Michael J. Zimmerman

Moral Responsibility and Ignorance

This paper defends the view that moral responsibility for behavior of whose moral wrongness one is ignorant occurs less frequently than is commonly supposed. Its central argument is this. If one is culpable for ignorant behavior, then one is culpable for the ignorance to which this behavior may be traced. One is never in direct control of such ignorance. Hence ones culpability for it presupposes ones being culpable for something else. Whatever this something else is, it cannot be ignorant behavior, for then the argument would apply all over again. Hence all culpability for ignorant behavior can be traced to culpability that involves a lack of ignorance.

Luck and Moral Responsibility

Considerable attention has recently been given to what has come to be called moral luck. It has been claimed that recognition of this phenomenon imperils the received conception of moral responsibility; some, indeed, have said that this conception must be revised in light of this recognition.

Recent Work on Intrinsic Value

Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed. (Less)

The Good and the Right

T. M. Scanlon has revived a venerable tradition according to which something’s being good consists in its being such that there is a reason to respond positively towards it. He has presented novel arguments for this thesis. In this article, I first develop some refinements of the thesis with a view to focusing on intrinsic value in particular, then discuss the relation between the thesis and consequentialism, then critically examine Scanlon’s arguments for the thesis, and finally turn to the question whether we should reject the thesis on the grounds that, when there is a reason to respond positively towards something, this is so because the thing in question is good. Two appendices follow. In the first, I discuss whether it is good to do right. In the second, I discuss whether an act’s being wrong provides a reason not to do it.

Moral Luck: A Partial Map

Luck varies from person to person, for two reasons. First, for something to occur as a matter of luck is for it to occur beyond the control of someone, and what is beyond one persons control may not be beyond anothers. Second, luck may be either good or bad (or neutral — but in that case it is not very interesting), and what is good luck for one person may be bad luck for another.

Negligence and Moral Responsibility

It is commonly accepted that one can be morally responsible for negligent behavior and its consequences. It is also commonly accepted that one cannot be morally responsible for occurrences over which one had no control. It is not clear how these beliefs are to be reconciled; for negligent behavior involves inadvertence, and yet the control which appears requisite for moral responsibility itself seems to require that one advert to ones behavior and its consequences. In this paper I shall provide an account of negligence according to which negligence involves both advertence and inadvertence to one and the same event, and I shall thereby seek to show how it is that one can be morally responsible for negligent behavior and its consequences. The paper will have two main sections: in the first I shall present my account of negligence, and in the second I shall discuss moral responsibility for negligence. There will be two appendices: in the first I shall discuss the issue of legal responsibility for negligence, and in the second I shall discuss the concepts of rashness and recklessness.

Is Moral Obligation Objective or Subjective

Many philosophers hold that whether an act is overall morally obligatory is an ‘objective’ matter, many that it is a ‘subjective’ matter, and some that it is both. The idea that it is or can be both may seem to promise a helpful answer to the question ‘What ought I to do when I do not know what I ought to do?’ In this article, three broad views are distinguished regarding what it is that obligation essentially concerns: the maximization of actual value, the maximization of expected value, and the perceived maximization of actual value. The first and third views are rejected; the second view is then refined and defended. The unfortunate upshot is that there may be no very helpful answer to the question just mentioned. As to the question posed in the title of the article, the answer unsurprisingly depends on what ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ are taken to mean.

Ignorance and moral obligation

Preface Acknowledgments 1. Three Views of Moral Obligation 2. In Defense of the Prospective View 3. In Further Defense of the Prospective View 4. Action-guidance 5. Moral Rights Bibliography Index

Virtual Intrinsic Value and the Principle of Organic Unities

This paper argues that Moores principle of organic unities is false. Advocates of the principle have failed to take note of the distinction between actual intrinsic value and virtual intrinsic value. Purported cases of organic unities, where the actual intrinsic value of a part of a whole is allegedly defeated by the actual intrinsic value of the whole itself, are more plausibly seen as cases where the part in question has no actual intrinsic value but instead a plurality of merely virtual intrinsic values.

On the Intrinsic Value of States of Pleasure

Is pleasure good? Is displeasure bad? On first consulting our moral intuitions we receive, I think, no clear-cut answers to these questions, and therein lies the problem that I wish to investigate. In pursuing this investigation I shall not attempt to skirt our intuitions; on the contrary, I shall dig into them as deeply as I can.