FA23 PHIL663

PHIL 663: Moral Responsibility
Dr. Patrick Dieveney
Tuesdays ·  5:30pm–8:15pm  ·  LA2–204

This course explores a couple problems in contemporary ethics that appear to undermine moral responsibility. The first concerns what are called ‘collective harms’. These are cases where producing some negative consequence requires that enough people act in a certain way, but no single act makes a difference. Each individual person can reasonably claim that, insofar as their contribution makes no difference, they did not do anything wrong. The second problem concerns moral luck—that there appears to be an unwelcome degree of luck in the extent to which one is morally praiseworthy or blameworthy. In exploring these problems, we shall uncover their characteristic features, consider their occurrence in practical moral dilemmas (especially in connection with environmental ethics), and investigate proposed solutions.