Building better Beings
A theory of Moral Responsibility
Building Better Beings presents a new theory of moral responsibility.
Beginning with a discussion of ordinary convictions about
responsibility and free will and their implications for a
philosophical theory, Manuel Vargas argues that no theory can do
justice to all the things we want from a theory of free will and
moral responsibility. He goes on to show how we can nevertheless
justify our responsibility practices and provide a normatively and
naturalistically adequate account of responsible agency, blame, and
desert. Three ideas are central to Vargas' account: the agency
cultivation model, circumstantialism about powers, and revisionism
about responsibility and free will. On Vargas' account,
responsibility norms and practices are justified by their effects. In
particular, the agency cultivation model holds that responsibility
practices help mold us into creatures that respond to moral
considerations. Moreover, the abilities that matter for
responsibility and free will are not metaphysically prior features of
agents in isolation from social contexts. Instead, they are functions
of both agents and their normatively structured contexts. This is the
idea of circumstantialism about the powers required for
responsibility. Third, Vargas argues that an adequate theory of
responsibility will be revisionist, or at odds with important strands
of ordinary convictions about free will and moral responsibility.
Building Better Beings provides a compelling and state-of-the-art
defense of moral responsibility in the face of growing philosophical
and scientific skepticism about free will and moral responsibility
