Carolina Sartorio has criticized the reasons-responsiveness theory of freedom for being inconsistent with the actual-sequence view motivated by the Frankfurt-style cases. Specifically, reasons-responsiveness conceived as a modal property does not pertain to the actual sequence of the agent's action and thereby it is irrelevant to the agent's freedom and moral responsibility. Call this the challenge of irrelevance. In this article, I present this challenge in a new way that overcomes certain limitations of Sartorio's argument. I argue that the (...) root of the challenge is that reasons-responsiveness as an unmanifested modal property seems to be nonexplanatory for the agent's action. I show that reasons-responsiveness theorists will confront this challenge even if they do not endorse the actual-sequence view. Finally, I deflate this challenge with David Lewis's model of causal explanation, showing that reasons-responsiveness is explanatory in virtue of providing information about the causal history of the agent's action. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a novel challenge to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s reasons-responsiveness theory of moral responsibility. According to their view, agents possess the control necessary for moral responsibility if their actions proceed from a mechanism that is moderately reasons-responsive. I argue that their account of moderate reasons-responsiveness fails to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for moral responsibility since it cannot give an adequate account of the responsibility of individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Empirical evidence (...) suggests that autistic individuals demonstrate impairments in counterfactual thinking, and these impairments, I argue, are such that they cast doubt on Fischer and Ravizza’s construal of moderate reasons-responsiveness. I then argue that modifying the view in order to accommodate individuals with ASD forces them to defend a strong reasons-responsive account despite the fact that they explicitly deny that such an account can adequately characterize what it is to be morally responsible for one’s actions. (shrink)

This essay outlines an empirically grounded account of normative political legitimacy. The main idea is to give a normative edge to empirical measures of sociological legitimacy through a nonmoralized form of ideology critique. A power structure’s responsiveness to the values of those subjected to its authority can be measured empirically and may be explanatory or predictive insofar as it tracks belief in legitimacy, but by itself it lacks normative purchase. It merely describes a preference alignment, and so tells us (...) nothing about whether the ruled have reason to support the rulers. I argue that we can close this gap by filtering the preferences of the ruled through a form of nonmoralized epistemic ideology critique, itself grounded in an empirical account of how belief in legitimacy is formed. (shrink)

Many think it is plausible that agents enjoy freedom and responsibility with respect to their actions in virtue of being reasons-responsive. Extant accounts spell out reasons-responsiveness (RR) as a general modal property. The agent is responsive to reasons for and against ϕ-ing, according to this idea, if they ϕ in accordance with the balance of reasons in a suitable proportion of possible situations. This paper argues that freedom and responsibility are not grounded in such modal properties on the basis (...) of a phenomenon I call ‘rational blind spots’. Agents have highly specific local blockages (or openings) that prevent them from seeing or reacting for a particular type of reason. When these blind spots are triggered, agents fail to be responsive to reasons in the sense relevant to freedom and responsibility. Thus, we judge that they are not free and responsible. But bind spots don’t remove the agent’s possession of general modal RR properties. Thus, extant accounts of reasons-responsiveness render the incorrect result that the agents in these cases remain responsible because they remain responsive to reasons in a general sense. (shrink)

Ordinarily, we take moral responsibility to come in degrees. Despite this commonplace, theories of moral responsibility have focused on the minimum threshold conditions under which agents are morally responsible. But this cannot account for our practices of holding agents to be more or less responsible. In this paper we remedy this omission. More specifically, we extend an account of reasons-responsiveness due to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza according to which an agent is morally responsible only if she is (...) appropriately receptive to and reactive to reasons for action. Building on this, we claim that the degree to which an agent is responsible will depend on the degree to which she is able to recognize and react to reasons. To analyze this, we appeal to relations of comparative similarity between possible worlds, arguing that the degree to which an agent is reasons-reactive depends on the nearest possible world in which given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she does so. Similarly, we argue that the degree to which an agent is reasons-receptive will depend on the intelligibility of her patterned recognition of reasons. By extending an account of reasons-responsiveness in these ways, we are able to rationalize our practice of judging people to be more or less responsible. (shrink)

