Responsible Agency and the Importance of Moral Audience

Ecological accounts of responsible agency claim that moral feedback is essential to the reasons-responsiveness of agents. In this paper, we discuss McGeer’s scaffolded reasons-responsiveness account in the light of two concerns. The first is that some agents may be less attuned to feedback from thei...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:  
Bibliographische Detailangaben
VerfasserInnen: Jefferson, Anneli (VerfasserIn) ; Sifferd, Katrina (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
Verfügbarkeit prüfen: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Lade...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Veröffentlicht: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2023
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Jahr: 2023, Band: 26, Heft: 3, Seiten: 361-375
weitere Schlagwörter:B Moral audience
B Autism
B Moral Responsibility
B Moral Agency
B Reasons responsiveness
Online Zugang: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Ecological accounts of responsible agency claim that moral feedback is essential to the reasons-responsiveness of agents. In this paper, we discuss McGeer’s scaffolded reasons-responsiveness account in the light of two concerns. The first is that some agents may be less attuned to feedback from their social environment but are nevertheless morally responsible agents - for example, autistic people. The second is that moral audiences can actually work to undermine reasons-responsiveness if they espouse the wrong values. We argue that McGeer’s account can be modified to handle both problems. Once we understand the specific roles that moral feedback plays for recognizing and acting on moral reasons, we can see that autistics frequently do rely on such feedback, although it often needs to be more explicit. Furthermore, although McGeer is correct to highlight the importance of moral feedback, audience sensitivity is not all that matters to reasons-responsiveness; it needs to be tempered by a consistent application of moral rules. Agents also need to make sure that they choose their moral audiences carefully, paying special attention to receiving feedback from audiences which may be adversely affected by their actions.
ISSN:1572-8447
Enthält:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-023-10385-1