Responsibility

This is a draft version of the paper. To view the final product through Springer (open access), click here: https://rdcu.be/bJm8m

Brain-computer interfaces allow agents to control computers without moving their bodies. The agents imagine certain things and the brain-computer interfaces read the concomitant neural activity and operate the computer accordingly. But the use of brain-computer interfaces is problematic for criminal law, which requires that someone can only be found criminally responsible if they have satisfied the actus reus requirement: that the agent has performed some (suitably specified) conduct. Agents who affect the world using brain-computer interfaces do not obviously perform any conduct, so when they commit crimes using brain-computer interfaces it is unclear how they have satisfied actus reus. Drawing on a forthcoming paper by Allan McCay, I suggest three potential accounts of the conduct that satisfies actus reus: the agent’s neural firings, his mental states, and the electronic activity in his brain-computer interface. I then present two accounts which determine how actus reus may be satisfied – one a counterfactual and the other a minimal sufficiency account. These accounts are lent plausibility because they are analogous to the but-for and NESS (Necessary Element in a Sufficient Set) tests for causation which are generally accepted tests for causation in legal theory. I argue that due to the determinations of these accounts and considerations regarding the relationship between the mind and brain, actus reus is satisfied by either the agent’s neural activity or brain-computer interface electrical activity. Which of these satisfies actus reus is determined by how well the brain-computer interface is functionally integrated with the agent.

Il saggio di Fulvia de Luise – L’involontarietà socratica del male e il macigno della responsabilità platonica. Tra il Protagora e il mito di Er – costituisce un tentativo di ricostruzione della posizione platonica sulla questione della libertà morale, attraverso i movimenti di vera e propria metamorfosi che investono la figura di Socrate nei Dialoghi. Senza proporsi di distinguere ciò che appartenne realmente a Socrate da ciò che Platone gli attribuisce, l’autrice intende porre a confronto due luoghi della rappresentazione platonica in cui il personaggio Socrate prende posizione in merito alla responsabilità individuale, con esiti apparentemente divergenti: il noto passaggio del Protagora in cui Socrate afferma che chi fa il male lo fa involontariamente, a causa dell’ignoranza; la perentoria asserzione contenuta nel mito di Er (Repubblica X), che attribuisce al soggetto umano una responsabilità assoluta nella gestione delle proprie scelte morali. Un’analisi mirata delle strategie rappresentative seguite da Platone nei due dialoghi, dove è sempre presente il filo conduttore del confronto tra Socrate e i poeti, conduce a un’ipotesi di sostanziale continuità e di perdurante socratismo tra i due contesti, in cui la validità della scelta morale resta vincolata al primato del sapere.

Enns reflects on the meaning of guilt and responsibility in the context of Indigenous struggles in Canada. While rarely uncomplicated, the question of who is to blame poses a unique challenge in the case of historical atrocities with enduring legacies. When those guilty of the original violations are long dead, yet leave behind institutions that perpetuate the conditions for oppression and privilege, it is tempting to assign collective guilt. With the help of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, who argued in the aftermath of the second world war for a robust understanding of collective responsibility, distinct from individual guilt, Enns navigates the effects of oversimplifying these concepts. Central to her discussion is the dramatic shift in contemporary scholarly and public discourses on victimhood and identity—on victimhood as identity—since Arendt famously wrote: “Where all are guilty, no one is.” With reference to the parallel ways in which victimhood is assumed as a permanent state and granted moral authority in North American Indigenous and anti-Black racism struggles, Enns notes the limits of an identity-based politics, and argues for a richer understanding of collective responsibility—one that will create a future world with a better inheritance.