The ethical concept of responsiveness has largely been interpreted in the context of international clinical research. In light of the increasing conduct of externally funded health systems research in low- and middle-income countries, this article examines how responsiveness might be understood for such research and how it can be applied. It contends that four features set HSR in LMICs apart from international clinical research: a focus on systems; being context-driven; being policy-driven; and being closely linked to development objectives. (...) These features support reinterpreting responsiveness for HSR in LMICs as responsiveness to systems needs, where health system performance assessments can be relied upon to identify systems needs, and/or responsiveness to systems priorities, which entails aligning research with HSR priorities set through country-owned processes involving national and sub-national policymakers from host countries. Both concepts may be difficult to achieve in practice. Country ownership is not an established fact for many countries and alignment to their priorities may be meaningless without it. It is argued that more work is, therefore, needed to identify strategies for how the responsiveness requirement can be ethically fulfilled for HSR in LMICs under non-ideal conditions such as where host countries have not set HSR priorities via country-owned processes. Embeddedness is proposed as one approach that could be the focus of further development. (shrink)

In his comments, Daniel Nicholls succeeds in saying more than a few things that I had scarcely realized about the ways in which I write and, therefore, of what I tend to take for granted. He sees in what I write a capacity ‘to utilize the “obvious” whilst at the same time saying something about it.’ Not every philosopher would take that as a compliment. Many philosophers and philosophies have quite other pretensions – to transcend the illusions of common thought (...) and perception towards a higher plane of metaphysical philosophy – or of physics and mathematics. I find that Nicholls’s remark both compliments and complements my work, however. The use of everyday language and example to disturb that everyday world to ‘bring it into high relief’ as Nicholls puts it – is a significant part of philosophical method. To juxtapose the esoteric language of metaphysics (being-in-itself, being-for-itself, being-for-others) with the everyday (what there is, living for oneself, living for others) is to haunt the everyday with a metaphysical imagination even as it reveals what metaphysics had erased from the coinage of common words. (I am thinking, of course, of Derrida’s remarks about Anatole France’s satirical view of philosophical language as coinage from which all marking has been erased). (shrink)

There is near universal agreement within the scientific and ethics communities that a necessary condition for the moral permissibility of cross-national, collaborative research is that it be responsive to the health needs of the host community. It has proven difficult, however, to leverage or capitalize on this consensus in order to resolve lingering disputes about the ethics of international medical research. This is largely because different sides in these debates have sometimes provided different interpretations of what this requirement amounts to (...) in actual practice. The goal of the discussion that follows is to clarify the nature of this important moral requirement. The first section explains the requirement for responsiveness to host community health needs in the context of international medical research. The second section examines various formulations of this requirement as they are enunciated in some of the core consensus documents in research ethics. The third section then defends a particular interpretation of this requirement, and the final sections examine more liberal alternatives with the aim of highlighting points of agreement and assessing the significance of areas of disagreement. (shrink)

In this study we seek to determine whether catastrophic events lead to corporate charitable giving unrelated to levels of firm profitability. We examine the issue relative to the corporate philanthropic response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. Based on a sample of 489 Fortune 500 companies, we find that differences in the extent of corporate contributions following 9/11 are positively and significantly associated with differences in firms' profitability. Further, while the degree of connection to the catastrophic event led to (...) higher levels of giving in comparison to the contributions of less connected firms, differences in the extent of philanthropy are still␣related to short-term profitability for the more connected firms. The study thus provides evidence suggesting that even in the wake of catastrophic events, corporate philanthropic giving is constrained by economic concerns. (shrink)

