as such examples become more common and well known, jurors’ interpretations of free will and moral responsibility will move away from the intuitive libertarian notion that currently underpins them.
Greene and Cohen also argue that the legal system does not require this libertarian interpretation. Rather, they suggest that only retributive notions of justice
, in which the goal of the legal system is to punish people for misdeeds, require the libertarian intuition. Many forms of ethically realistic and consequentialist
approaches to justice, which are aimed at promoting future welfare rather than retribution, can survive even a hard determinist interpretation of free will. Accordingly, the legal system and notions of justice can thus be maintained even in the face of emerging neuroscientific evidence undermining libertarian intuitions of free will.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman
maintains similar ideas. Eagleman says that the legal justice system ought to become more forward looking. He says it is wrong to ask questions of narrow culpability, rather than focusing on what is important: what needs to change in a criminal's behavior and brain. Eagleman is not saying that no one is responsible for their crimes, but rather that the "sentencing phase" should correspond with modern neuroscientific evidence. To Eagleman, it is damaging to entertain the illusion that a person can make a single decision that is somehow, suddenly, independent of their physiology and history. He describes what scientists have learned from brain damaged patients, and offers the case of a school teacher who exhibited escalating pedophilic tendencies on two occasions - each time as results of growing tumors. Eagleman also warns that less attractive people and minorities tend to get longer sentencing - all of which he sees as symptoms that more science is needed in the legal system.
In the Western tradition, Baruch Spinoza echoes the Bhagavad Gitas point about agents and natural forces, writing “men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetite, and do not think, even in their dreams, of the causes by which they are disposed to wanting and willing, because they are ignorant [of those causes].” Krishna is hostile to the influence of passions on our rational faculties, speaking up instead for the value of heeding the dictates of one's own nature: “Even a wise man acts under the impulse of his nature. Of what use is restraint?” Spinoza similarly identifies the taming of one's passions as a way to extricate oneself from merely being passive in the face of external forces and a way toward following our own natures.
asks why anyone would care about whether someone had the property of responsibility and speculates that the idea of moral responsibility may be "a purely metaphysical hankering".
.
In recent years, research in experimental philosophy
has explored whether people's untutored intuitions about determinism and moral responsibility are compatibilist or incompatibilist. Some experimental work has included cross-cultural studies. However, the debate about whether people naturally have compatibilist or incompatibilist intuitions has not come out overwhelmingly in favor of one view or the other, finding evidence for both views. For instance, when people are presented with abstract cases that ask if a person could be morally responsible for an immoral act when they could not have done otherwise, people tend to say no, or give incompatibilist answers. When presented with a specific immoral act that a specific person committed, people tend to say that that person is morally responsible for their actions, even if they were determined (that is, people also give compatibilist answers).
The neuroscience of free will
investigates various experiments that might shed light on free will.
had an apartheid regime, the country's government might have been said to have had collective moral responsibility for the violation of the rights of non-European South Africans.
is "failure to accept responsibility for own actions".
Moral
A moral is a message conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim...
obligation
Obligation
An obligation is a requirement to take some course of action, whether legal or moral. There are also obligations in other normative contexts, such as obligations of etiquette, social obligations, and possibly...
s in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
.
People who have moral responsibility for an action are usually called moral agents. Agents are creatures that are capable of reflecting on their situation, forming intention
Intention
Intention is an agent's specific purpose in performing an action or series of actions, the end or goal that is aimed at. Outcomes that are unanticipated or unforeseen are known as unintended consequences....
s about how they will act, and then carrying out that action. Many believe that agency, and thus moral responsibility, requires free will. Thus, free will is an important issue in the debate on whether individuals are ever morally responsible for their actions—and, if so, in what sense. Incompatibilists think that determinism is at odds with free will, whereas compatibilists think the two can coexist.
Society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
generally holds people responsible
Social responsibility
Social responsibility is an ethical ideology or theory that an entity, be it an organization or individual, has an obligation to act to benefit society at large. Social responsibility is a duty every individual or organization has to perform so as to maintain a balance between the economy and the...
for their actions, and will say that they deserve praise
Praise
Praise is the act of making positive statements about a person, object or idea, either in public or privately. Praise is typically, but not exclusively, earned relative to achievement and accomplishment...
or blame
Blame
Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, making negative statements about an individual or group that their action or actions are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong their action is blameworthy...
for what they do. However, moral responsibility is not necessarily the same as legal responsibility. A person is legally responsible for an event when it is that person who is liable to be penalised in the court system for an event. Although it may often be the case that when a person is morally responsible for an act, they are also legally responsible for it, the two states do not always coincide.
