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Does Non-Moral Ignorance Exculpate? Situational Awareness and Attributions of Blame and Forgiveness

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Abstract

In this paper, we set out to test empirically an idea that many philosophers find intuitive, namely that non-moral ignorance can exculpate. Many philosophers find it intuitive that moral agents are responsible only if they know the particular facts surrounding their action (or inaction). Our results show that whether moral agents are aware of the facts surrounding their (in)action does have an effect on people’s attributions of blame, regardless of the consequences or side effects of the agent’s actions. In general, it was more likely that a situationally aware agent will be blamed for failing to perform the obligatory action than a situationally unaware agent. We also tested attributions of forgiveness in addition to attributions of blame. In general, it was less likely that a situationally aware agent will be forgiven for failing to perform the obligatory action than a situationally unaware agent. When the agent is situationally unaware, it is more likely that the agent will be forgiven than blamed. We argue that these results provide some empirical support for the hypothesis that there is something intuitive about the idea that non-moral ignorance can exculpate.

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Notes

  1. For an overview of the literature on the epistemic condition on moral responsibility, see Wieland (2017).

  2. On the method of cases, see Nagel (2012), Mizrahi (2014), and Baz (2016).

  3. According to Wieland (2017, p. 3), “As many say since Strawson (1962), S is morally blameworthy for X (whether it is an action, omission, consequence, etc.) iff on account of X, S is a proper candidate for the reactive attitudes, such as resentment, indignation, and condemnation.”

  4. Cf. Sher’s (2009, p. 143) “full epistemic condition,” which is also stated in terms of awareness and lack of awareness. For a discussion of the epistemic requirements for moral responsibility in the context of criminal law, see Oshana (2013).

  5. See also Fischer and Tognazzini (2009). Cf. Mele (2011).

  6. In addition to an epistemic condition, there may be other conditions for blameworthiness (and for moral responsibility in general, see, e.g., Cova 2017). For example, some have argued for the principle known as “Ought Implies Can” (OIC) on the grounds that to blame moral agents who are unable to do what they ought to do would be unfair. See Fischer (2003). Cf. Graham (2011). In this paper, we are interested in the epistemic dimension of moral responsibility, in particular, non-moral ignorance. Mizrahi (2009) and (2012).

  7. See, e.g., Haji (1997). On blameworthiness and control, see Brekke Carlsson (2017).

  8. Cf. Rosen (2004). See also Wieland (2015).

  9. For an overview of this literature, see Feltz (2007) and Cova (2016). For a critical discussion, see Nadelhoffer (2004) and Sauer (2014).

  10. For arguments against the so-called “tracing principle,” see Khoury (2012).

  11. According to Zaibert (2009, p. 388), the “standard view” is that “to forgive is, explicitly, to overcome resentment (even if this overcoming is done for a moral reason,” but Zaibert (2009, p. 368) argues that “to forgive is to deliberately refuse to punish.” Cf. Warmke (2011).

  12. See also Wieland (2015) for the contrast between moral ignorance and factual ignorance.

  13. In Luke 23:34, Jesus says “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Presumably, Jesus is talking about moral ignorance here; that is, they do not know that what they are doing is morally wrong, which is different from being ignorant of non-moral facts. For more on moral ignorance, see Guerrero (2007).

  14. We chose a gender-neutral name, like “Alex,” in an attempt to avoid as much as possible any gender-related influences on people’s judgments.

  15. Although demographics had no statistical effects, it is worth noting that our sample was extremely diverse, with participants (ages 18–65) claiming at least three different genders (624 men, 433 women, and 6 other), 17 different ethnic backgrounds, and 25 distinct religious affiliations.

  16. We chose not to dichotomize the data into two categories—agree/disagree or, for example, blame/do not blame—because we want to be able to test the strength of the agreement. Dichotomizing would mean we would not be able to discover if one receives strong blame and another is only somewhat blameworthy. We would only be able to say that blame was assigned in both cases. For more on the problems with dichotomization, see MacCallum et al. (2002).

  17. Likert-type items are single questions that still use the same layout as the questions within a full Likert scale. Individual items in a full Likert scale are then summed to form what is assumed to be a continuous variable. For more on the statistical difference between Likert-type items and full Likert scales, see Clason and Dormody (1994).

  18. It is common to test Likert-type data as if it is continuous. The commonality of this practice does not mean it is the appropriate test. For example, Likert-type data fails the assumptions for ANOVA testing, meaning the results from such a test may be wrong. For a detailed explanation of ART procedures, see Wobbrock et al. (2011). We performed the statistical analysis in R using the ARTool package provided by Wobbrock et al. An overview of the tool and package can be accessed at https://depts.washington.edu/aimgroup/proj/art/.

  19. The null hypothesis for these tests is that “true location shift is equal to 0” for two between-subjects groups.

  20. It is important to note here that the agent is not morally ignorant; i.e., the agent is not ignorant of moral facts. Rather, the agent is situationally ignorant, i.e., ignorant of the non-moral facts surrounding his/her (in)action, in particular, that that a person using crutches just boarded the train and there are no available seats. On moral ignorance, see Guerrero (2007).

  21. See footnotes 13 and 20.

  22. See Buckwalter and Turri (2015), Mizrahi (2015a), (2015b), Chituc et al. (2016), and Henne et al. (2016).

  23. For more on this sort of “positive” program or, more precisely, experimental philosophy as cognitive science, see Knobe (2016).

  24. Strawson (1962) does include forgiveness in his list of “reactive attitudes,” which also includes resentment, indignation, anger, and gratitude. As mentioned above, however, philosophers of moral responsibility have focused mostly on praise and blame. See, e.g., Macnamara (2011).

  25. See Martin and Cushman (2016) for an experimental test of the hypothesis that we forgive unintentional actions because “we do not believe the agent is even causally responsible for them” (Martin and Cushman 2016, p. 134). Recall that our experimental study is not about intentional (or unintentional) actions but rather about situational awareness (or lack of situational awareness) and attributions of blame as well as forgiveness.

  26. As another anonymous reviewer helpfully pointed out, a possible symmetry between blameworthiness and being worthy of forgiveness might be taken as a platitude that any account of forgiveness must be able to accommodate. However, we think that it would be useful to have empirical evidence, even for something that is considered a platitude, when possible.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of Acta Analytica for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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  1. School of Psychology, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne, FL, 32901, USA

    Alicia Kissinger-Knox & Patrick Aragon

  2. School of Arts and Communication, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne, FL, 32901, USA

    Moti Mizrahi

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  1. Alicia Kissinger-Knox
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Correspondence to Moti Mizrahi.

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Kissinger-Knox, A., Aragon, P. & Mizrahi, M. Does Non-Moral Ignorance Exculpate? Situational Awareness and Attributions of Blame and Forgiveness. Acta Anal 33, 161–179 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-017-0339-y

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