This study aims to explore if local responsiveness pressure and subsidiary resources influence green management adoption of overseas subsidiaries, and to investigate the relationships between the level of green management adoption and performance. The 101 effective samples were collected from 583 Taiwanese firms, which are listed in the top 1000 manufactory firms and have invested in China. Though structural equation model analysis' empirical results indicate that local responsiveness pressure and subsidiary resources both have positive effects on the level (...) of green management adoption of the subsidiary. This study also suggests that the level of green management adoption is positively related to the subsidiary's performance. (shrink)

Standard reasons-responsiveness theories, such as Fischer’s and Ravizza’s (1998), tell us to look to other possible worlds in order to determine whether an agent is appropriately responsive to reasons. Carolina Sartorio (2018) has given a powerful critique of such counterfactual accounts of reasons-responsiveness, what she calls the “demarcation problem,” and has given an alternative way of characterizing reasons-responsiveness, one that allegedly avoids the demarcation problem. While we agree with Sartorio that the demarcation problem is a serious one (...) for standard counterfactual accounts of reasons-responsiveness, we argue that her own characterization of reasons-responsiveness faces a serious demarcation problem of its own. We conclude by sketching a characterization of reasons-responsiveness that, although inspired by Sartorio’s account, promises to avoid any demarcation problem. (shrink)

This paper tests a model of corporate social responsiveness capabilities in an industry setting. It seeks to understand whether corporate social responsiveness can be a source of competitive advantage for a given company in an industry where participants face similar constraints and issues.

It is plausible to think that part of what it is to be an autonomous agent is to adequately respond to important changes in one’s circumstances. The agent who has set her own course in life, but is unable to recognize and respond appropriately when evidence arises indicating the need to reconsider and perhaps adjust her plan, lacks an important form of personal autonomy. However, this “evidence-responsiveness” aspect of autonomy has not yet been adequately analyzed. Most autonomy theorists ignore (...) it altogether and the few who have addressed it have failed to give a satisfactory account. In this paper, I first examine an evidence-responsiveness condition proposed by Arneson. I argue there that while Arneson’s condition provides a valuable framework in which to examine evidence-responsiveness, there are several crucial issues that it either fails to address at all or else fails to adequately resolve. That condition is therefore in need of further elaboration and refinement. I then examine a recent article in this journal by Blöser, Schöpf, and Willaschek which develops an account of autonomy that I argue can usefully be understood as employing and elaborating upon the general framework offered by Arneson. I argue that while the elaboration Blöser and her co-authors provide Arneson’s condition is instructive, it is inadequate in several important ways which indicate the form a more satisfactory evidence-responsiveness condition will take. I go on to develop such a condition and conclude by highlighting the advantages to be gained by including that condition in a complete theory of autonomy. (shrink)

This article contributes to debates on complicity in injustice and violence by deepening the recent efforts to map out an ethics of responsiveness to complicity. The ethics of responsiveness aims to increase the affective engagement of people who disproportionately benefit from domination, exploitation, and exclusion, with the impact of their complicity on others. It articulates different strategies for tackling the dispositions that help the privileged disavow complicity. To extend the responsiveness approach, this article builds on Hannah Arendt’s (...) theorisation of the relationship between politics, reality, and responsibility. A turn to Arendt helps us respond to the political problem of an erosion of the frameworks of judgement and action across society that enable critical engagement with complicity. I argue that the problem adds a burden on the privileged to strengthen and protect the institutions and processes that allow us to come to terms with reality together by developing a disposition towards ‘world-in-formation.’. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that certain nonhuman animals could be conceived of as capable of moral motivation and subsequent moral behavior, with the appropriate behavioral, psychological and cognitive evidence. I argue that a certain notion of morality—morality as the process of conscious, reasoned deliberation over explicit moral concepts—is excessively exclusionary, and that such a notion describes one mode of moral cognition, but not, as others have argued, morality's essence. Instead, morality and moral behaviors could be viewed as natural (...) phenomena that arose as a means by which social species could better cohere and survive, and one that consists of a spectrum of behaviors. Ultimately, I argue that the aforementioned notion of moral cognition has unfairly worked to exclude (certain) nonhuman animals from the sphere of morality as beings capable of moral behavior, and that instead we should be looking at moral behavior as a function of what I call ‘moral responsiveness.'. (shrink)

