Sosa on Moral Responsibility

Ernie Sosa has a new paper on experimental philosophy. Among other topics, he discusses some of the recent experimental work on moral responsibility.

In essence, he argues that the English word 'responsible' is ambiguous -- with one sense corresponding roughly to the concept of attributibility, the other corresponding roughly to the concept of accountability. Sosa then suggests that some of the surprising recent results can be understood in terms of certain factors pushing subjects more toward one or another of the two possible interpretations.

Comments

[John Fischer]

This sounds interesting. The distinction between "attributability" and "accountability" seems very similar to Gary Watson's distinction between the "two faces of responsibility".

[Gustavo Llarull]

Yes; actually, Sosa cites the SEP article on moral responsibility as his source of the distinction, and the SEP article in turn refers to Watson's "Two Faces of Responsibility."

I enjoyed E. Sosa's paper, by the way. A friendly amendment to experimental philosophy and a good defense of intuitions.