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Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Ownership

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Notes

  1. Haji, Ishtiyaque, and Stefaan E. Cuypers, “Moral Responsibility and the Problem of Manipulation Reconsidered,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 12, no. 4 (2004) pp. 439–464. Haji and Cuypers claim that in cases of responsibility undermining manipulation, the manipulated agent is unfree because “she acts on springs of action ‘not truly her own’, or, in our terminology, ‘not authentic’. Our concern is to give a partial account of this sense of ‘authenticity’”, p. 449.

  2. Haji and Cuypers 2004, pp. 446–447.

  3. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 440.

  4. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 455.

  5. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 454.

  6. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 452.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Haji, Ishtiyaque, “Historicism, Non-historicism, or a Mix?” The Journal of Ethics, 17(3) (2013) 185–204. Haji states, “one of our central contentions is that initial schemes, if authentic, are merely ‘relationally authentic’: they are authentic only insofar as they do not subvert responsibility for later behavior”, p. 193.

  9. Perhaps part of the desire was to see the look on the man’s face after the insult.

  10. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 453.

  11. Haji, Ishtiyaque, and Stefaan E. Cuypers, Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Education (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 32.

  12. According to Haji and Cuypers’ account of relational authenticity, Charlie’s “normal” pro-attitude is inauthentic. For more see, “Magical Agents, Global Induction, and the Internalism/Externalism Debate.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85(3), 343–371. They state, “A pro-attitude or its mode of acquisition is inauthentic if that pro-attitude or the way in which it is acquired will subvert moral responsibility for behavior, which owes its proximal causal genesis to the pro-attitude, or the normative agent into whom the child will develop” (Haji and Cuypers 2007, p. 352).

  13. For a similar worry, see McKenna, Michael, “Defending Nonhistorical Compatibilism: A Reply to Haji and Cuypers.” Philosophical Issues, Vol 22, no. 1, n. 13 (2012) 264–280.

  14. Haji and Cuypers 2004, p. 454.

  15. Haji 2013, p. 196.

  16. Fischer, John Martin, and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  17. According to Fischer and Ravizza, a mechanism is a way in which an action comes about. This includes, but is not limited to, ordinary practical deliberation, unreflective habit, hypnosis, direct stimulation of the brain, etc. (Fischer and Ravizza 1998, pp. 38–39).

  18. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, pp. 210–211.

  19. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 207.

  20. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 208.

  21. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 209.

  22. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 211.

  23. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 213.

  24. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 214.

  25. Frankfurt, Harry, The Importance of What We Care About (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

  26. Haji and Cuypers 2004, pp. 448–449.

  27. Haji and Cuypers 2008, p. 352.

  28. For a similar proposal see Noggle, Robert “Autonomy and the Paradox of Self-Creation,” in J. S. Taylor (ed), Personal Autonomy: New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in Contemporary Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 87–108. For a discussion of Noggle’s proposal, see Cuypers, Stephaan, “Educating for Authenticity: The Paradox of Moral Education Revisited,” in H. Siegel (ed), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 122–144.

  29. This is similar to the ability of an agent to “shed” one of her values in Mele’s terminology. See Mele, Alfred, Free Will and Luck (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 167. The choice to shed an attitude need not be a conscious choice.

  30. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 209.

  31. Fischer, John Martin, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, and Manuel Vargas, Four Views on Free Will (New York: Blackwell 2007) pp. 186–187.

  32. See Mele 2006 for another discussion of a scalar notion of moral responsibility in the context of children. Fischer rejects the scalar notion of responsibility. For him, moral responsibility is all-or-nothing. He does, however, allow for degrees of blameworthiness (Fischer 2007).

  33. This is one consideration that might lead one to believe that a manipulated agent is unfree. See Mele, Alfred, Autonomous Agents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 155.

  34. Or perhaps they must be acquired in a way that does not bypass the agent’s capacities for control over her mental life.

  35. Fischer and Ravizza 1998, p. 232.

  36. For helpful comments on various drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Alfred Mele, Stephen Kearns, Gabriel de Marco, Taylor Cyr, the graduate student writing group at Florida State University, the audience at the Florida Philosophical Association’s conference in 2014 and an anonymous referee.

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  1. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Matthew T. Flummer

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Flummer, M.T. Moral Responsibility, Authenticity, and Ownership. J Value Inquiry 50, 525–538 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9534-5

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