Firms’ real estate choices significantly affect their sustainability, due to real estate’s impact on the natural environment. This paper investigates the ecological responsiveness of firms in specific industries by analyzing the decisions these firms make in occupying office space. We analyze the decisions of more than 11,000 tenants to choose office space in green buildings or in, otherwise comparable, conventional buildings nearby. Controlling for building quality and location, we find that corporations in the oil and banking industries, as well (...) as non-profit organizations, are among the most prominent green tenants. Furthermore, measures of an industry’s human capital intensity are positively related to the propensity to lease green office space. These empirical findings confirm the theoretical framework on economic advantage and institutional pressure as important determinants for the ecological responsiveness of firms. (shrink)

This book extends Alfred Schutz’s “On Multiple Realities” by describing the provinces of meaning of play, music, religious ritual, and African-American folkloric humor. Throughout these provinces, the author traces two themes: resilience and responsiveness. In resilience, individuals or communities run up against obstacles, imposed relevances, which they come to terms with, or give meaning to (in phenomenological parlance), by modifying, evading, overcoming, or accepting them. Responsiveness emerges from Schutz’s idea of making music together, which the author takes further (...) by analyzing the mimetic encounter with the other and the asymmetries in listening to music, and, especially, by showing how the features of the cognitive style of music as a province of meaning affect sociality, disposing us to be more vulnerable and attentive to each other’s non-conceptual, musical meanings. This text appeals to upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students as well as to faculty in philosophy. (shrink)

The primary responsibility for global climate change responsiveness is usually attributed to nation states. This is reflected in the United Nations’ processes aimed at enrolling governments in mitigation and adaptation programmes. Such an approach begs the question of how global climate change (GCC) responsiveness might proceed if a national government is hostile to the issue, as appears likely to be the case in the USA. This paper addresses this concern by documenting the percentage of the population of the (...) USA who are ‘covered’ by at least one of six examples of GCC responsiveness at sub-federal – state and municipality – levels. Of the population of the USA, 25.8% lives in states where all of the state-level initiatives surveyed are in effect, whereas only 4.4% are not covered by any of the six. This coverage has increased as compared to earlier surveys (Lutsey, N., and D. Sperling. 2008. “America’s Bottom-Up Climate Change Mitigation Policy.” Energy Policy 36: 673–685. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2007.10.018). This finding suggests that there is more practical hope for GCC responsiveness than might be commonly appreciated and this also has ramifications for research in accounting. (shrink)

In this article I want to explore some questions that arise from the work of Stanley Cavell. My purpose is to examine lines of connections between Cavell's readings of Wittgenstein (specifically his notions of 'criteria', 'aspect blindness' and 'primitive reaction', with special reference to the philosophical problem of 'other minds') and Shakespeare, on the one side, and a certain dimension of the ethical, on the other. Although Cavell has rarely offered explicit remarks on the issue of morality, and is normally (...) not considered a moral philosopher, it is my contention that it is possible to elicit what we could call an implied ethics from his philosophical view. This ethical outlook is not to be confused with a theory, but is rather a turn or bent that emerges especially by understanding the place of acknowledgment and ethical responsiveness in our practical life. Key Words: acknowledgment • Cavell • ethics • skepticism • Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Starting from existing interpretations of Cavell’s account of moral perfectionism, this article seeks to elaborate an account of democratic responsiveness that foregrounds notions of ‘turning’ and ‘manifesting for another’. In contrast to readings of Cavell that privilege reason-giving, the article draws on the writings of Cavell as well as on Foucault’s work on parreēsia to elaborate a grammar of responsiveness that is attentive to a wider range of practices, forms of embodiment and modes of subjectivity. The article suggests (...) that a focus on the notions of ‘turning’ and ‘manifesting for another’ is crucial if we are to account for the processes through which political imagination is opened up so as to bring about novel ways of being and acting. The arguments are illustrated with reference to recent events in the Arab Spring as well as to the politics of redress in a posttransitional social movement, Khulumani. Keywords: democracy; responsiveness; Cavell; Foucault; parrēsia; frank-speaking; moral perfectionism; reason-giving; ‘turning’; ‘manifesting for another’; political imagination (Published: 23 December 2011) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 4, No. 4 , 2011, pp. 207-229. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v4i4.14448. (shrink)

