The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility

by Nelkin, Dana Kay; Pereboom, Derk

• ISBN13: 9780197799604
• ISBN10: 0197799604
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2026-01-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility is a collection of 33 articles by leading international scholars on the topic of moral responsibility and its main forms, praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. The articles in the volume provide a comprehensive survey on scholarship on this topic since 1960, with a focus on the past three decades. Articles address the nature of moral responsibility - whether it is fundamentally a matter of deserved blame and praise, or whether it is grounded anticipated good consequences, such as moral education and formation, or whether there are different kinds of moral responsibility. They examine responsibility for both actions and omissions, whether responsibility comes in degrees, and whether groups such as corporations can be responsible.

The traditional debates about moral responsibility focus on the threats posed from causal determinism, and from the absence of the ability to do otherwise that may result. The articles in this volume build on these arguments and appraise the most recent developments in these debates. Philosophical reflection on the personal relationships and moral responsibility has been especially intense over the past two decades, and several articles reflect this development. Other chapters take up the link between blameworthiness and attitudes such as moral resentment and indignation, while others explore the role that forgiveness and reconciliation play in personal relationships and responsibility. The range of articles in this volume look at moral responsibility from a range of perspectives and disciplines, explaining how physics, neuroscience, and psychological research on topics such as addiction and implicit bias illuminate the ways and degrees to which we might be responsible.

Author Biography

Dana Kay Nelkin (Ph.D. UCLA) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and Affiliate Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Her areas of research include moral psychology, ethics, bioethics, and philosophy of law. She is the author of Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility, and co-editor of the The Ethics and Law of Omissions. Her work in moral psychology includes participation in an interdisciplinary research collaboration of philosophers and psychologists, The Moral Judgements Project.

Derk Pereboom (Ph.D. UCLA) is the Susan Linn Sage Professor in the Philosophy Department at Cornell University and Senior Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. His areas of research include free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, early modern philosophy, especially Kant, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of Living without Free Will, Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life, and he is co-author with Michael McKenna of Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction. He has published articles on free will and moral responsibility, consciousness and physicalism, nonreductive materialism, divine providence, the problem of evil, and on Kant's metaphysics and epistemology.

Table of Contents

Introduction Dana Kay Nelkin and Derk Pereboom

I. Theories of Responsibility
1. Instrumentalist Theories of Responsibility Manuel Vargas
2. Reasons-Responsiveness, Frankfurt Examples, and the Free Will Ability Michael McKenna
3. Attributionist Theories of Responsibility Matthew Talbert

II. Kinds of Responsibility
4. Attributability, Answerability, and Accountability: On Different Kinds of Moral Responsibility Sofia Jeppsson

III. Dimensions of Responsibility
5. Responsibility for Acts and Omissions Randolph Clarke
6. Degrees of Responsibility Justin Coates
7. Group Responsibility Christian List

IV. Determinism and the Ability to Do Otherwise
8. Moral Responsibility, Alternative Possibilities, and Frankfurt Examples Derk Pereboom
9. Manipulation Arguments against Compatibilism Derk Pereboom and Michael McKenna

V. Skepticism
10. Illusionism Saul Smilansky
11. Free Will Skepticism and Criminal Justice: The Public Health-Quarantine Model Gregg D. Caruso
12. Metaskepticism Tamler Sommers

VI. Blame
13. Blame and Holding Responsible Angela Smith
14. Responsibility and the Reactive Attitudes R. Jay Wallace
15. Response-Dependence Accounts of Blameworthiness David Shoemaker

VII. Responsibility, Knowledge, and Causation
16. Ethics is Hard! What Follows? On Moral Ignorance and Blame Elizabeth Harman
17. Responsibility and Causation Carolina Sartorio

VIII. Responsibility, Law, and Justice
18. Responsibility, Punishment, and Predominant Retributivism David Brink
19. Legal Responsibility: Psychopathy, a Case Study Elizabeth Shaw
20. Responsibility and Distributive Justice Richard Arneson

IX. Responsibility, Neuroscience, and Psychology
21. Responsibility and Neuroscience Alfred R. Mele
22. Responsibility and Consciousness Peter Carruthers and Matt King
23. Responsibility and Situationism Brandon Warmke
24. Experimental Philosophy and Moral Responsibility Gunnar Björnsson

X. Responsibility, Relationships, and Meaning in Life
25. Moral Responsibility and Existential Attitudes Paul Russell
26. Relationships and Responsibility Dana Kay Nelkin
27. Responsibility, Personal Relationships, and the Significance of the Reactive Attitudes Seth Shabo
28. Forgiveness Per-Erik Milam
29. Reconciliation and he End of Responsibility Linda Radzik
30. Responsibility and Religion Dan Speak

XI. Case Studies
31. Moral Responsibility in the Context of Addiction Doug McConnell
32. Moral Responsibility for Implicit Bias and the Impact of Social Categorization Maureen Sie
33. Atrocity, Evil, and Responsibility John Doris and Dominic Murphy