Blaming Slaveowners

I'm in the process of reading Carlos Moya's new book Moral Responsibility: The Ways of Scepticism (reviewed here by Matt Talbert).  In the last chapter, he attempts to show that moral responsibility is compatible with indeterminism, and thus give support to a libertarian position.  In the process, he talks about slaveowners and compares our intuitive judgments about the blameworthiness of slaveowners, depending on what century they lived in.  I think this is an interesting question, so I put it to you.

Grant that purchasing a slave is morally wrong.  Now consider someone living in Ancient Greece who purchases a slave.  There's some intuitive pull to saying that even though this person may have done something morally wrong, he is not blameworthy.  On the other hand, consider someone who purchases a slave in 18th century America.  There's some intutive pull to saying that this person has done something morally wrong, and is blameworthy.  How do we explain this difference?

There are a few ways we can go.  Do we want to say that the Ancient Greek slaveowner is not blameworthy because he is not morally responsible?  But then, which condition on responsibility might he fail to meet?  Or do we want to say that the Ancient Greek slaveowner is responsible, but this is one case where someone can be morally responsible for a morally wrong action without being blameworthy?  But then, what mitigates his blameworthiness?  Or do we want to say that despite the fact that purchasing a slave today is wrong, purchasing slaves in Ancient Greece was not morally wrong?

What do you think?

Comments

[Kevin Timpe]

Neal,

Here is a possible response (and one that I, to be honest, feel some pull toward).

Perhaps the slave owner in ancient Greece fails to be morally responsible (and thus fails to be blameworthy) because he failed to meet the epistemic condition for moral responsibility. Perhaps he was ignorant that such a practice is morally wrong in a way that the person in the 18th century isn't (or perhaps only the former and not the later is non-culpably ignorant of this fact).

[Neal]

Kevin,

That was my first instinct as well -- that the Ancient Greek slaveowner was non-culpably ignorant of the fact that purchasing slaves is morally wrong, and hence he somehow fails to meet the epistemic condition on moral responsibility. But -- and I concede here that I haven't thought or read much about the epistemic condition -- it seems to me that it would be an odd episemtic condition on moral responsibility which required that the agent be aware (or at least culpably ignorant) of the fact that her action was morally wrong. I say this for a few reasons.

First, I was under the impression that the epistemic condition had more to do with whether the agent could resaonably foresee some consequence of her action.

Second, in the case of morally right actions, it seems less plausible to say that in order to be morally responsible for a morally right action, the agent must be aware that the action is morally right. But surely if the epistemic requirement we are discussing is a condition for moral responsibility, it should be the same whether the action in question is morally right or morally wrong.

Third, I wonder whether this sort of epistemic condition you suggest is better associated with the praiseworthiness/blameworthiness distinction. That is, although someone can be morally responsible for owning slaves in Ancient Greece, they may not be blameworthy, because blameworthiness requires some sort of awareness that what you are doing is morally wrong. If so, then this is more reason to suppose that responsibility and blameworthiness come apart in important ways.

[Randy Clarke]

Suppose S has purchased someone as a slave, and that what S did was wrong. Suppose that S is not blameworthy for making the purchase. It strikes me as a plausible explanation for the lack of blameworthiness (if true) that S did not believe, and could not have been reasonably expected to believe, that making the purchase was wrong.

Must we also say that S is not responsible for making the purchase? I'm not so sure. It seems that the truth of attributions of responsibility for actions depends on how, in the attribution, the action is described. S might be responsible for making the purchase, it may be that making the purchase is wrong, yet S not be responsible for acting wrongly. So perhaps S is not blameworthy because not responsible for acting wrongly, even though S is responsible for making the purchase. (I don't know; just trying this out.)

Neal said:

"But surely if the epistemic requirement we are discussing is a condition for moral responsibility, it should be the same whether the action in question is morally right or morally wrong."

Supposing invariantism, no?

