Moral Responsibility: Non-Metaphysical Perspectives

A workshop exploring non-metaphysical approaches to moral responsibility
will be held at Macquarie University on 20-21 November 2014. The workshop
is supported by the Centre for Agency, Values and Ethics (CAVE) and the
Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University.

Speakers and respondents will include:



Professor Marina Oshana (UC Davis)

Professor Natalie Stoljar (McGill)

Dr Jules Holroyd (Nottingham)

Dr Daniel Cohen (CAPPE)

Professor Jeanette Kennett (CAVE, Macquarie)

Professor Catriona Mackenzie (CAVE, Macquarie)

Dr Katrina Hutchison (CAVE, Macquarie)

 If you are interested in presenting a paper at this workshop, please
submit an abstract of up to 250 words to [email protected] by 10th
October 2014.


 *Background and focus of workshop*

Many philosophers now deny the relevance of the metaphysics of the free
will debate to moral responsibility.  They offer non-metaphysical grounds
for moral responsibility, for example as a feature of human psychology, or
as an ineliminable aspect of interpersonal relationships.

Such approaches often draw inspiration from either P.F. Strawson's
influential notion of morally reactive attitudes, Harry Frankfurt's
hierarchical conception of personhood, and/or Frankfurt-style
counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities.

These non-metaphysical approaches tend to describe moral responsibility in
terms of related capacities such as reasons-responsiveness (Fischer) or the
capacity for reflective self-control (Wallace), and in close association
with related concepts such as autonomy.

Despite the increasing prevalence of non-metaphysical approaches, they
raise many important questions that are yet to be adequately explored.  For
example, although these approaches often presuppose a close connection
between autonomy and moral responsibility, the nature of this relationship
has received little attention. It is also surprising that the moral
responsibility literature includes so little feminist work, particularly
given the influence of feminist approaches to autonomy (such as relational
autonomy).

This workshop aims to investigate some of these important, under-explored
questions. Papers are invited on the broad topic of non-metaphysical
perspectives on moral responsibility. Possible topics include, but are not
limited to:

   - Exploration of the relationship between moral responsibility and
   autonomy
   - Feminist approaches to moral responsibility
   - Responsibility for character: are we responsible for our characters,
   and what does this mean?
   - Moral responsibility and implicit bias – are we responsible for our
   implicit biases?
   - Non-metaphysical approaches to blame and punishment