Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T19:31:33.029Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Moral Diversity and Moral Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2018

BRIAN KOGELMANN  and
ROBERT H. WALLACE
BRIAN KOGELMANN
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLANDbkogel89@gmail.com
ROBERT H. WALLACE
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONArhwallace@email.arizona.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In large, impersonal moral orders many of us wish to maintain good will toward our fellow citizens only if we are reasonably sure they will maintain good will toward us. The mutual maintaining of good will, then, requires that we somehow communicate our intentions to one another. But how do we actually do this? The current paper argues that when we engage in moral responsibility practices—that is, when we express our reactive attitudes by blaming, praising, and resenting—we communicate a desire to maintain good will to those in the community we are imbedded in. Participating in such practices alone will not get the job done, though, for expressions of our reactive attitudes are often what economists call cheap talk. But when we praise and blame in cases of moral diversity, expressions of our reactive attitudes act as costly signals capable of solving our social dilemma.

Keywords

moral responsibilityStrawsoncheap talkcostly signalmoral disagreement
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , Fall 2018 , pp. 371 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arpaly, Nomy. (2002) Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Aumann, Robert. (2000) ‘Nash Equilibria Are Not Self-Enforcing’. In Aumann, Collected Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 615–20.Google Scholar
Bernheim, Douglas B., and Redding, Lee S.. (2001) ‘Optimal Money Burning’. Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 10, 463–507.Google Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, and Gintis, Herbert. (2013) A Cooperative Species. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Crawford, Vincent P., and Sobel, Joel. (1982) ‘Strategic Information Transmission’. Econometrica, 50, 1431–51.Google Scholar
Darwall, Steven. (2006) The Second-Person Standpoint. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald. (2011) The Order of Public Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald. (2016) The Tyranny of the Ideal. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hieronymi, Pamela. (2001) ‘Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62, 529–55.Google Scholar
Kogelmann, Brian. (2017) ‘Justice, Diversity, and the Well-Ordered Society’. The Philosophical Quarterly, 67, 663–84.Google Scholar
Kogelmann, Brian, and Gaus, Gerald. (2017) ‘Rational Choice Theory’. In Blau, Adrian (ed.), Research Methods in Analytic Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 217–42.Google Scholar
Kogelmann, Brian, and Stich, Stephen G. W.. (2016) ‘When Public Reason Fails Us: Convergence Discourse as Blood Oath’. American Political Science Review, 110, 717–30.Google Scholar
McKenna, Michael. (2012) Conversation and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Muldoon, Ryan. (2016) Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Murphy, Ryan. (2018) ‘The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption’. Working paper for Social Science Research Network. Available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3160438.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. ([1993]2005) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 2008. Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Skyrms, Brian. (2004) The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Angela. (2012) ‘Moral Blame and Moral Protest’. In Coates, Justin and Tognazinni, Neal (eds.), Blame: Its Nature and Norms (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 27–48.Google Scholar
Strawson, P. F. (1962) ‘Freedom and Resentment’. Proceedings of the British Academy, 48, 187–211.Google Scholar
Talbert, Matthew. (2012) ‘Moral Competence, Moral Blame, and Protest’. Journal of Ethics, 16, 89–109.Google Scholar
Tosi, Justin, and Warmke, Brandon. (2016) ‘Moral Grandstanding’. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 44, 197–217.Google Scholar
Watson, Gary. ([1987] 2008) ‘Responsibility and the Limits of Evil: Variations on a Strawsonian Theme’. In McKenna, Michael and Russell, Paul (eds.), Free Will and Reactive Attitudes (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing), 115–42.Google Scholar