Even though anthropogenic climate change is largely caused by industrialized nations, its burden is distributed unevenly with poor developing countries suffering the most. A common response to livelihood insecurities and destruction is migration. Using Peter Singer's ‘historical principle’, this paper argues that a morally just evaluation requires taking causality between climate change and migration under consideration. The historical principle is employed to emphasize shortcomings in commonly made philosophical arguments to oppose immigration. The article concludes that none of these arguments is able to override the moral responsibility of industrialized countries to compensate for harms that their actions have caused.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

An overview of Augustine of Hippo's views about freedom. I argue that Augustine the bishop was one of the first theological compatibilists, who believed that responsibility is compatible with at least certain kinds of necessity and that human freedom requires determination by divine grace.

The article examines the phenomenon of “juvenile delinquency”, assesses its actual state and establishes the
tendencies of its manifestations. Juvenile delinquency in Ukraine as a part of crime in a broad sense arises and develops
under the influence of certain determinants. The study of the causes and conditions of juvenile delinquency remains
relevant today, which indicates the special danger of this kind of crime for the development of society. The purpose of
the article is to study the state of the problem in Ukraine and the experience of other countries in minimising the criminal
behaviour of minors in the process of property and non-property relations. The leading approach that was used when
writing the article is the comparison and analysis of modern materials on the problems of criminal behaviour of criminals
who have not reached the age of majority. As a result, it was possible to identify the social characteristics of juvenile
criminals and the reasons for their criminal behaviour. Considerable attention is paid to the factors influencing the
commission of crimes: a dysfunctional family, shortcomings of the educational process, the problem of alcohol and drug
use by minors. In addition, some directions for the prevention of juvenile delinquency were developed. The applied value
is the ability to change legislation in terms of work and correction of minor criminals’ behaviour.

In this essay, I undertake a critical phenomenological exposition of the conditions of ethical community as they present themselves in light of the anthropocene. I begin by approaching the present human condition by following Arendt in her considerations of what more recently has been termed the Anthropocene. I will take her notion of the process character of action as a lodestar in a so-called anarcheological reading of Aristotle that opens for a thinking of unbounded possibility and unbounded affinity, and that shows how Aristotle's ethics, like so many other ethical and moral theories, is really a project of metaphysical closure in the face of the poignantly sensed, but theoretically marginalized, anarchic apertures of communitary life. In order to prepare for an ethics capable of perpetually affirming, rather than closing off, these anarchic apertures of the human condition, I bring the insights won in the anarcheological reading of Aristotle into conversation with accounts of the ethical responses presented by the Native American nation of the Crow toward the end of the 19 th century, when they-in a sense not-dissimilar to what we now experience in the anthropocene-faced the end of the world. I conclude by extracting form this some elements for a thinking of ethics at the end of worlds that affirms the unbounded apertures of human community.

According to many criteria, agency, intentionality, responsibility and freedom of decision, require conscious decisions. Freud already assumed that many of our decisions are influenced by dynamically unconscious motives or that we even perform unconscious actions based on completely unconscious considerations. Such actions might not be intentional, and perhaps not even actions in the narrow sense, we would not be responsible for them and freedom of decision would be missing. Recent psychological and neurophysiological research has added to this a number of phenomena (the "new unconscious") in which behavior is completely unconscious or in which the decision or its execution is influenced by unconscious factors: priming, automatic behavior, habitualized behavior, actions based on plain unconscious deliberations, intrusion of information from the dorsal pathway, etc. However, since this makes up the largest part of the behavior which is generally regarded as action, intentionality, yet agency, responsibility and even compatibilist freedom of decision for the largest part of our behavior may be threatened. Such considerations have led to a lively debate, which, however, suffers from generalizations that lump all these unconscious phenomena together. In contrast, the aim of this article is to discuss individual unconscious influences on our behavior separately with respect to what extent they require changes in traditional conceptualizations. The first part (sections 2-4) of the article outlines the "traditions" and their elaborations: the intentional causalist concept of action, an associated empirical theory of action and standard concepts of responsibility and compatibilist freedom of decision, as well as the challenges for them. In the second part (sections 5-9), the aforementioned unconscious influences on our actions (except for automated and habitualized actions, which I discuss elsewhere) are examined: 1. unconscious priming, 2. dynamically unconscious motives, 3. dorsal pathway information influencing conscious decisions, 4. unconsciously altered execution of conscious intentions, and 5. unconscious deliberations and decisions. To what extent do these phenomena C1. require a change in the concept of action, C2. curtail intentionality or agency, C3. responsibility, and C4. freedom? The result is: The curtailments prove to be far less dramatic than they initially appear; they require more watchfulness but no conceptual change.

Phenomenology is often criticized as a philosophy that mistakenly privileges consciousness and subjectivity.  If phenomenology presupposes subjectivity, then it must be either supplemented or supplanted by a more comprehensive ontology.  In this paper, I argue that such a bifurcation of phenomenological and ontological methods is itself ultimately premised on a kind of mind-body dualism, or the idea that consciousness is a world constituting activity.  By drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s 1954-5 lectures on Institution and Passivity, recently translated into English by Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey, I develop the resources to explain how consciousness is not a meaning-constituting activity but rather an instituting-instituted synthesis, that is, the expressive inheritance and transformation of different developmental institutions of meaning.    The paper proceeds by introducing the phenomenological method, dealing with three antinomies that the idea of constitution cannot resolve (a problem of conscious passivity, the problem of the existence of the pre-conscious past, and the problem of other minds).  I elaborate the concept of institution by drawing on three levels of institution which I present through the examples of organic sensori-motor development, expressive human habituation and learning (particularly writing), and the experience of shared social spaces and gestures.  After exploring these organic, personal, and social institutions, I will briefly develop the implications institution has for, on the one hand, attempts to naturalize phenomenology, and on the other, how we should rethink individual responsibility on the basis of institution.

Talk given at University of Alberta philosophy colloquium series, 27 November 2015.

The article discusses a challenge to the traditional intentional-causalist conceptions of action and intentionality as well as to our everyday and legal conceptions of responsibility, namely the psychological discovery that the greatest part of our alleged actions are performed automatically, i.e. unconsciously and without a proximal intention causing and sustaining them. The main part of the article scrutinises several mechanisms of automatic behaviour, how they work and whether the resulting behaviour is an action: actions caused by distal implementation intentions, four types of habit and habitualisation, mimicry and semantically induced automatic behaviour (which, however later is disregarded because of its unclarity). According to the intentional-causalist criterion, the automatic behaviours resulting from all but one of these mechanisms turn out to be actions and intentional; and even the behaviour resulting from the remaining mechanism (naturally acquired habits) is something we can be responsible for. Hence, the challenge, seen from close up, does not really call the traditional conception of action and intentionality into question.

PURPOSE: Although the term "responsibility" plays a central role in bioethics and public health, its meaning and implications are often unclear. This paper defends the importance of a more systematic conception of responsibility to improve moral philosophical as well as descriptive analysis. METHODS: We start with a formal analysis of the relational conception of responsibility and its meta-ethical presuppositions. In a brief historical overview, we compare global-collective, professional, personal, and social responsibility. The value of our analytical matrix is illustrated by sorting out the plurality of responsibility models in three cases (organ transplantation, advance directives, and genetic testing). RESULTS: Responsibility is a relational term involving at least seven relata. The analysis of the relata allows distinguishing between individual versus collective agency, retrospective versus prospective direction, and liability versus power relations. Various bioethical ambiguities result from insufficient, implicit, or inappropriate ascriptions of responsibility. CONCLUSIONS: A systematic conception of responsibility is an important tool for bioethical reflection. It allows an in-depth understanding and critique of moral claims on a meta-ethical level without presuming one particular normative approach. Considering the concept of responsibility can also help to complement the current bioethical focus on individual autonomy by including the perspectives of other actors, such as family members or social groups.

From the dawn of Vatican Council II, lay Catholics have been encouraged to actively participate to the life and mission of the Church. Many lay faithful have responded to this call and dispensed their service in various church ministries. However, many other lay men and women have not demonstrated a visible participation, especially in the mission of promoting priestly and religious vocations. In its attempt to advocate for a more active collaboration of Vietnamese lay people in vocation promotion, this paper will accomplish three goals. It will stress once again that lay Christians in Vietnam need to share the responsibility entrusted to each by the Church in encouraging vocations. The paper then argues that lay presence in this ministry enhances its dynamic and effectiveness. It finally explores ways lay faithful can employ to raise awareness in youth of the call to priesthood and religious life in their context and culture. As such, the study hopes to inspire all baptized to extend their participatory presence in vocation promotion with zeal and confidence.

I analyze the potential a link between the problem of plagiarism and academic responsibility. I consider whether or not the way teachers and students view each other, education, and the writing process is  irresponsible wherein producing papers becomes more valuable than the genuine learning that paper writing is originally intended to indicate and facilitate. This irresponsibility applies to both students and teachers who allow writing papers to be industrialized into meaningless tasks done in order to obtain a grade / pass a course. In this irresponsible situation, plagiarism can appear an efficient, albeit dishonest, gamble to succeed. Using the thought of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jan Patočka to philosophically assess and respond to this academic situation, I argue for a way to restore the teacher-student relationship to a proper state of care and responsibility.

Pareraukawa’s Te Ahukaramū identifies an externalised type of knowledge as mātauranga (Royal 2005). It is a shared knowledge, “‘ma’ and ‘tau’ … said to be attained when it is held or comes to rest within us” (Smith 2015, 51). Contrastingly, mātauranga Māori is “an indigenous body of knowledge that arises from a worldview based upon kinship relationships between people and the natural world” (Royal Society Te Apārangi 2017, para. 2). An inherited erudition, it “responds to the three great questions of life, namely: Who am I? What is this world that I exist in? What am I to do?” (Royal 2012, 35) Mātauranga Māori is a means for exploring life philosophically.

Extinction is the “irreversible condition of a species or other group of organisms having no living representatives in the wild, which follows the death of the last surviving individual of that species or group” (Hine and Martin 2015, para. 1). Mass extinctions are extinctions of the greatest magnitude, occurring “when many diverse groups of organisms become extinct over short periods of time” (Condie 2011, 250). In November 2017, 15,372 scientists declared the scientific consensus (Ripple et al. 2017). Mass extinction has occurred five times in the past. A sixth mass extinction has begun. Humans are the cause of the latest episode. However, “the oft-repeated claim that Earth’s biota is entering a sixth ‘mass extinction’ depends on clearly demonstrating current extinction rates are far above the ‘background’ rates” (Ceballos et al. 2015, 1).

An example of mātauranga is the method outlined by Ceballos et al. (2015) for calculating current extinction rates. An example of mātauranga Māori are the responses, which arise from that calculation. If we have evidence that our nonhuman kin (and, indeed, our own offspring) are being “deprive[d] of life or strength” (Lewis and Short 1891, 704), what is our responsibility?

This paper presents my replication study of Ceballos et al. (2015) using 2018 data. It considers the etymology of responsibility as an agential construct. Finally, it makes suggestions for a non-agential responsibility informed by, first, mātauranga Māori and, second, Levinasian ethics.

