Moral Address, Moral Responsibility, and the Boundaries of the Moral Community
Moral Address, Moral Responsibility, and the Boundaries of the Moral Community
Author: David Shoemaker
Source: Ethics, Vol. 118, No. 1, Symposium on Stephen Darwall's The Second‐Person Standpoint (October 2007), pp. 70-108
Introduction
Moral Responsibility: Holding someone morally responsible indicates their membership in a specific community, the moral community.
Questions Addressed:
What are the criteria for membership in the moral community?
Why are moral assessments limited to members?
How can one lose or fail to obtain membership?
Aim: To theorize the interplay of moral responsibility, moral address, and the moral community.
Key Theorists Referenced: Peter Strawson, Lawrence Stern, Gary Watson, Stephen Darwall.
I. The Concept of Moral Community
Moral Agents: Individuals capable of engaging in exchanges of moral reasons.
Membership Requirements:
The capacity to understand and respond to moral reasons.
Lack of this capacity excludes individuals from moral community membership.
Importance of Moral Conversations:
These conversations involve genuine exchanges that define membership.
Deficient Cases:
Theories must address individuals at the margins of membership (both outside and just inside the community).
II. Reactive Attitudes and Moral Responsibility
Definition of Moral Responsibility:
Accountability is directed towards those eligible to hold one responsible.
Strawson's Perspective:
Traditional debates questioned the viability of moral responsibility under determinism.
Actual responsibility attributions are unaffected by this debate.
Reactive Attitudes:
These attitudes (e.g., resentment, gratitude) are vital to moral participation and underscore moral demands.
Criteria for Full Membership:
Engage in interpersonal relationships.
Able to respond to moral obligations without turning to an objective attitude.
III. Conditions of Moral Agency: R. Jay Wallace's MRBT
Moral Reasons-Based Theory (MRBT):
Capacity to recognize and apply moral reasons (both epistemic and motivational components).
Requirement of reflective self-control to act on moral reasons indicates eligibility for the moral community.
MRBT Formalization:
A moral agent is one who can recognize and apply moral reasons and regulate behavior accordingly.
Importance: Failure in any capacity makes an individual ineligible.
IV. Case Studies Exploring Boundaries of Moral Membership
A. Psychopathy
Definition: Classified as an anti-social personality disorder involving chronic disregard for others and moral norms.
Diagnostic Criteria:
Failure to conform to lawful behavior, deceitfulness, impulsivity, irritability, recklessness, irresponsibility, lack of remorse.
MRBT Application:
Psychopaths lack either the ability to apply moral reasons or to be motivated by them.
Regarding moral responsibility, the suggestion is that moral motivation is impaired due to emotional deficiencies rather than cognitive errors.
Implications: Psychopaths exemplify a clear exclusion from the moral community due to their inability to care about others, leading to a lack of genuine moral engagement.
B. Moral Fetishism
Definition: A scenario where individuals adhere to moral norms without recognition of the agent’s authority.
Types of Fetishists:
Agent-neutral: Motivated purely by universal norms without caring about the individuals involved.
Agent-relative: Recognize the norms but detach from their source and related emotional consequences.
Consequences: Such individuals lack genuine accountability and fail to engage in proper moral address, leading them to be expunged from the moral community.
C. Autism
Overview of High-Functioning Autism (HFA): Individuals may understand moral situations but struggle emotionally.
Identifying Empathy:
Many individuals with HFA demonstrate moral care and concern, which allows for moral engagement, albeit by non-standard means.
Capability to express guilt or remorse when acting as moral agents.
Conclusion: Individuals with HFA can still enter the moral community due to their underlying ability to recognize moral demand.
D. Mild Mental Retardation (MMR)
Defining Characteristics: Individuals may possess a mental age similar to children yet display emotional maturity and care for the moral community, unlike typical children.
Moral Capacity: While cognitive development does not progress as in typical cases, learning and emotional maturation allow individuals with MMR to engage in moral responsibility.
Key Point: Emotional responses toward caregivers and representations of moral community demands enable them to be accountable without full cognitive function.
V. Conclusions and Further Remarks
Revised MRBT (Version 5):
One can be a member of the moral community if:
Capable of recognizing and applying second-personal moral reasons through identifying empathy, irrespective of the method.
Motivated by these reasons through a care for their source, leading to moral address via the reactive attitudes.
Overall Implication: Moral agency can be complex, influenced by emotional capacities and motivations rather than strictly based on cognitive function.
The Richness of Relationships: Recognizing the varied complexities of moral responsibility through emotional engagement fosters deeper understanding in relationships within the moral community.