Ignorance, Responsibility and Moral Obligation

• Applicant: Daniele Bruno
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 503995582

This research project aims to mount a systematic inquiry into the epistemic conditions of moral blameworthiness. While the focus of most previous studies with a similar intent lay squarely on the question under which conditions agents can be excused by their ignorance, this project seeks to go beyond this by also explicitly tackling the question in which way agents can be thus excused.There are two different ways in which an agent can be shown not to be an apt target for blame for a certain action. First, it can turn out that their action was not wrong – the agent did not act contrary to any moral duties. Secondly, it is possible that the agent is not morally responsible for the action (wrong tough it may be). These two conditions offer two competing explanations of the excusing force of ignorance. This duality of possible explanations of blamelessness is reflected in the fact that the moral relevance of ignorance is discussed in two separate contexts. On the one hand, there is an established debate on the epistemic condition of moral responsibility, which generally proceeds on the assumption of the wrongness of the excused actions. On the other hand, the action’s wrongness is itself the core point of contention in the debate between objectivists and subjectivists/perspectivists about moral obligation. Somewhat surprisingly, these two separate stands of debate have so far mostly run parallel to each other, meaning that the positions and arguments advanced in them have not been brought into conversation with each other to a sufficient degree.My project sets off from this diagnosis to mount an investigation into this duality of ways of accounting for excusing force of ignorance. The aim is not only to offer a analysis of why this duality obtains, but also a thorough examination of arguments for and against maintaining it. In other words, the project sets out to establish whether our intuitive judgments about blameworthy agents can be adequately accounted for by just one of two kinds of epistemic filters, or whether both are ultimately needed to do so.One important reason to pursue this question separately is that it stands to yield important payoffs for further questions regarding the epistemic conditions of blameworthiness. A thorough investigation of the mentioned duality will enable the “translation” of many arguments and theses from one strand of debate to another, which in turn stands to move forward debates over the concrete epistemic conditions of blameworthiness in substantive ways.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants