Responsibility vs. Blameworthiness

Let's suppose that to be morally responsible is to be an apt target for the reactive attitudes.

And let's suppose that to be blameworthy/praiseworthy is to be such that the reactive attitudes are justifiably applied to you.

Nearly everyone agrees (I think) that an agent can be morally responsible without being praiseworthy or blameworthy.  That is, in our terms above, an agent can be the sort of object to which reactive attitudes are appropriately applied without it being the case that any reactive attitude is justifiably applied to the agent in a particular circumstance.  But what people disagree about (I think) is what gets you from moral responsibility to blameworthiness/praiseworthiness.  So what is it?

Pereboom thinks (I think) that if you are morally responsible for a morally wrong action, then you are therefore blameworthy for it, and if you are morally responsible for a morally right action, then you are therefore praiseworthy for it.  On his view, the only actions that an agent can be morally responsible for without being praiseworthy/blameworthy are morally neutral actions.

But others disagree.  For instance, Fischer thinks that more is needed.  Take his resopnse to Pereboom's 4-case manipulation argument.  Fischer has responded by saying that although the agent is morally responsible in all four cases, the agent is not blameworthy in all four cases.  He stops short of actually telling us where the cut-off for blameworthiness comes, but he does say that it's clear to him that in case 1, the agent is not blameworthy, whereas in case 4 (the deterministic case), the agent is blameworthy.  I wonder what other conditions for blameworthiness Fischer has in mind here?

And in general, I wonder what people think about the relationship between these two notions -- responsibility and blameworthiness.  In some discussions of moral responsibility, you'll hear an incompatibilist say that to be morally responsible is to be truly deserving of praise or blame.  But this sounds a lot closer to what I called 'blameworthiness/praiseworthiness' above.  Could it be that when Fischer judges the agent in case 1 not to be blameworthy, he is actually agreeing with the incompatibilist, but they are just using different words (one saying 'blameworthy'; the other saying 'morally responsible')?  I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but I feel like it's important to be clear about the relationship between these two concepts.  Any thoughts?

Comments

[Randy Clarke]

There is some controversy over whether one can be morally responsible for morally neutral actions. I wonder what's at stake in the dispute. Here's another view that's around: one can be blameworthy for something that one isn't responsible for. I believe that's George Sher's view about character traits.

[Eddy Nahmias]

I'm not sure how exactly it would clarify these questions, but it seems relevant to remember that
(a) an agent can possess the capacities required to be a free and morally responsible agent, and
(b) an agent can, in a particular action, exercise (or fail to exercise) those capacities.
Relatedly, an agent (or type of creature) can be
(a) exempt from judgments of moral responsibility, presumably because she/he/it does not possess the relevant capacities at all, and
(b) excused from judgments of moral responsibility, often because she/he is unable to exercise the relevant capacities in the particular action in question.
(The exempt/excuse language comes from Watson's discussion of P.F. Strawson.)

I would think that "being morally responsible" is not a very folksy expression, and could be used technically by philosophers to refer to an agent's possessing the relevant capacities for free will. "Being praiseworthy/blameworthy," the more folksy expressions, would then refer to whether a morally responsible agent (i.e., one who possesses free will) had the opportunity to exercise those capacities in a particular action that has moral consequences. If it is a "morally neutral" action, then the agent can still be morally responsible (in that she/he possesses free will) without being praiseworthy or blameworthy on that occassion.

[Christian]

Hi Neal,

Here's my answer: Someone is blameworthy when they act from bad reasons. They are praiseworthy when acting from good reasons. Someone is morally responsible for performing an act when they perform it from certain kinds of reasons, typically the kinds of reasons that make them subject for blame or praise.

You'll probably want to know what a good reason is. Example, acting because one desires to help another in need for their sake. A bad reason is, for example, acting from the desire to harm another person for sake of seeing them harmed. On this view only beings that act from certain reasons can be subject to blame, praise or are ever morally responsible for what they do.