Raz on responsibility: comments on Mayr

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I present a qualified defence of Raz's account of responsibility in response to Erasmus Mayr's important criticisms in this contribution to this issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Raz
• responsibility
• rational capacities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Since I’ll only be discussing Raz’s responsibility₂, I’ll skip the subscripts.

2 As Mayr points out, Raz is often criticised for not placing his account within the philosophical literature on this topic. Although this is an important concern, I cannot address it here, and I’ll keep my focus on Raz’s account in his terms and Mayr’s criticism of it.

3 See, for instance, Metaphysics of Morals 6:213 (in Kant’s Practical Philosophy edited and translated by Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996)).

4 Mayr looks also at cases in which this characterisation is not quite right. More on this momentarily.

5 My own view is that there is an important difference in the case of the moral failure because of the unconditional nature of the reason involved, but this depends on a view of moral reasons that Raz does not share.

6 I take it that Raz spends quite a bit of time discussing cases of failed skill exactly because there is a tendency to try to restrict the realm of responsibility to the confines of the mind and includes only mental attitudes that are reason-responsive.

7 For related discussion, see Elizabeth Harman ‘Does Moral Ignorance exculpate?’ [2011] Ratio 443.

8 Joseph Raz, From Normativity to Responsibility (Oxford University Press 2012), p. 245. Though perhaps a position that philosophers, such as Kant (Metaphysics of Morals 6: 401), would accept given their views on the impossibility of erring conscience.

9 ‘The Two Kinds of Error in Action.’ [1963] Journal of Philosophy 393. I am very much simplifying and adapting Anscombe’s point to my purposes.

10 Another possible answer here is to say that remembering such things is within Erasmo’s secure competences (assuming Erasmo does not suffer from any serious disability) and all his failures to remember are ones that he is responsible for. After all, even a forgetful person can reliably remember what they intended to do; they are simply less reliable than the average person. I am sympathetic to this view, but I suspect that Mayr is on to a structural issue that would need to be addressed even if the structure is not present in this particular case.