Chapter 7 Socializing Responsibility
There is a near universal consensus that the bearers of moral responsibility are the individuals we identify with proper names. I suggest that if we take the exercise of agency as a guide to the identification of agents, we may find that agents sometimes extend into the world: they may be constitute...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Book Chapter |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford
Oxford University Press
2018
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | DOAB: download the publication DOAB: description of the publication |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | There is a near universal consensus that the bearers of moral responsibility are the individuals we identify with proper names. I suggest that if we take the exercise of agency as a guide to the identification of agents, we may find that agents sometimes extend into the world: they may be constituted by several individuals and/or by institutions. These extended agents may be responsible for morally significant outcomes. I argue that institutions or extended agents may also be responsible for the failure of individuals to satisfy the epistemic conditions on moral responsibility. Individuals may believe virtuously but falsely, due to the way in which cues to reliability are socially distributed. I conclude by suggesting that a focus on individual responsibility may have distracted us from the urgent task of reforming the institutional actors responsible for widespread ignorance about morally significant facts. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 1 electronic resource (20 p.) |
| Access: | Open Access |