Philosophical stances
Depending on how a philosopher conceives of free willFree will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
, they will have different views on moral responsibility.
Metaphysical libertarianism
Metaphysical libertarians think our actions are not always causally determined, allowing for the possibility of free will and thus moral responsibility. All libertarians are also incompatibilists; they think that if causal determinism were true about human actions across the board, we would not have free will. Accordingly, libertarians subscribe to the principle of alternate possibilities, which posits that moral responsibility requires that we could have acted differently.Phenomenological considerations are sometimes invoked by incompatibilists to defend a libertarian position. In daily life, we feel as though choosing otherwise is a viable option. Although this feeling does not firmly establish the existence of free will, some incompatibilists claim the phenomenological feeling of alternate possibilities is a prerequisite for free will.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
suggested that people sometimes avoid incrimination and responsibility by hiding behind determinism: "...we are always ready to take refuge in a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs upon us or if we need an excuse". Of course, whether individuals really hide behind the doctrines of determinism
Determinism
Determinism is the general philosophical thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. There are many versions of this thesis. Each of them rests upon various alleged connections, and interdependencies of things and...
has no bearing on the truth of those doctrines.
A similar view has it that individual moral culpability lies in individual character. That is, a person with the character of a murderer has no choice other than to murder, but can still be punished because it is right to punish those of bad character. How one's character was determined is irrelevant from this perspective. Robert Cummins, for example, argues that people should not be judged for their individual actions, but rather for how those actions "reflect on their character". If character (however defined) is the dominant causal factor in determining one's choices, and one's choices are morally wrong, then one should be held accountable for those choices, regardless of genes and other such factors.
In law, there is a known exception to the assumption that moral culpability lies in either individual character or freely willed acts. The insanity defense — or its corollary, diminished responsibility
Diminished responsibility
In criminal law, diminished responsibility is a potential defense by excuse by which defendants argue that although they broke the law, they should not be held fully criminally liable for doing so, as their mental functions were "diminished" or impaired. The defense's acceptance in American...
(a sort of appeal to the fallacy of the single cause
Fallacy of the single cause
The fallacy of the single cause, also known as causal oversimplification, is a fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes.Often after a tragedy...
) — can be used to argue that the guilty deed was not the product of a guilty mind. In such cases, the legal systems of most Western societies assume that the person is in some way not at fault, because his actions were a consequence of abnormal brain function.
The argument from luck
The argument from luck is a criticism against the Libertarian conception of moral responsibility. It suggests that any given action, and even a person's character, are the result of various forces outside that person's control. It may not be reasonable, then, to hold that person solely morally responsible. Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...
suggests that four different types of luck (including genetic influences and other external factors) end up influencing the way that a person's actions are evaluated morally. For instance, a person driving drunk may make it home without incident, and yet this action of drunk driving might seem more morally objectionable if someone happens to jaywalk along his path (getting hit by the car).
This argument can be traced back to David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
. If physical indeterminism is true, then those events that are not determined are scientifically described as probabilistic or random. It is therefore argued that it is doubtful that one can praise or blame someone for performing an action generated randomly by his nervous system (without there being any non-physical agency responsible for the observed probabilistic outcome).
Hard determinism
Hard determinists (not to be confused with Fatalists) often use libertyLiberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
in practical moral considerations, rather than a notion of a free will. Indeed, faced with the possibility that determinism requires a completely different moral system, some proponents say "So much the worse for free will!". Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...
, the famous defense attorney, pleaded the innocence of his clients, Leopold and Loeb
Leopold and Loeb
Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb , more commonly known as "Leopold and Loeb", were two wealthy University of Michigan alumni and University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks in 1924 and were sentenced to life imprisonment.The duo were...
, by invoking such a notion of hard determinism. During his summation, he declared:
St. Paul
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...
, in his Epistle to the Romans
Epistle to the Romans
The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, often shortened to Romans, is the sixth book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by the Apostle Paul to explain that Salvation is offered through the Gospel of Jesus Christ...
addresses the question of moral responsibility as follows: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" In this view, individuals can still be dishonoured for their acts even though those acts were ultimately completely determined by God.
Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, researchers in the emerging field of neuroethics
Neuroethics
Neuroethics is the ethics of neuroscience, and the neuroscience of ethics.The ethics of neuroscience deals with matters as a subclass of bioethics...
, argue, on the basis of such cases, that our current notion of moral responsibility is founded on libertarian (and dualist
Dualism (philosophy of mind)
In philosophy of mind, dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical....
) intuitions. They argue that cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...
research (e.g. neuroscience of free will
Neuroscience of free will
Neuroscience of free will refers to recent neuroscientific investigations shedding light on the question of free will, which is a philosophical and scientific question as to whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions or decisions. As it has become possible to...
) is undermining these intuitions by showing that the brain is responsible for our actions, not only in cases of florid psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
, but even in less obvious situations. For example, damage to the frontal lobe
Frontal lobe
The frontal lobe is an area in the brain of humans and other mammals, located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere and positioned anterior to the parietal lobe and superior and anterior to the temporal lobes...
reduces the ability to weigh uncertain risks and make prudent decisions, and therefore leads to an increased likelihood that someone will commit a violent crime. This is true not only of patients with damage to the frontal lobe
Frontal lobe
The frontal lobe is an area in the brain of humans and other mammals, located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere and positioned anterior to the parietal lobe and superior and anterior to the temporal lobes...
due to accident or stroke, but also of adolescents, who show reduced frontal lobe activity compared to adults, and even of children who are chronically neglected or mistreated. In each case, the guilty party can, they argue, be said to have less responsibility for his actions. Greene and Cohen predict that, as such examples become more common and well known, jurors’ interpretations of free will and moral responsibility will move away from the intuitive libertarian notion that currently underpins them.
Greene and Cohen also argue that the legal system does not require this libertarian interpretation. Rather, they suggest that only retributive notions of justice
Justice
Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics; justice is the act of being just and/or fair.-Concept of justice:...
, in which the goal of the legal system is to punish people for misdeeds, require the libertarian intuition. Many forms of ethically realistic and consequentialist
Consequentialism
Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct...
approaches to justice, which are aimed at promoting future welfare rather than retribution, can survive even a hard determinist interpretation of free will. Accordingly, the legal system and notions of justice can thus be maintained even in the face of emerging neuroscientific evidence undermining libertarian intuitions of free will.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman
David Eagleman
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. He is best known for his work on time perception, synesthesia, and neurolaw...
maintains similar ideas. Eagleman says that the legal justice system ought to become more forward looking. He says it is wrong to ask questions of narrow culpability, rather than focusing on what is important: what needs to change in a criminal's behavior and brain. Eagleman is not saying that no one is responsible for their crimes, but rather that the "sentencing phase" should correspond with modern neuroscientific evidence. To Eagleman, it is damaging to entertain the illusion that a person can make a single decision that is somehow, suddenly, independent of their physiology and history. He describes what scientists have learned from brain damaged patients, and offers the case of a school teacher who exhibited escalating pedophilic tendencies on two occasions - each time as results of growing tumors. Eagleman also warns that less attractive people and minorities tend to get longer sentencing - all of which he sees as symptoms that more science is needed in the legal system.
Hard Incompatibilism
Derk Pereboom defends a position he calls hard incompatibilism, according to which we cannot have free will (and thus cannot be morally responsible) whether determinism or indeterminism are true, if only events caused our actions. While Pereboom acknowledges that agent causation is still a possibility, he regards it as unlikely against the backdrop of the most defensible physical theories. Without agent causation, Pereboom thinks the freedom required for moral responsibility is not in the offing.Compatibilism
Compatibilists contend that even if determinism were true, it would still be possible for us to have free will. The Hindu text The Bhagavad Gita offers one very early compatibilist account. Facing the prospect of going to battle against kinsmen to whom he has bonds, Arjuna despairs. Krishna attempts to assuage Arjuna's anxieties. He argues that forces of nature come together to produce actions, and it is only vanity that causes us to regard ourselves as the agent in charge of these actions. However, Krishna adds this caveat: “. . . [But] the Man who knows the relation between the forces of Nature and actions, witnesses how some forces of Nature work upon other forces of Nature, and becomes [not] their slave. . .” When we are ignorant of the relationship between forces of Nature, we become passive victims of nomological facts. Krishna's admonition is intended to get Arjuna to perform his duty (i.e., fight in the battle), but he is also claiming that being a successful moral agent requires being mindful of the wider circumstances in which one finds oneself.Paramahansa Yogananda also said, "Freedom means the power to act by soul guidance, not by the compulsions of desires and habits. Obeying the ego leads to bondage; obeying the soul brings liberation."In the Western tradition, Baruch Spinoza echoes the Bhagavad Gitas point about agents and natural forces, writing “men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetite, and do not think, even in their dreams, of the causes by which they are disposed to wanting and willing, because they are ignorant [of those causes].” Krishna is hostile to the influence of passions on our rational faculties, speaking up instead for the value of heeding the dictates of one's own nature: “Even a wise man acts under the impulse of his nature. Of what use is restraint?” Spinoza similarly identifies the taming of one's passions as a way to extricate oneself from merely being passive in the face of external forces and a way toward following our own natures.
