Skip to main content

School of Philosophy

  • Home
  • People
  • Events
    • Event series
    • Conferences
      • Past conferences
    • Past events
  • News
    • Audio/Video Recordings
  • Research
  • Study with us
    • Prizes and scholarships
  • Visit us
  • Contact us

Centres & Projects

  • Centre for Consciousness
  • Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory
  • Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences
  • Humanising Machine Intelligence

Related Sites

  • Research School of Social Sciences
  • ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences

Centre for Consciousness

Related Sites

Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory

Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences

School of Philosophy

Administrator

Breadcrumb

HomeUpcoming EventsHolly Smith (Rutgers), "Non-Tracing Cases of Culpable Ignorance"
Holly Smith (Rutgers), "Non-Tracing Cases of Culpable Ignorance"

Recent writers on negligence and culpable ignorance have argued that there are two kinds of culpable ignorance: tracing cases, in which the agent’s ignorance traces back to some culpable act or omission of hers in the past that led to the current act, which therefore arguably inherits the culpability of that earlier failure; and non-tracing cases, in which there is no such earlier failure, so the agent’s current state of ignorance must be culpable in its own right.  An unusual but intriguing justification for blaming agents in non-tracing cases is provided by Attributionism, which holds that we are as blameworthy for our non-voluntary emotional reactions, spontaneous attitudes, and the ensuing patterns of awareness as we are for our voluntary actions. The Attributionist explanation for why some non-tracing cases involve culpability is an appealing one, even though it has limited scope.  After providing a deeper account of why we should take the Attributionist position seriously, I use recent psychological research to argue for a new account of the conditions under which agents are culpable for straightforward instances of blameworthy acts.  That account is extended to blameworthiness for non-voluntary responses.  I conclude that even when the agent’s failure to notice arises from a non-voluntary objectionable attitude, very few such cases are ones in which Attributionism implies that the agent is blameworthy for her act.

Date & time

  • Mon 11 Jul 2011, 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room D

Event Series

MSPT seminars