A side issue: I wouldn't think the example is a good one for raising the present issue, for I'm inclined to think the ancient slaveowner IS blameworthy. Granted, slavery has been prevalent and widely accepted in just about every era until the nineteenth century. But you don't need to be in a society in which slavery is generally deplored to see that slavery is an abomination; it's fairly obvious. Moreover, the institution apparently had its critics in ancient times; I don't know why else Aristotle would have bothered to defend it. So my inclination is to hold the ancient slave owner culpable, even if less so than the modern slave owner (if we suppose them both ignorant, then the ancient one is perhaps less culpably ignorant).

[Kevin Timpe]

Neal,

You write: "I was under the impression that the epistemic condition had more to do with whether the agent could resaonably foresee some consequence of her action."

I think that this is one role that epistemic considerations play in moral responsibility, but I don't think that it's the only one. For instance, suppose that I know that a particular action will reasonably lead to a particular consequence, C. But I don't know that bringing about C is morally wrong, and that I'm not culpably ignorant of this. Then isn't it plausible to think that I wouln't be morally responsible for bringing about C? So I guess I'm less inclined than you to say that it would be an "odd episemtic condition on moral responsibility which required that the agent be aware (or at least culpably ignorant) of the fact that her action was morally wrong."

Second, I'm inclined to accept the parallel for morally good actions, though I'm probably strongly influenced here by my tendency toward a certain kind of virtue ethic.

I think that more work needs to be done on capturing exactly what this epistemic requirement is (or what the various parts of the epistemic requirement are). I, for one, only know how to give a rough characterizition of what it should be, and it is far from satisfactory. And one reason for this is for the tracing issues that Manuel raises so well in his "Trouble with Tracing" paper in last year's Midwest Studies volume.

(I should also note that I have an affinity to Randy's last point as well. With regard to slavery, I think it is hard to be non-culpably ignorant that such a practice is morally wrong.)

[Matt Lawson]

I think the negative feelings that I have about the slaveowners from the 18th centry vs the slaveowners from ancient Greece come from my understanding of how slaves were treated. It is morally wrong to own a slave. It is morally wrong to mistreat another person. In school we were taught about how slaves in American history were mistreated by their owners - what a tragedy. It was a tragedy from people being rounded up like animals, brought here like animals, sold like animals, and treated like animals. On the other hand, in ancient Jewish society, if you could not pay your debts (there were no credit cards) you could sell yourself into slavery to repay them. However, in that society, every seven years all slavemasters had to set their slaves free. Also, there were other laws in place to protect slaves to protect them from being mistreated (though like all things this was abused).

[Clifford Sosis]

Hello,

The reason our intuitions might cut the Greeks slack is because they didn't have as many epistemic resources at their disposal as a 19th century slaveowner (I suspect that this is false), however, I think Matt is onto something. In cases such as these, what we imagine slavery was like under the slaveowner in the respective century might determine our attribution of responsibility. So, when we imagine Greek slavery, we might envisage a noble institution, as it is portrayed in Spartacus, and thus cut the Greeks slack. However, I suspect if we specify that the conditions in both cases are just as brutal (or noble) we will have the intuition that the slaveowners in either century are as morally responsible as each other.

[Alex Guerrero]

I think our intuitions are shaped in part by our exposure to the details of the institutions, which might explain the difference. Additionally, the strongly racial character of American slavery contrasts it with Ancient Greek slavery, which can make it seem even worse. I actually don't feel that the attributions of moral responsibility or blameworthiness in the two cases are any different; it's just that being a slaveholder in America is actually a worse thing for which to be blameworthy/responsible.

Just fyi, there are several papers that deal with these questions directly, with Rosen defending a line similar to the one Kevin Timpe was suggesting above:

Michael Zimmerman, “Moral Responsibility and Ignorance,” (Ethics, Vol. 107, No. 3, Apr. 1997)

Gideon Rosen, “Culpability and Ignorance,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, November 2002

Michelle Moody-Adams, “Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance,” (Ethics, Vol. 104, No. 2, Jan. 1994)