This paper builds upon Mary Kate McGowan’s analysis of the mechanisms of harm in conversations (McGowan 2004; 2009). McGowan describes how a speaker’s intervention might constitute harm by enacting what is permissible to do in the conversation thereafter. We expand McGowan’s analysis in two ways: first, we use her account to argue for the potential of interlocutor’s silence, not only speaker’s intervention, to enact harm;  second, we introduce a new party into the picture: observers of the conversation. We propose that not only interlocutors who contribute to harm through action, but also those who do so by omission are morally responsible for that harm. We focus on one aspect of conversations: introduction of presuppositions. We argue that when the presupposition is morally problematic (e.g., sexist, ableist, racist, homo-, trans- or xeno-phobic),  interlocutors have a moral responsibility to block it. This responsibility comes in degrees, and, importantly, depends on whether the interlocutor’s speech capacity is diminished by the harmful presupposition (i.e. whether the interlocutor is being silenced). Unlike common approaches to harm in speech, which take the unit of analysis to be the speaker-interlocutor relationship, we take as unit of analysis the relationship between the pair speaker-interlocutor and an observer. Problematic presuppositions introduced in conversations can harm observers overhearing these conversations (as well society as a whole), and prevention of such harm motivates our proposal for attribution of responsibility to interlocutors.
We proceed as follows. First we review the dynamics of presupposition introduction. Second, we briefly introduce McGowan’s analysis of conversational pragmatics, subscribing to her account that some conversational moves constitute a special type of harm related to oppression, and outline a taxonomy of the pathways through which harm can be inflicted upon observers and the society as a whole. In the third part we articulate our argument that in the cases of presupposition introduction considered here, interlocutors are not merely allowing harm, but actively doing it, and put forward our proposal for responsibility attribution. Finally, we address potential objections, and situate our proposal within a broader project to fight oppressive speech.

During the pre-Christmas period a question arises, which is indeed also relevant during the rest of the year, but which gets increasingly explosive in this special period of time: How neurotic is our society? It seems as if modern society drops into a buying and consumption frenzy beyond comparison during these four weeks before X-Mas. In all shops you find shiny, glittering decoration and in almost every corner people are constantly showered with advertisements, X-Mas songs and special offers. The stimulus satiation in the cities is incredible and contributes in the anyway fast moving times once more to the increasing stress in people. Recently I saw an interesting sticker on an old, widely traveled car standing at the traffic lights. It said: „No shoes, no shirt, no worries“. What if we recollected this motto and less would be more? What would reflective X-Mas days be like if consumption and material presents were no longer the focus?

" Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality, " says Emmanuel Levinas in the preface to Totality and Infinity. Why is ethical inquiry a meaningful and necessary task? This is a universal question with which all contemplation of ethics should grapple. This paper aims to show that both the Other in Levinas and the " Heavenly-command (tianming 天命) " in the Zhong Yong 中庸 indicate that human beings are called to be passively ethical. The passivity of ethical responsibility is, however, not caused by a divine moral power, but can be seen in three characteristics that mark ethics: 1) the exposure to the other, 2) the time of diachrony and 3) the aporetic moment of ethical response. Ethical responsibility is commanded before one's initiative to be ethical and is therefore prior to moral subjectivity. Moreover, a moral life is accomplished only in sincerely responding to this command of ethical responsibility. This opens up a kind of activity called " sincerity (cheng 誠). " The source of responsibility therefore lies in a passive ethical situation that calls upon an active ethical response. This ethical responsibility is the foundation of all ethical inquiry.

Building on medical anthropology literature that analyzes doctor-patient interactions as a charged site for the production of political subjectivities, I demonstrate how a central feature of Mexico City's new public abortion program involves " responsibilization. " In accordance with entrenched Ministry of Health objectives, providers transmit a suite of values about personal responsibility and self-regulation through birth control use, hinging abortion rights to responsible reproductive subjectivity. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research across program clinics, including seventy-five interviews with patients and providers, I show how ILE protocols fashion " responsibilized " liberal subjects. I argue that the recent granting of abortion rights in Mexico City— ostensibly a new moment for the construction of women's citizenship—instead reflects and extends long-standing state agendas of " reproductive governance. " My analysis of reproductive rights as the newest framing of ongoing population policies in Mexico adds to a critical anthropology of human rights and of liberal projects of governance. __________________________________________________________________________________ ___ Twenty patients sit bleary-eyed in the waiting room of a public abortion clinic nestled in the heart of a gritty borough of Mexico City i. It is 8:00 on a Monday morning. Some patients steal an extra few minutes of sleep. Others motion to their partners who linger outside the entrance, watching after their children. Many families had arrived at the clinic before sunrise, braving the chilly morning air to line up behind the maroon metal gates to obtain one of the limited appointments. As the wait drags on, the patients swap intimate details about the circumstances

