Who Knew? Responsibility Without Awareness

by Sher, George

• ISBN13: 9780195389203
• ISBN10: 0195389204
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

To be responsible for their acts, agents must both perform those acts voluntarily and in some sense know what they are doing. Of these requirements, the voluntariness condition has been much discussed, but the epistemic condition has received far less attention. In Who Knew? George Sher seeks to rectify that imbalance. The book is divided in two halves, the first of which criticizes a popular but inadequate way of understanding the epistemic condition, while the second seeks to develop a more adequate alternative. It is often assumed that agents are responsible only for what they are aware of doing or bringing about--that their responsibility extends only as far as the searchlight of their consciousness. The book criticizes this "searchlight view" on two main grounds: first, that it is inconsistent with our attributions of responsibility to a broad range of agents who should but do not realize that they are acting wrongly or foolishly, and, second, that the view is not independently defensible.

Author Biography

George Sher is Herber S. Autrey Professor of Philosophy at Rice University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

The Searchlight View

Responsibility Without Awareness

Responsibility and Practical Reason

Kantian Fairness

Knew--Or Should Have Known?

A New Beginning

Setting the Norms of Recognition

The Responsible Self

Out of Control

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.