Human moral responsibility is moral responsibility enough

a reply to F. Allan Hanson

Ronald N. Giere

pp. 425-427

in: Evan Selinger (ed), Affect, agency, intentionality, and responsibility, Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences 7 (3), 2008.

Abstract

Hanson claims that moral responsibility should be distributed among both the humans and artifacts comprising complex wholes that produce morally relevant outcomes in the world. I argue that this claim is not sufficiently supported. In particular, adopting a consequentialist understanding of morality does not by itself support the view that the existence of a causally necessary object in such a complex whole is sufficient for assigning moral responsibility to that object. Moreover, there are good reasons, both evolutionary and contemporary, for not adopting this stance.