In this paper, I refute "the inability thesis," which says that people who act unethically due to social conditioning "suffer from some presumed culturally generated inability to avoid wrongdoing," and are therefore not responsible for their action.
Excerpts:
"I agree with Moody-Adams that the inability thesis is empirically and conceptually flawed, but I think that there is something else wrong with it as well. Namely, inability theorists tend to describe moral ‘inabilities’ by analogy with disabilities like blindness, blind-spots, and so-called ‘handicaps'... . Even if the inability thesis were not false, these comparisons would be ableist and harmful because they reinforce cultural associations between disability and moral depravity, which reinforces ableist prejudice.
...
I would suggest that we swap the concept of epistemic bad luck for the concept of structural oppression whenever possible. Instead of saying that men who silence women are “subject to ‘circumstantial’ epistemic bad luck” (Fricker: 33), say that they are perpetrators and beneficiaries of patriarchal oppression. Instead of saying that white people who deny the existence of racial inequality are epistemically “handicapped” (Mills: 51), say that they are acting on white group interests. Instead of saying that implicit sexists cannot “access” the “critical perspective on gender” needed to respect women as equals (Fricker: 101), say that they don’t want to listen to women. What may seem to be epistemic 'inability' may, on scrutiny, turn out to be epistemic privilege, being wielded by 'golden boys' to silence and smother the less privileged."

This paper identifies a number of questions that any plausible theory of epistemic blame ought to answer: What is epistemic blame? When is someone an appropriate target of epistemic blame? And what justifies engaging in epistemic blame? I argue that a number of problems arise when we try to answer these questions using existing conceptions of moral blame. I then consider and reject Brown's (2020) belief-desire model of epistemic blame. Finally, I argue that an agency-cultivation model of moral responsibility is not only able to help us develop a plausible theory of epistemic blame, it is particularly well-placed to do so.

Prendendo spunto da un passo del Sistema periodico in cui Levi definisce Dio un “maestro di polimerizzazioni” che non ama le sostanze “troppo incorruttibili”, questo saggio discute il tema della responsabilità ambientale e della trascendenza in relazione all’ecologia. In particolare, ci si sofferma sul pensiero di H. Jonas e sul legame che connette l’idea di responsabilità ambientale in Das Prinzip Verantwortung (1979) al pensiero dell’impotenza di Dio in Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (1987). Il saggio si conclude considerando le implicazioni di questi concetti per le en- vironmental humanities, in connessione con i discorsi sulla giustizia ambientale (la slow violence di R. Nixon) e le nuove ontologie degli iper-oggetti (la object-oriented-ontology di Morton). Idea fondamentale è che la letteratura, specie quando ci parla della materialità e del nostro rapporto con il non umano, è una voce importante nell’orizzonte immanente/trascendente del nostro essere ambientale.

Moving from a passage of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table in which God is defined as a “master of polymerization” who does not like “incorruptible things”, this essay examines the topics of environmental responsibility and transcendence in relation to ecology. Particular attention is devoted to H. Jonas’s thought and to the bond between his ethics in Das Prinzip Verantwortung (1979) and his idea of God’s impotence in Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (1987).
In conclusion, the essay considers the implications of these concepts and their literary illustra- tion within the environmental humanities, especially in relation to environmental justice (e.g. Nixon’s slow violence) and object-oriented-ontology (Morton’s hyperobjects).
Keywords: Environmental humanities, ethics, ecology, transcendence, Hans Jonas, Primo Levi.

