Abstract
This paper distinguishes six different responsibility concepts from one another, and it explains how those concepts relate to each other. The resulting “structured taxonomy of responsibility concepts” identifies several common sources of disputes about responsibility, and it suggests a procedure for resolving such disputes. To demonstrate their utility, this taxonomy and procedure are then used to illuminate debates in two familiar contexts.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Although I use H.L.A. Hart’s terminology to preserve continuity with his work, there are differences between my and his terminology. Also compare to Chapters 1 and 3 by van de Poel, this volume.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
I use Stephen Perry’s term “outcome responsibility” (2000:555) because it captures the idea of a form of responsibility which looks backwards in time to states of affairs (outcomes or actions) that occurred in the past, and for which the person in question is blameworthy (if what they are responsible for is bad) or perhaps praiseworthy (if it is good), but others have given this concept different names. For instance, Hart calls it “causal responsibility” (1968:212), though I find this name unhelpful since it runs together at least two distinct ideas – i.e. the normative concept of responsibility (e.g. see Kutz (2004:555); citing Wallace (2002)) and what I take to be its causal component. Fischer and Ravizza call it “moral responsibility” (1998), and they too distinguish between moral responsibility for actions and for outcomes; though I am not fond of this name either since although it captures the inherently normative nature of responsibility, it fails to adequately differentiate between our forward-looking moral responsibilities (our “role responsibilities” comprise some of these, and what I will shortly call “liability responsibility” comprises the rest of them) and the backward-looking moral responsibility which I am presently calling “outcome responsibility”. Also, Peter Cane calls this concept “historical responsibility” (2004:162); Thomas Scanlon calls it “responsibility as attributability” (1998:248); Gary Watson calls it the “attributability” sense of responsibility (2004:263–65); and Garrath Williams and Antony Duff call it “retrospective responsibility” (Williams 2008:457, 459, 460 and 467; Duff 1998). Finally, although Herbert Honoré also uses the label “outcome responsibility” (e.g. Honoré 1999), he uses it to refer to the concept which below I call “liability responsibility”.
- 6.
My point is not that we would necessarily make this particular evaluation about the risks involved, but rather that if we made that evaluation then Smith would be deemed responsible.
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Gary Watson also argues that we would not usually say that someone was responsible for a bad outcome unless their actions were “contrary to one of [their] responsibilities” (2004:274)
- 8.
The “ought to” clause captures the idea, expressed for instance in Fischer and Ravizza’s tracing principle (1998:48–51), that diminished capacities for which a person is responsible have at most only a discounted exculpatory value – people who cause accidents while voluntarily intoxicated are typically not excused for what they did despite their reduced capacities. For contrast, see Chapters 6 and 7 by Dymock and Benchimol, this volume.
- 9.
There is room in both inferences for other considerations too: my capacity (e.g. to swim) may be a reason to do various things (e.g. save the drowning child, join the swimming team, etc.), and other reasons (e.g. that I am running late for work) may compete with the capacity-based reasons for determination of what I ought to do. See Chapter 5 by Lowry, this volume, for a discussion of the relationship between can claims and ought claims via reasons claims.
- 10.
Peter B. M. Vranas (2007:181) argues that the positive or generative account of the relationship between capacity and obligation is more plausible than the second or regulative account, because there are good reasons to suppose that if I really could not have done something, then I really can not legitimately be expected to have done that thing in the first place.
- 11.
The main exception to this is vicarious liability – i.e. when one person is held responsible for what another person did – but this can either be explained away and criticized as a departure from an otherwise legitimate moral norm, or we could check whether the specific instance might perhaps be justified. For instance, we might check whether the party that will be held vicariously responsible failed to supervise the other party as they ought to have, and that they are after all outcome responsible for what the other person did which means that no injustice is done qua holding them liability responsible. This is presumably one reason why parents are held responsible for their children’s actions.
- 12.
The so-called “three strikes laws” demonstrate how a judgment that someone lacks virtue responsibility can be an aggravating factor at sentencing.
- 13.
I discuss these points in greater depth in Vincent (2010:91–93).
- 14.
This suggests that there exists a more direct relationship between capacity responsibility and liability responsibility than what is depicted in the diagram at the top of Section 2.3. However, since this relationship is mediated via our aims, and our aims are not themselves depicted in the above diagram (the diagram after all only sets out to depict the relations that obtain between different responsibility concepts), I have therefore chosen to only describe the relationship between capacity responsibility and liability responsibility here.
- 15.
… or a collection of aims, since we might after all be pluralists in this regard …
- 16.
Abad (Chapter 8, this volume) disagrees – she argues that only some kinds of responses (i.e. liability responsibility) are fitting or appropriate given what someone has done (i.e. given their outcome responsibility).
- 17.
… or, if we have plural aims, about the relative importance of our different aims …
- 18.
Since different responsibility concepts appear in claims about taking responsibility as opposed to claims about the things for which someone allegedly is responsible – the former are forward-looking while the latter are backward-looking – claims about the former can’t be derived through mere logical entailment from claims about the latter. Put another way, the fact that someone is responsible for some state of affairs (e.g. their bad health) does not yet tell us how that person should take responsibility for it. Abad (Chapter 8, this volume) however disagrees with me on this point.
- 19.
In that paper I argue that rather than asking whether neuroscience is relevant to responsibility, we should ask how the range of different neuroscientific techniques and technologies can help us to address the six different kinds of responsibility questions that we might ask – i.e. the first six questions listed at the top of Section 2.4.1. above.
- 20.
It also depends on a range of historical factors discussed by Fischer and Ravizza under the heading of the “tracing approach” (1998:48–51).
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Vincent, N.A. (2011). A Structured Taxonomy of Responsibility Concepts. In: Vincent, N., van de Poel, I., van den Hoven, J. (eds) Moral Responsibility. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1878-4_2
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