Accountability, Answerability, and Attributability
Sofia Jeppsson
Abstract
Abstract This chapter provides an overview and brief critical discussion of moral responsibility pluralism: that is, theories according to which there are several different kinds of moral responsibility, and it is possible for an agent to be morally responsible in one sense while lacking responsibility in another. Philosophers usually become pluralists about moral responsibility in order to handle one of two problems. Moral responsibility skeptics must explain how we ought to handle wrongdoing in a society where skepticism is embraced: saying that although one kind of moral responsibility does not exist, another one does, and suffices for our most crucial practices, offers a solution. Other philosophers argue that we need pluralism to make sense of our often-ambiguous intuitions regarding the responsibility of agents with certain impairments. The latter is far from obvious, though; moral responsibility monists can appeal to familiar excuses such as non-culpable ignorance, or how difficulties can diminish responsibility without erasing it. Pluralism does seem crucial for skeptics; however, it remains difficult to separate the kind of moral responsibility that does not exist according to the theory from the one that does, if the latter is made sufficiently thick to base vital practices on.