A Liability Model of Moral Responsibility

Keith Hankins (The University of Melbourne)

Abstract: In this talk I will sketch and defend a version of what I call a "liability model" of moral responsibility. The distinguishing feature of this model is that it denies that there is a necessary connection between culpability and the sort of moral responsibility associated with the notion of blameworthiness. In other words, I will argue that there are a range of cases where we can be morally responsible qua blameworthy for things simply in virtue of having been associated with them, and this is true even when our association with the events for which we are being held responsible does not implicate the quality of our will in any way. As I will show, although at first glance this may seem to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, in fact it is a natural consequence of two of the things that make our responsibility practices necessary:  1) the opacity of our intentions and 2) the fact that our lives are thoroughly mediated by luck fortune and chance.