Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Joseph Masotti (University of California San Diego) and Paul Conway (University of Southampton) on their recent paper, " When Do People Have an Obligation Not to Tic? Blame, Free Will, and Moral Character Judgments of People with Tourette’s Syndrome " ( Neuroethics 2024). Joseph Masotti Imagine being in a public space when suddenly you feel an uncontrollable urge to shout a word or sound. You know others may judge you, and you want to resist, but the urge is overpowering. If you shout, you may explain to others that the urge was just too powerful to resist. But then, others may see you acting mechanistically, lacking the control needed to be responsible for your actions. On the other hand, you can’t take responsibility for your shouting, as you know it’s not intentional. This is the reality for many with Tourette’s Syndrome (TS), a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary tics.  Paul Conway Our study investigates how people perceive blame, f...

Today's post is by Anneli Jefferson and Katrina Sifferd. Anneli is a lecturer at Cardiff University who works in the philosophy of psychology, moral philosophy, and the intersection of the two. Katrina is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Elmhurst College. In this post they discuss their recent paper in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice . Anneli Jefferson Accounts of responsibility often underestimate the importance of the social environment. Other people are vital to the development and maintenance of moral agency: As social beings, we calibrate our moral compass to our moral audience. When deciding whether it is acceptable to eat the last piece of cake, not to disclose extra earnings on a tax return or spank our children as a form of punishment, we do this with an eye to what’s considered acceptable by our social environment. The reactions of others highlight the existence and importance of moral norms by providing us with feedback, directly and indirectly. Katrina Sifferd On...

Today`s post is by Jake Wojtowicz on recent paper " Agent-Regret, Accidents, and Respect " ( The Journal of Ethics , 2023). Jake Wojtowicz earned his PhD from King's College London in 2019. He lives in Rochester, NY where he writes about the ethics and the philosophy of sport. Jake Wojtowicz Writing in The New Yorker , Alice Gregory talks about accidental killers and introduces a motorist, Patricia, who - temporarily blinded by the sunlight in her eyes - hit and killed a cyclist. It wasn’t her fault, but she spent time in the suicide unit and this has ruined her life. She even wrote to the state attorney asking to be criminally punished.  Bernard Williams suggested someone in Patricia’s situation should feel “agent-regret”. This isn’t the guilt of the intentional or reckless wrongdoer, and it isn’t the regret of the bystander. In “Agent-regret, accidents, and respect”, I reflect on Patricia’s case to shed light on how we should think about someone who accidentally harms ...

This post is by Olivia Siegfried, currently studying for a Master’s degree in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. Olivia is interested in youth mental health, personality disorders, and forensic psychology, and adopts a social constructionist perspective to understand these issues. This is part of a series of posts by students of the Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health and Wellbeing module at the Institute for Mental Health. They share some of their views on key topics discussed in the module. Olivia Siegfried Responsibility without blame As personality disorders are notoriously hard to treat, Hannah Pickard has put forward the ‘responsibility without blame’ approach ( Pickard, 2011 ) for clinicians to adopt to foster the best clinical outcomes. Although sounding inherently paradoxical, we can hold people responsible without blaming them by segregating responsibility from morality and instead defining it through a person’s agency.  Taking responsibility for...

This post is by Meghan Griffith  (Davidson College). Meghan Griffith In “ Narrative Capacity and Moral Responsibility ”, I argue that our ability to understand and tell stories plays a role in moral responsibility. One standard approach to moral responsibility involves “reasons-responsiveness.” If we can recognize and react to reasons for acting, then it seems that we are in control of our behavior, and therefore responsible (see Fischer and Ravizza 1998 for an influential account). I think “narrative capacity” enhances our sensitivity to reasons. Narrative capacity is a way of making sense of the world (Velleman 2003, 1) and involves understanding the “meaning-affecting” relation between events (Rosati 2013, 34). In other words, we come to understand and interpret the events in our lives within the context of a story. Each event is not interpreted on its own. Instead, its meaning is “conditioned by” its relation to other events (Schechtman 2007, 162). For example, an event might b...

In this post, I interview Imperfect Cognitions network member Jules Holroyd, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow in the department of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, and Principal Investigator of the Leverhulme Trust funded Bias and Blame project . The project runs from 2014-2017 and the team includes senior lecturer Tom Stafford and postdoctoral researcher Robin Scaife in the department of psychology, and PhD student Andreas Bunge in the department of philosophy. SS: The Bias and Blame project investigates the relationship between moral interactions, such as blame, and the manifestation of implicit bias. How did you become interested in this topic, and has there been much previous research in this area? JH: The project looks principally at whether moral interactions, such as blaming, impact on the expression of implicit racial bias. The interest in this   question arose out of the philosophical debates about responsibility for bias, in which two claims see...

This post is by Marion Godman (pictured above), researcher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of Social Sciences (TINT) at Helsinki University. In this post she draws on a discussion she lead at the Moral Psychology Interdisciplinary Workshop , CRASSH, on 9th October 2015.  As intriguing as reasoning about psychopathy is, it is also bound to make us uneasy. People with the condition commit a disproportionate number of crimes compared to other psychiatric groups (Coid et al. 2009 ) and are also over-represented in the criminal statistics concerning recidivism, predatory violence and serial killings (Hare 1999 ). So for legal and policy purposes, it is imperative to think about these far from perfect minds prone to manipulation and violence. But at the same this makes it difficult to keep one’s head cool when approaching psychopathy. How do we think about the disorder without disapproval and disdain clouding our judgment? Or could it be...