Moral Legal Responsibilities
that no one knows what he is doing, or that everyone`s behavior is incomprehensible in relation to conscious goals, or that everyone lives in a world of deception, or that no one has a moral sense. (P. Strawson 1962 [1993:59]) Wolf suggests that if a person`s true self is the product of severe childhood trauma (or related factors), that person may only be responsible for their behavior in a superficial sense that simply attributes evil actions to the agent`s true self (1990: 37-40). Wolf argues, however, that attributions of moral responsibility go further than such attributions can reach: if moral responsibility requires free will, and free will involves access to alternatives in a manner incompatible with determinism, then it would follow from the truth of determinism that no one is ever morally responsible. The above reasoning and the skeptical conclusion it reaches are supported by the hard deterministic perspective on free will and responsibility, historically defended by Spinoza and d`Holbach, among others, and more recently by Ted Honderich (2002). But, since determinism may well be wrong, contemporary skeptics of moral responsibility more often follow a hard incompatible line of reasoning that the kind of free will required for desert-based moral responsibility (as opposed to prospective responsibility (see § 2.1) is incompatible with the truth or lie of determinism (Pereboom 2001, 2014). The skeptical positions discussed below are generally of this nature: the skeptical conclusions they hold do not depend on the truth of determinism. Despite the above quotes, Nagel himself does not entirely agree with a skeptical conclusion about the responsibility for moral happiness, but others have, notably Neil Levy (2011). According to Levy`s “Hard Luck View,” the global nature of moral happiness means “there are no desert-related differences between moral actors” (2011: 10). Of course, there are differences between agents in terms of character and the good or bad deeds and results they produce, but Levy`s point is that, given the influence of luck in producing these differences, they do not provide a solid basis for treating people differently in terms of moral praise and blame. (See Russell 2017 for a compatibilist narrative that leads to a variety of pessimism, but not skepticism, based on the concerns about moral happiness just described.) A moral duty is an obligation based on morality or ethics, while a legal duty is an obligation based on the law of a country. But now consider another potential assassin who is not even trying to kill anyone, but only because his circumstances do not favor this option. This potential assassin is willing to kill under favorable circumstances (and so he seems to have had good moral luck, since he was not in those circumstances).
Perhaps the degree of responsibility attributed to the successful and failed assassins described above depends not so much on the fact that they both tried to kill, but on whether they were both willing to kill; In this case, the potential assassin who has just been introduced may share their degree of responsibility, because he shares their will to kill. But a report that focuses on how officers would be willing to act in counterfactual circumstances is likely to lead to unintuitive conclusions about liability, as many officers, usually found innocent, could willingly perform horrific acts under the right circumstances. (Mr. Zimmerman 2002 and 2015 does not shy away from this consequence, but criticism of his efforts to reject moral happiness – Hanna 2014, Hartman 2017 – has made much of it; see Peels 2015 for a position related to Zimmermans but able to avoid the unintuitive consequence just mentioned.) If the network [between the higher order and the lower order desires] to . Brainwashing or subliminal advertising. We would not hold the author morally responsible for his behavior The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, addresses the question of moral responsibility as follows: “Does not the potter have the power over clay, from the same piece, to have one vase honored and another to dishonor it?” [15] From this point of view, individuals can still be dishonored for their actions, even if those actions were ultimately entirely ordained by God. “Just because people or institutions have the right to do something doesn`t mean they have to do it. Legal action is not enough to justify an act ethically. Often, the right of one party is accompanied by an obligation of another party that has a certain relationship with the first party.
Rights and duties have moral rules. For example, the patient`s right to refuse treatment and the health care provider`s obligation not to treat a patient without informed consent are consistent with the rule “do not treat a patient without the informed consent of that patient.” An engineer`s obligation to keep a client`s privileged information confidential is consistent with the rule contained in the codes of ethics of many engineering firms: keep the business affairs of a client or employer confidential. Let us recall the previous definition of negative and positive rights. Would the obligation not to disclose a client`s privileged information be a negative or positive obligation? In recent years, experimental philosophy has sought to find out whether people`s untaught intuitions about determinism and moral responsibility are compatible or incompatible. [45] Some experimental work includes intercultural studies. [46] However, the debate over whether humans have inherently compatible or incompatibilistic intuitions has not overwhelmingly favored one point of view or the other and has not found evidence for both.