This dissertation is a collection of essays under the theme of moral responsibility 'at the margins'. I investigate a number of examples of disordered agency and cognition -- self-deception, delusion, and addiction -- through the lens of a so-called `reasons-responsiveness' theory of morally responsible agency, employing the theory to examine the extent to which agents in those conditions are morally responsible, and in virtue of what this is so. In Chapter 2, after a brief introductory chapter, and before getting into the individual disordered phenomena, I develop and defend the reasons-responsiveness theory of responsible agency to which I will appeal in later chapters. Such theories -- according to which responsible agency is based in an agent's capacity for recognizing and responding to reasons for action -- are not entirely new. However, developed in the right way, they are also well-equipped to respond to a kind of skeptical challenge to morally responsible agency that has somewhat recently come into vogue. This skeptical challenge is motivated by recent findings in social and cognitive psychology that seem to show that much of human behaviour is motivated by considerations which are, from the perspective of justifying action, irrelevant. For example, contributions to a communal office coffee fund can as much as triple when the instructions are accompanied with a pair of watchful 'eyes'. I argue that of all mainstream theories of agency, the reasons-responsiveness theory is least threatened by results such as these. I further respond by addressing a dispute between reasons-responsiveness theorists themselves: what is required for someone to count as responding to reason? I argue for a liberal interpretation of this requirement on independent grounds, and note that such a version of the theory is even better equipped to respond to the skeptic, yielding a theory of agency which is actually enhanced by appeal to the empirical results. In Chapters 3 and 4 I develop a novel account of self-deception and use that account to address the question: Are some delusional subjects responsible for their delusions? The central difficulty for the philosophical theory of self-deception has been to yield a psychologically plausible description of its dynamics. Self-deception is also paradigmatically intentional behaviour for which agents are typically blameworthy. I argue that no extant account of self-deception can capture both of these features. On my account, what makes a state a self-deceptive one is not determined by how it comes about. Rather, it is determined by how that belief is maintained. Self-deception, on this view, is willful failure, a refusal, to meet epistemic requirements for motivationally biased reasons. Thus, self-deceivers are typically responsible for their self-deception. I further argue that if this account is correct, there will be at least some cases of delusion (e.g., the Reverse Othello and Capgras delusions) for which agents are, in some sense, responsible. Appealing to the distinction between blameworthiness and (what I shall call) 'attributability', I claim that this leads us not to the conclusion that delusional subjects should be blamed, but instead to a more nuanced understanding of the kind of agency involved in the dynamics of delusion, and of the reasons these subjects are excused. The final chapter is about addiction. Perhaps the central question raised by addiction is: to what extent are addicts responsible agents? Theorists notoriously oscillate between two extreme positions: (1) that addicts are just like unimpaired agents and are fully responsible and (2) that addicts helplessly suffer a condition that leaves them utterly without self-control. I argue against both extreme positions, engaging with current science at both turns. Against (2), I argue that there is no satisfactory understanding of the 'brain disease theory' of addiction that entails that addicts are not responsible agents. I then argue against (1) by considering addicts at different stages of addiction -- those who are aware of their predicament vs. those who are not (although they should be). With respect to the unaware, I argue that they share some features with the self-deceived which explains their insensitivity to a rationally circumscribed body of evidence. Concerning the aware, I appeal to empirical work on `ego-depletion' and willpower -- and to Chapter 2's theory of responsibility -- to argue that these addicts suffer a graded impairment of the will, one that partially excuses them from blameworthiness.

Freedom and resentment / Peter Strawson -- On "freedom and resentment" / Galen Strawson -- The importance of free will / Susan Wolf -- Responsibility and the limits of evil : variations on a Strawsonian theme / Gary Watson -- The real self view / Susan Wolf -- Identification and wholeheartedness / Harry Frankfurt -- What happens when someone acts? / J. David Velleman -- Sanctification, hardening of the heart, and Frankfurt's concept of free will / Eleonore Stump -- Intellect, will, and the principle of alternate possibilities / Eleonore Stump -- Responsibility, agent-causation, and freedom : an eighteenth-century view / William L. Rowe -- What we are morally responsible for / Harry Frankfurt -- Incompatibilism without the principle of alternative possibilities / Robert Heinaman -- Causing and being responsible for what is inevitable / William L. Rowe -- Responsibility for consequences / John Martin Fischer, Mark Ravizza.

This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a number of skeptical arguments against each. It then outlines an alternative forward-looking account of moral responsibility grounded in non-desert-invoking desiderata such as protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. It concludes by addressing concerns about the practical implications of skepticism about desert-based moral responsibility and explains how optimistic skeptics can preserve most of what we care about when it comes to our interpersonal relationships, morality, and meaning in life.

David Shoemaker presents a new pluralistic theory of responsibility, based on the idea of quality of will. His approach is motivated by our ambivalence to real-life cases of marginal agency, such as those caused by clinical depression, dementia, scrupulosity, psychopathy, autism, intellectual disability, and poor formative circumstances. Our ambivalent responses suggest that such agents are responsible in some ways but not others. Shoemaker develops a theory to account for our ambivalence, via close examination of several categories of pan-cultural emotional responsibility responses (sentiments) and their appropriateness conditions. The result is three distinct types of responsibility, each with its own set of required capacities: attributability, answerability, and accountability. Attributability is about the having and expressing of various traits of character, and it is the target of a range of aretaic sentiments and emotional practices organized around disdain and admiration. Answerability is about one's capacity to govern one's actions and attitudes by one's evaluative judgments about the worth of various practical reasons, and it is the target of a range of sentiments and emotional practices organized around regret and pride. Accountability is about one's ability to regard others, both evaluatively and emotionally, and it is the target of a range of sentiments and emotional practices organized around anger and gratitude. In Part One of the book, this tripartite theory is developed and defended. In Part Two of the book, the tripartite theory's predictions about specific marginal cases are tested, once certain empirical details about the nature of those agents have been filled in and discussed.

"This book lays out the major arguments for scepticism about moral responsibility and subjects them to sustained and penetrating critical analysis. Moral Responsibility lays out the intricate dialectic involved in these issues in a helpful and accessible way. The book goes on to suggest a way in which scepticism can be avoided, arguing that an excessive pre-eminence given to the will might lie at the root of scepticism of moral responsibility. Carlos Moya offers an alternative to scepticism, showing how a cognitive approach to moral responsibility which stresses the importance of belief would rescue our natural and centrally important faith in the reality of moral responsibility."--Jacket.

When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the ‘problem of many hands.’ This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of moral responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking (accountability, blameworthiness, and liability) and forward-looking (obligation, virtue). Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings.

How and to what degree are we responsible for our characters, our lives, our misfortunes, our relationships and our children? This question is at the heart of "Moral Responsibility". The book explores accusations and denials of moral responsibility for particular acts, responsibility for character, and the role of luck and fate in ethics. Moral responsibility as the grounds for a retributivist theory of punishment is examined, alongside discussions of forgiveness, parental responsibility, and responsibility before God. The book also discusses collective responsibility, bringing in notions of complicity and membership, and drawing on the seminal contemporary discussion of collective agency and responsibility: the Nuremberg trials.