Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2006

Keywords

Moral responsibility, normative moral theory, agency, intention, agent history, oppression, justice

Abstract

Many theories of moral accountability, whether libertarian or compatibilist, may be characterized as time-slice theories in that they do not allow the agent’s personal history to be relevant to moral accountability, instead making accountability rest solely on the state of things during one slice out of the agent’s life story. The point of this paper is to draw attention to the personal background irrelevance embedded in such theories, and to argue that any theory of accountability embracing such irrelevance supports injustice. My argument rests on an analysis of some generally accepted epistemic conditions on accountability, claiming that whether these conditions are met in a given case typically depends on the agent’s personal history. A theory of accountability that renders personal history irrelevant cannot properly take the epistemic conditions into account, and will as a result support unjust verdicts regarding accountability. Moreover, I try to show that injustice produced in this way is likely to take on a systematic and stable structure, involving unjust negative moral characterization of weaker persons by stronger persons, so as to constitute oppression.

Comments

Invited paper presented at the Central Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association, 2006. 

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