Many guidelines for international research require that studies be responsive to host community health needs or health priorities. Although responsiveness possesses great intuitive and rhetorical appeal, existing conceptions are confusing and difficult to apply. Not only are there few examples of what research the responsiveness requirement permits and what it rejects, but its application can lead to contradictory results. Because of the practical difficulties in applying responsiveness and the danger that misapplying responsiveness could harm the interests (...) of developing countries, we argue that responsiveness should be refocused in three ways: in terms of (1) who enforces it, (2) under what standard, and (3) in what cases. We conclude that responsiveness should be applied by host country officials at the policy level with the exercise of judgment when externally funded research threatens to displace scarce local resources. (shrink)

The study introduces an interaction-based model that illustrates the iterative process of corporate responsiveness to social pressure. The model is then applied to a recent case of international relevance. The study implies that corporate management can apply three types of management approaches when managing relations with society, depending on their perception of social pressure: tactic, strategic or no action. This is then reflected in their practice of public relations (PR). Ethical leadership is considered to be manifested by the proactive (...) practice of PR, which aims at mutual understanding between the organisation and the stakeholders. The firm's interaction with the stakeholders does not guarantee that social pressure would actually be relieved. Rather, PR fails in its task of establishing and maintaining favourable relationships if it does not meet stakeholders' expectations. Identifying emerging issues, relevant publics and preferable communication methods within a given context is the precondition for strategic, proactive management of stakeholder relations. This is especially relevant in the international business environment where the firm is challenged with increased institutional distance and pressure. (shrink)

This essay aims at an elucidation of the performative relation connecting artistic mimesis with the living body. Encompassing art theory and phenomenology of the body, the scope is to evince a crucial link between aesthetic interpretation, body motion, and mimetic creativity, with general implications for reflection on the body, as well as a deeper understanding of a major element of ancient Chinese culture. By mainly analyzing Chinese texts on ink brush writing, as well as some testimony taken from 20th century (...) European philosophy, this essay, from a transcultural stance, tries to show how ink brush writing may be interpreted as a type of regulated body movement and body exercise. What appears as responsiveness within this phenomenal field is a specific form of mimesis, namely body mimesis. As a sort of imitative action, body mimesis runs through the bodily self, beyond consciousness, transforming it and shaping its behavior. (shrink)

Pogge and Wenar have recently argued that we are responsible for the persistence of the so-called ‘resource curse’. But their analyses are limited in important ways. I trace these limitations to their undue focus on the ways in which the international rules governing resource transactions undermine government accountability. To overcome the shortcomings of Pogge’s and Wenar’s analyses, I propose a normative framework organized around the social value of government responsiveness and discuss the implications of adopting this framework for future (...) normative assessment of the resource curse and our relationships to it. (shrink)