Other views
Daniel DennettDaniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...
asks why anyone would care about whether someone had the property of responsibility and speculates that the idea of moral responsibility may be "a purely metaphysical hankering".
Experimental research
Mauro suggests that a sense of personal responsibility does not operate or evolve universally among humankind. He argues that it was absent in the successful civilization of the IroquoisIroquois
The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...
.
In recent years, research in experimental philosophy
Experimental philosophy
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a...
has explored whether people's untutored intuitions about determinism and moral responsibility are compatibilist or incompatibilist. Some experimental work has included cross-cultural studies. However, the debate about whether people naturally have compatibilist or incompatibilist intuitions has not come out overwhelmingly in favor of one view or the other, finding evidence for both views. For instance, when people are presented with abstract cases that ask if a person could be morally responsible for an immoral act when they could not have done otherwise, people tend to say no, or give incompatibilist answers. When presented with a specific immoral act that a specific person committed, people tend to say that that person is morally responsible for their actions, even if they were determined (that is, people also give compatibilist answers).
The neuroscience of free will
Neuroscience of free will
Neuroscience of free will refers to recent neuroscientific investigations shedding light on the question of free will, which is a philosophical and scientific question as to whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions or decisions. As it has become possible to...
investigates various experiments that might shed light on free will.
Collective moral responsibility
When people attribute moral responsibility, they usually attribute it to individual moral agents. However, Joel Feinberg, among others, has argued that corporations and other groups of people can have what is called ‘collective moral responsibility’ for a state of affairs. For example, when South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
had an apartheid regime, the country's government might have been said to have had collective moral responsibility for the violation of the rights of non-European South Africans.
Lack of sense of responsibility of psychopaths
One of the attributes defined for psychopathyPsychopathy
Psychopathy is a mental disorder characterized primarily by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Psychopaths are highly prone to antisocial behavior and abusive treatment of others, and are very disproportionately responsible for violent crime...
is "failure to accept responsibility for own actions".
See also
- Desert (philosophy)Desert (philosophy)Desert in philosophy is the condition of being deserving of something, whether good or bad.-Nomenclature:The word is related to justice, revenge, blame, punishment and many topics central to moral philosophy...
- House of ResponsibilityHouse of ResponsibilityThe House of Responsibility is a concept to combine scientific engagement about past, present and future. The house is located in the upper-Austrian town of Braunau am Inn. The former tavern was a cultural center for the Nazi party during the Third Reich...
- Moral hazardMoral hazardIn economic theory, moral hazard refers to a situation in which a party makes a decision about how much risk to take, while another party bears the costs if things go badly, and the party insulated from risk behaves differently from how it would if it were fully exposed to the risk.Moral hazard...
- Declaration of Human Duties and ResponsibilitiesDeclaration of Human Duties and ResponsibilitiesThe Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilities was written for reinforcing the implementation of human rights under the auspices of the UNESCO and the interest of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights and was proclaimed in 1998 "to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Universal...
External links
- Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility - The Whole Thing in Brief by Ted HonderichTed HonderichTed Honderich is a Canadian-born British philosopher, Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London and Visiting Professor, University of Bath...
- "Moral responsibility", Andrew EshlemanAndrew EshlemanAndrew Eshleman is a professor at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a professor of Liberal Studies and Philosophy, he has written and edited numerous publications on his subjects of expertise including an article on for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .-External...
, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyStanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...
(Fall 2004 Edition) - "Computing and Moral Responsibility", Kari Gwen Coleman, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
- "Moral Responsibility for Computing Artifacts: Five Rules, Version 27", Ad Hoc Committee for Responsible Computing
- Fundamental rights and responsibilities, a report endorsed by PACEPACE-Associations:* Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers International Union* National PACE Association* Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence-Educational programs:...
in 2011