Forms of Exculpation: Nature and Norms of Blamelessness

This workshop is aimed at discussing questions regarding the relationship between prescriptive and hypological notions in the normative, with a specific focus on conceptual issues regarding excuses and exemptions. It is a familiar fact of life that agents can be exculpated through a variety of factors, ranging from ignorance, over duress, to permanent impairment of their rational facilities. Sometimes, these various factors are taken to directly affect what an agent ought to do, at other times, they are taken to constitute excuses for (nonetheless wrong) actions. Contributions to this workshop will deal with the question of how to best theoretically capture the various forms of exculpation, combining perspectives from ethics, epistemology and legal philosophy.

The workshop is open to everyone. For contact and registration, please write to: [email protected]