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HUM-Fagkomiteen for humaniora

Moral responsiblity: Challenges and implications for law and political theory

Tildelt: kr 2,5 mill.

The research will be presented in five articles which all relate to moral responsibility. I will address challenges to moral responsibility in light of empirical knowledge, i.e., neuroscientific knowledge about the causes of human behaviour and sociologic al knowledge of divergences in people's conception of moral responsibility. I will discuss the implications of these challenges for legal and political theory, e.g. with regard to justification for punishment and conceptions of political freedom. Topics of articles: 1) I discuss to what degree a shared sense of justice in a multicultural society is compatible with people having divergent conceptions of responsibility. 2) Folk theories about moral responsibility might better account for the pragmatic and social role of responsibility attribution than philosophical theories do, and I argue that traditional philosophical approaches bring out distorted concepts of moral responsibility. 3) Based on our interest in being treated as moral agents deserving of p raise and blame, neuroscientific discoveries about the causes of human behaviour need not threaten a retributivist justification of punishment. 4) I argue for a revision of retributive practices in the direction of a communicative theory of punishment. Co m. retributivism can serve as a common ground for both compatibilists and incompatibilists about determinism and moral responsibility, and is more justifiable on an independent account than a consequentialist theory. 5) I argue that the compatibilist noti on of freedom and responsibility which I am defending can be reconciled with a republican idea of political freedom as freedom from the arbitrary will of others. We can be said to be free in spite of being subjected to forces of nature, but not in spite o f being subjected to someone?s arbitrary will. That holds even if the other's arbitrary will is never manifested in actual interference or if we do not know that we are subject to someone's will.

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HUM-Fagkomiteen for humaniora