The concept of mutual responsiveness is currently based on little empirical data in the literature of Responsible Research and Innovation. This paper explores RRI’s idea of mutual responsiveness in the light of recent RRI case studies on private sector research and development. In RRI, responsible innovation is understood as a joint endeavour of innovators and societal stakeholders, who become mutually responsive to each other in defining the ‘right impacts’ of the innovation in society, and in steering the innovation (...) towards realising those impacts. Yet, the case studies identified several reasons for why the idea of mutual responsiveness does not always appear feasible or desirable in actual R&D situations. Inspired by the discrepancies between theory and practice, we suggest three further elaborations for the concept of responsiveness in RRI. Process-responsiveness is suggested for identifying situations that require stakeholder involvement specifically during R&D. Product-responsiveness is suggested for mobilising the potential of innovation products to be adaptable according to diverse stakeholder needs. Presponsiveness is suggested as responsiveness towards stakeholders that are not reachable at a given time of R&D. Our aim is to contribute to a more tangible understanding of responsiveness in RRI, and suggest directions for further analysis in upcoming RRI case studies. (shrink)

A longstanding puzzle about moral responsibility for negligence arises from three plausible yet jointly inconsistent theses: (i) an agent can, in certain circumstances, be morally responsible for some outcome O, even if her behavior with respect to O is negligent (i.e., even if she never adverted to the possibility that the behavior might result in O), (ii) an agent can be morally responsible for O only if she has some control over O, (iii) if an agent acts negligently with respect (...) to O, then she has no control over O. This paper is in two parts. First, I argue that reasons-responsiveness models of moral responsibility can be applied naturally to negligence scenarios; indeed, agents are intuitively responsible for the outcomes of their negligent behavior just when they meet the conditions for responsibility given by the best reason-responsiveness theories. Second, if the reasons-responsiveness conditions are applicable to negligence scenarios then one of two things follows: either agents can have direct control over outcomes they never adverted to, or reasons-responsiveness is not a condition of control but of something else connected to moral responsibility. Each possibility would be important in its own right—and each can solve the negligence puzzle. (shrink)

This short paper comments on the connections between epigenetics, responsiveness and embodiment. Epigenetics has solidified a new conception of DNA as “responsive,” and rightfully so. Yet, the discussion too easily falls back to metaphors of agency and can show a tendency to see responsiveness and embodiment as based on epigenetics, which is shown to be wrong.

In several papers (2013, 2014, 2015) Conor McHugh defends the influential view that doxastic responsibility, viz. our responsibility for our beliefs, is grounded in a specific form of reasons-responsiveness. The main purpose of this paper is to show that a subject’s belief can be responsive to reasons in this specific way without the subject being responsible for her belief. While this specific form of reasons-responsiveness might be necessary, it is not sufficient for doxastic responsibility.

To be an autonomous agent is to determine one’s own path in life. However, this cannot plausibly be seen as a one-off affair. An autonomous agent does not merely set herself on a particular course and then lock the steering wheel in place, so to speak, but must maintain some form of ongoing control over her direction in life—must keep her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel. Circumstances often change in important and unexpected ways, after all, (...) and it is reasonable to think that a crucial part of autonomy consists of the ability and disposition to recognize and properly respond to such changes. This implies, I contend, that a patient whose initial decision to undergo a given treatment satisfied plausible requirements of autonomy, but who is now unable to recognize that available evidence indicates the need to reconsider her medical situation and options has come to lack autonomy with respect to her desire to continue that treatment. However, and despite its importance with respect to both theoretical understandings of autonomy and applications of the concept to clinical ethics, this ongoing aspect of autonomy has received little attention. This paper aims to go some way toward remedying that. I first critically review two of the few theories of autonomy that do address “evidence-responsiveness” so as to identify and elaborate what I take to be the most promising way in which to account for this aspect of autonomy. After considering and responding to a possible objection to the evidence-responsiveness condition I propose, I conclude by discussing its clinical implications. That condition, I argue, is not merely theoretically sound, but can and should be applied to clinical practice. (shrink)

I argue that the theory of moral responsibility defended by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza is incompatible with the metaphysical possibility of time travel.

This paper addresses the Arrovian social choice problem. Our focus is the role of positive responsiveness, which requires social judgments to be strongly monotonic with respect to individual judgments. We clarify the structure of decisive coalitions associated with collective choice rules that satisfy positive responsiveness and Arrow's axioms. Transitivity of social preferences is relaxed to quasi‐transitivity or acyclicity.

