Responsibility, Outcomes and Agency Flashcards
What is the premise surrounding responsibility, outcomes and agency?
We are responsible for the outcomes of what we do as acting rational agents.
Honore - ‘Outcome Responsibility’.
This is the theory of outcome responsibility (Voyiakis calls this agency responsibility).
What does outcome responsibility say?
We are responsible for the things that happen when we operate as rational agents.
When you act, you are not simply a cause in the world but an author.
Therefore our actions are attributable to us.
This is why we have feelings towards the outcomes we cause i.e. running over a child.
Where will you not have outcome responsibility?
Where a third person pushes you against people and you injure somebody else.
What does outcome responsibility say about rights?
Certain rights can lift responsibility.
You have a right to speak your mind without threats of violence and this will lift responsibility if somebody beats you up even though you were both exercising rational agency.
What does outcome responsibility say about strict liability?
It puts strict liability to the fore, and it requires no special justification.
As long as the outcome was a result of agency, there will be responsibility.
Rylands v Fletcher involved the agency of Rylands and this led to a harmful outcome, no further justification for strict liability needed.
What are the arguments in favour of outcome responsibility?
- It is fair - fairness argument.
2. Outcome responsibility is essential to how we understand our personhood.
What does the fairness argument say?
We don’t control everything that happens in the world.
Instead we make bets, hoping they will turn out well.
Most of the time these decisions do turn out well.
Why is fairness a bad argument?
- It does not balance the asymmetry between big harms and big gains - getting somewhere quicker is tiny compared to killing somebody in a road-traffic accident.
- Some people are more likely to cause harm due to their disposition, you may be an unlucky person - Perry i.e. Mansfield.
- Some people are more likely to cause harm due to their position i.e. painter vs air traffic controller.
A
What does the personhood argument say?
Our view of ourselves as persons is shaped by the outcomes of our actions.
If I fail to turn in an assignment, this is constitutive of my agency and goes to my personhood.
What is wrong with the personhood argument?
Bernard Williams - if you innocently run over a child, you will still hold yourself responsible - in the sense that it has become part of his life story.
But we should not blame the driver attributively.
If the driver observed the relevant standard of conduct, he will not be substantively responsible either.
What does outcome responsibility say about Tarlington that is controversial?
Outcome responsibility would say that Tarlington is responsible but that his responsibility is limited.
This is not the correct way to look at things, we should say that Tarlington was not responsible to begin with.