Nedržavni akteri dobijaju sve veći značaj u savremenom međunarodnom pravu, tim pre što se sve češće govori o krizi država kao subjekata međunarodnog prava. Kao učesnici u dešavanjima u okviru međunarodne zajednice snose odgovornost za akte koje počine. Odgovornost u međunarodnom pravu predstavlja jedan od najvažnijih instituta, te stoga ova oblast nikada ne gubi na interesovanju. I neka međunarodna tela, poput Komisije Ujedinjenih nacija za međunarodno pravo i Udruženja za međunarodno pravo, prepoznaju važnost ove teme. Pažnju ovoj temi posvećuje pre svega izveštaj specijalnog izvestioca Generalnog sekretara o potrebi za uvođenjem odgovornosti nedržavnih aktera. Zato je Komisija UN za međunarodno pravo usvojila nacrt članova o odgovornosti međunarodnih organizacija, a velika pažnja posvećena je i individualnoj krivičnoj odgovornosti. Autor će u ovom radu, pored ovih važnih pitanja, prikazati i odgovornost koju snose transnacionalne kompanije i nevladine organizacije. Cilj ovog rada je da pruži pregled aktuelnog stanja u ovim oblastima, kao i da iznese predloge za eventualne dalje poduhvate, u smislu kodifikacije.

An increasingly popular view in scholarly literature and public debate on implicit biases holds that there is progressive moral potential in the discomfort that liberals and egalitarians feel when they realize they harbor implicit biases. The strong voices among such discomfort advocates believe we have a moral and political duty to confront people with their biases even though we risk making them uncomfortable. Only a few voices have called attention to the aversive effects of discomfort. Such discomfort skeptics warn that, because people often react negatively to feeling blamed or called-out, the result of confrontational approaches is often counterproductive. To deepen this critique, I distinguish between awareness discomfort and interaction discomfort, developing a contextual approach that draws on recent research on negative affect and emotions to chart a more complete picture of the moral limits of discomfort. I argue that discomfort advocates risk overrating the moral potential of discomfort if they underestimate the extent to which context shapes the interpretation of affect and simple, raw feelings.

Responsibility frames shape the public perception of health issues such as obesity, diabetes, or cancer, specifically regarding responsibility attributions for their causes and treatment. They may not only affect individual health behaviors, but also social judgements and health policy support. This systematic review on health responsibility frames in the media includes studies published 2004-2019 (N = 69). Content analyses (n = 56) show that the media attribute health responsibility most frequently, but not exclusively to individuals. Experimental studies (n = 13) indicate that the focus on individual responsibility affects the conceptions and attitudes of the audience: While the effects on attributions of responsibility were inconsistent, individual responsibility frames effectively reduced health policy support. Finally, the conceptual focus on individual vs. societal health responsibility is deemed problematic for neglecting a third, essential and relevant health determinant – the social network.

Das Ideal individueller Authentizität von Personen ist ein ebenso verbreitetes wie umstrittenes Ideal in modernen, liberalen Gesellschaften. Wertgeschätzt wird in Bezug auf die Authentizität von Personen die Idee einer authentischen Selbst-Entsprechung: etwas oder jemand gilt als authentisch durch Selbstübereinstimmung, dadurch ‚wirklich so zu sein', ohne Verstellung, ohne Beeinflussung von auβen. Es geht darum, sich selbst treu zu sein und zu bleiben. Verteidigt wird das Ideal der Authentizität im Sinne einer Selbst-Verteidigung gegen Erfahrungen der Entfremdung und als ein verantwortliches Selbstverhältnis im Prozess einer fortgesetzten Authentifizierung gegenüber sich selbst und anderen.

This paper reflects on the articles submitted for the Symposium Confronting the Internet's Dark Side. I discuss some of the criticisms of the book's theory and my treatment of hate speech. The responsibilities of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Web-Hosting Services (WHSs) are in the fore, arguing that as they are the gatekeepers, they need to be proactive far more than they are now. This paper, like my book, strives to suggest an approach that harnesses the strengths and capabilities of the public and the private sectors in offering practical solutions to pressing problems.

