UC San Diego

Most people acknowledge that epistemic considerations matter for moral responsibility. For example, it matters for responsibility whether a pharmacist knowingly or unknowingly gave a customer the wrong medication. It might be that even though the pharmacist made an unwitting error, she’s still responsible for her wrongdoing – but we would want to know more about the nature and etiology of her epistemic state. Despite this near universal recognition that these considerations matter, however, the epistemic dimension of moral responsibility has traditionally taken a backseat to issues regarding free will. The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand how this epistemic dimension influences responsibility and construct a core theory. In chapter one, I introduce the epistemic dimension and address some important issues that aren’t central to my project before moving on to the main project at hand. In chapter two, I evaluate the prospects for attributionism, an approach to moral responsibility that grounds responsibility in an agent’s evaluative orientation. In chapter three, I then consider a rival approach, capacitarianism, which emphasizes the capacities of an agent. In chapter four, I expand on the awareness of risk condition that forms the foundation of my account of the epistemic dimension. Finally, in chapter five, I address remaining issues regarding my account of the epistemic dimension. The centerpiece of the dissertation is my theory of the awareness of risk condition. I argue that in order to be blameworthy for some outcome, the agent must have: (1) an occurrent belief of the general risk of her conduct, and (2) a disposition to believe the specific risk of her conduct. As far as the occurrent belief, the agent must entertain a belief about the riskiness of her actions at the time of wrongdoing, but this doesn’t mean she must explicitly entertain that belief. As for the disposition to believe, I articulate a notion whereby such dispositions are grounded in other beliefs and perceptions and require some mediating process to form the relevant belief