The capacity of cells and organisms to respond to external stimuli and to maintain stability in order to survive decreases progressively during ageing. The mitogenic and stimulatory effects of growth factors, hormones and other agents are reduced significantly during cellular ageing. The sensitivity of ageing cells to toxic agents including antibiotics, phorbol esters, radiations and heat shock increases. This failure of homeostasis during cellular ageing does not appear to be due to any quantitative and qualitative defects in the receptor systems. (...) Instead, metabolic defects in the pathways of macromolecular synthesis may be the basis of altered cellular responsiveness during ageing. (shrink)

John Broome argues that rationality cannot consist in reasons-responsiveness since rationality supervenes on the mind, while reasons-responsiveness does not supervene on the mind. I here defend this conception of rationality by way of defending the assumption that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind. Given the many advantages of an analysis of rationality in terms of reasons-responsiveness, and in light of independent considerations in favour of the view that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, we should take seriously (...) the backup view, a hypothesis that explains why reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind even though paradigmatic reasons are external facts. I argue that Broome’s objections to the backup view, as well as his more general objection to the thesis that reasons-responsiveness supervenes on the mind, do not succeed. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship among the weak Pareto principle, the strong Pareto principle, and positive responsiveness in the context of voting. First, it is shown that under a mild domain condition, if an anonymous and neutral collective choice rule (CCR) is complete and transitive, then the weak Pareto principle and the strong Pareto principle are equivalent. Next, it is shown that under another mild domain condition, if a neutral CCR is transitive, then the strong Pareto principle and positive (...) responsiveness are equivalent. By applying these results, we obtain a new characterization of the method of majority decision. (shrink)

No one has done more than John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza to advance our understanding of the important dispute in the theory of responsibility between structuralists and historicists. This makes it all the more important to take the measure of Responsibility and Control, their most recent contribution to the historicist side of the discussion. In this paper I examine some novel features of their most recent version of responsiblity-historicism, especially their new notions of "moderate reasons-responsiveness" and "ownership-of-agency." Fischer (...) and Ravizza intend these new elements to solve two problems untouched by earlier versions of their theory: the "problem of strange preference patterns" and the "reasons-responsiveness problem of induction." I argue that they cannot solve these problems within the theoretical strictures they place upon themselves, namely a minimalist meta-ethics of value and practical reason, and attention only to certain formal features of preference-acquisition. I conclude that historicist compatibilists cannot hope to meet the challenge of structuralist compatibilism, from the one side, and of incompatibilism, from the other, unless they take on the full task of accounting for the difference between the child's acquisition of autonomous substantive preferences and values and her acquisition of heteronomous ones. (shrink)

We consider modifications to the standard David Lewis signaling game and relax a number of unrealistic implicit assumptions that are often built into the framework. In particular, we motivate and explore various asymmetries that exist between the sender and receiver roles. We find that endowing receivers with a more realistic set of responses significantly decreases the likelihood of signaling, while allowing for unequal selection pressure often has the opposite effect. We argue that the results of this article can also help (...) make sense of a well-known evolutionary puzzle regarding the absence of an evolutionary arms race between sender and receiver in conflict-of-interest signaling games. (shrink)

The way in which accountability is currently employed in business ethics practice is based on a few central assumptions. It is assumed, for instance, that ethical failures result from the deliberate, rational decision-making of moral agents. A second important assumption is that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between the decisions and actions of individuals and the consequences of those decisions. Furthermore, the current approach towards accountability failures relies on the ability on legal sanctions to deter agents from (...) ethical lapses. This paper will argue that these three assumptions do not survive critical interrogation and that our understanding of accountability therefore has to be reconsidered. It will propose that accountability be reconceived as a relational responsiveness towards stakeholders. (shrink)