ATS2875 Chapter Notes - Chapter All: Thomas Nagel
3 Sep 2018
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Attitudes, tracing and control - angela m. smith. It is commonly assumed that moral responsibility requires voluntary control: an agent can be morally responsible only for things that fall within the scope of their voluntary control. Whereas, we regularly praise and blame individuals for mental states and conditions that appear to fall out of the scope of their voluntary control, such as, desires, emotion, beliefs and other attitudes. In moral luck by thomas nagel he describes what he sees as a deep paradox in our everyday practices of moral assessment. The basic assumption that leads to this paradoxical conclusion, according to nagel, is that (cid:858)people (cid:272)a(cid:374)(cid:374)ot (cid:271)e (cid:373)orall(cid:455) assessed for what is (cid:374)ot their fault, or for what is due to factors (cid:271)e(cid:455)o(cid:374)d their (cid:272)o(cid:374)trol(cid:859). And this leads to the paradox(cid:454), (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause (cid:858)[t]he thi(cid:374)gs for whi(cid:272)h people are morally judged are determined in more ways than we at first realize by what is beyond their (cid:272)o(cid:374)trol(cid:859).
