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A Riddle Regarding Omissions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ishtiyaque Haji
Ishtiyaque Haji*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, CanadaV5A 1S6
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Extract

John Martin Fischer has recently proposed that actions and omissions are asymmetric with respect to the requirement of alternative possibilities for moral responsibility: whereas moral responsibility for an action does not require freedom to refrain from performing the action, moral responsibility for failure to perform an action does require freedom to perform the action. In what follows, I first critically assess Fischer's asymmetry principle. In arguing against the principle, I raise some concerns about Fischer's association of responsibility with control. I then motivate a riddle regarding omissions: some cases appear to show that a person is not responsible for failing to bring about something in virtue of the fact that the person could not bring about that thing. Other cases, though, seemingly show that a person is responsible for failing to bring about something even though the person could not bring about that thing. What explains the asymmetry in responsibility attributions in these cases involving omissions? Third, I consider some answers to this riddle and explain why they are inadequate. Finally, I sketch my own answer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 485 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1992

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References

1 See Fischer, John Martin and Ravizza, Mark ‘Responsibility and Inevitability,’ Ethics 101 (1991) 258-78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fischer, John Martin ‘Responsibility and Failure,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86 (1985/86) 251-70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Subsequent references to these works in the text will be made, respectively, in this way: (RI, page number); (RF, page number).

‘Omission’ is used throughout in a technical sense: an omission is a failure to do (or to bring about) something.

2 Fischer, John Martin ‘Responsibility and Control,’ Journal of Philosophy 89 (1982) 24-40Google Scholar; and Fischer, John Martin ‘Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility,’ in Schoeman, F. ed., Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987) 81-106Google Scholar

3 Murder is modeled after Fischer and Ravizza’s Assassin in ‘Responsibility and Inevitability,’ 258-9.

4 Frankfurt, Harry ‘What We are Morally Responsible For,” in Cauman, L. et al., eds., How Many Questions? (Indianapolis: Hackett 1982) 321-35, at 330-1Google Scholar. Fischer discusses Frankfurf s example in ‘Responsibility and Failure,’ 257-60.

5 Discussing this sort of case, Michael Slote believes that although the teller does not hand over the money freely, the teller can be held morally responsible for his action. (See Slote’s Understanding Free Will,’ Journal of Philosophy 77 [1980] 136-51.) One may argue that one should distinguish types of freedom and claim that the bank teller is morally responsible (even if not culpable) for handing over the money.

6 ‘Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility,’ 90, n. 11. Ferdinand Schoeman presents another sort of case that raises difficulties for Fisher’s condition. Fischer summarizes and briefly discusses Schoeman’s case in ‘Responsiveness and Moral Responsibility,’ 90, n. 11.

7 Michael Zimmerman has also urged that the second half of Fischer’s asymmetry principle is false. See An Essay on Moral Responsibility (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield 1988), 125-6. Zimmerman, in addition, has many interesting things to say on a case analogous to Locke. See Zimmerman, esp. 119-27.

8 Frankfurt, Harry G. ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969) 828-39, at 836, n. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 It should be emphasized that Zimmerman is not committed to this position. According to Zimmerman, an agent is directly responsible solely for her volitions and so all indirect responsibility (responsibility for something other than one’s volitions, for instance, responsibility for the consequences of one’s volitions) is empty. Given this emptiness, Zimmerman’s view is that his theory can be as flexible as it wants with respect to indirect responsibility—there is no correct position here. See Zimmerman, ch. 3, sect. 3.

10 This sort of qualification is required to guard against counterexamples involving ‘artificial’ volitions like those that are electronically induced.

11 Like Fischer, I confine attention to the freedom-relevant component of moral responsibility. It should be noted, in addition, that the responsibility condition does not say anything about the condition appropriate for responsibility for omissions where there is no volition on the part of an agent of which the omission is a consequence.

12 Paralysis, I think, is relevantly similar to Phobia: Phoebe has a deep unconscious phobia about water (later revealed by hypnosis), and cannot really entertain the possibility of swimming to save a drowning child, although she thinks that she can. No other means of saving the drowning child is available. Phoebe decides not to try, but in fact she could not have decided differently.

I thank an anonymous referee for The Canadian Journal of Philosophy for Phobia.

13 I thank Michael Zimmerman and an anonymous referee for The Canadian Journal of Philosophy for their comments and suggestions.