Luck and responsibility.
Date
2007
Authors
Woodrow, Jennifer L.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Dalhousie University
Abstract
Description
Moral and epistemic luck occur when an agent's responsibility is determined, at least in part, by luck. The problem of luck and responsibility is most perspicuously cast as a clash of two intuitions, both of which seem central to responsibility. On the one hand, persons' standings as responsible moral and epistemic agents are almost univocally held to be immune from determination by luck. On the other hand, we invariably count luck in assessing agents' moral and epistemic responsibility.
Luck both must not and does influence responsibility. Does this mean norms of responsibility are incoherent? Arguing from the perspective of participants in practices of attributing and undertaking responsibility, I maintain that neither intuition can be eliminated from our concept of responsibility. Drawing from current evolutionary theory, I articulate a hybrid conception of responsibility that accommodates both intuitions. This hybrid view incorporates the objective demand that persons do and believe the right things and the subjective demand that persons do and believe the right things for the right reasons. Moral and epistemic luck are then diagnosed as a mismatch between the objective and the subjective dimensions of responsibility.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 2007.
Luck both must not and does influence responsibility. Does this mean norms of responsibility are incoherent? Arguing from the perspective of participants in practices of attributing and undertaking responsibility, I maintain that neither intuition can be eliminated from our concept of responsibility. Drawing from current evolutionary theory, I articulate a hybrid conception of responsibility that accommodates both intuitions. This hybrid view incorporates the objective demand that persons do and believe the right things and the subjective demand that persons do and believe the right things for the right reasons. Moral and epistemic luck are then diagnosed as a mismatch between the objective and the subjective dimensions of responsibility.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 2007.
Keywords
Philosophy.