Action, responsibility, culpability: lessons from Parks somnambulism

Monday 28 April 2014 - h. 12,30

Aula Direzione del dipartimento

Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano

Filippo Santoni De Sio

(Technische Universiteit, Delft)

Action, responsibility, culpability: lessons from Parks somnambulism

Abstract: In 1987 a man named Kenneth Parks was acquitted for the killing of his mother-in-law and the serious injury to his father-in-law, as it was proved that even if the killing and the injury had been done by him, he did them in a state of somnambulism. In this paper we address the question of Parks’ moral culpability, and we draw some general implications for the philosophy of action and the theory of responsibility. Even if it is almost unanimously held that Parks should not be held culpable for what he did, we think that it is an open and interesting philosophical question why it is the case that he is not culpable. We argue that the thesis of Parks non-culpability is compatible with at least two different accounts of Parks’ story, that we dub respectively the involuntariness account and the lack of basic responsibility account. We claim that only one of these justifications is correct, namely the lack of basic responsibility account. The first goal of this paper is to present the two accounts, to argue against the involuntariness account, and to argue for the lack of basic responsibility account. We think, however, that the contrast between the two justifications for Parks’ non-culpability reflects a more general contrast between two different approaches to the theory of action and responsibility. On the one hand, the involuntariness account arguably reflects a more coarse-grained theory of human action, and a simpler view of responsibility. On the other hand, the lack of basic responsibility account allows for a more fine-grained theory of action, and a more complex view of the varieties of responsibility. Hence, another important goal of the paper is to present these two different pairs of approaches to human action and responsibility, and to argue for the latter, that is for a more fine-grained theory of action and a more complex view of responsibility.

(The conference will be in English)

Giuliano Torrengo [email protected]