Response-Dependence in Moral Responsibility: A Granularity Challenge

Abstract

According to the response-dependence view of moral responsibility, a person is morally responsible just in case, and in virtue of the fact that, she is an appropriate target for reactive attitudes. This paper raises a new puzzle regarding response-dependence: there is a mismatch between the granularity of the reactive attitudes and of responsibility facts. Whereas the reactive attitudes are comparatively coarse-grained, responsibility facts can be quite fine-grained. This poses a challenge for response-dependence, which seeks to ground facts about responsibility in facts about the reactive attitudes. Specifically, reactive attitudes are not enough for grounding facts about degrees of moral responsibility. The response-dependence view thus requires significant revisions or supplementations.