Freiheit ist mehr als die Freiheit, zu wirtschaften. Dieses Buch stellt dar, wie Liberalismus heute gedacht werden muss, damit er nicht im Widerspruch zu Gerechtigkeit, Nachhaltigkeit und einem gelingenden Leben steht. Freiheit, so das Plädoyer, muss vielschichtiger verstanden werden, um zu sehen, welche Rolle Märkte für eine gute Gesellschaft spielen können. Jenseits des politischen Schubladendenkens wird das Bild einer Gesellschaft entworfen, die allen Mitgliedern ein selbstbestimmtes Leben ermöglicht und dabei mit den begrenzten Ressourcen der natürlichen Welt vereinbar ist.
Das Buch führt in zentrale Themen der Ideengeschichte, Wirtschaftstheorie und Sozialphilosophie ein und legt die Denkmuster offen, die viele heutige Debatten prägen. Unter anderem geht es um die Frage nach einem realistischen Menschenbild jenseits des homo oeconomicus, um das Verhältnis negativer, positiver und republikanischer Freiheit und um die Frage, wie eine Politik aussehen kann, die sich auch jenseits des Wachstumszwangs an einem selbstbestimmten Leben für alle Menschen orientiert. Nicht zuletzt zeigt das Buch auf, wie mit einem zeitgemäßen Freiheits- und Menschenbild Märkte wieder in den Dienst einer gerechten Gesellschaft gestellt werden können.

Over the last few decades, both the European Union and European States have been implementing various strategies to externalize border controls with the declared intent of saving human lives and countering smuggling but with the actual end result of shifting borders, circumventing international obligations and ultimately preventing access to Europe. What has been principally deplored is the fact that externalizing border controls risks creating ‘legal black holes’. Furthermore, what is particularly worrying in the current European debate is the intensification of this practice by multiple arrangements with unsafe third countries, exposing migrants and asylum seekers to serious human rights violations.
This book explores whether European States can succeed in shifting their responsibility onto Third States in cases of human rights violations. Focusing, in particular, on the 2017 Italy-Libya Memorandum of Understanding, the book investigates the possible basis for triggering the responsibility of outsourcing States. The second part of the book examines how the Italy-Libya MoU is only a small part of a broader scenario, exploring EU policies of externalization. A brief overview of the recent decisions of the EU Court vis-à-vis two aspects of externalization (the EU-Turkey statement and the issue of humanitarian visas) will pave the way for the conclusions since, in the author’s view, the current attitude of the Luxembourg Court confirms the importance of focusing on the responsibility of European States and the urgent need to investigate the possibility of bringing a claim against the outsourcing States before the Court of Strasbourg.

The relationship between self-consciousness, Aristotelian ontology, and Cartesian duality is far closer than it has been thought to be.  There is no valid inference either from considerations of Aristotle’s hylomorphism or from the phenomenological distinction between body and living body, to the undermining of Cartesian dualism.  The claims that Descartes introspectively encounters the self and that the Cartesian extent of inner space is self-contained are profound errors, distortions through the lenses of modern theories.  Descartes’ conception of the self as both a reasoning and willing being informs his conception of personhood; a person for Descartes is an unanalysable, integrated, self-conscious, and autonomous human being.

Some philosophers and physicians have argued that alcoholic patients, who are responsible for their liver failure by virtue of alcoholism, ought to be given lower priority for a transplant when donated livers are being allocated to patients in need of a liver transplant. The primary argument for this proposal, known as the Responsibility Argument, is based on the more general idea that patients who require scarce medical resources should be given lower priority for those resources when they are responsible for needing them and when they are competing with patients who need the same resources through no fault of their own. Since alcoholic patients are responsible for needing a new liver and are in direct competition with other patients who need a new liver through no fault of their own, it follows that alcoholic patients ought to be given lower priority for a transplant. In this article, I argue against the Responsibility Argument by suggesting that in order for it to avoid the force of plausible counter examples, it must be revised to say that patients who are responsible for needing a scarce medical resource due to engaging in behavior that is not socially valuable ought to be given lower priority. I'll then argue that allocating organs according to social value is inconsistent or in tension with liberal neutrality on the good life. Thus, if one is committed to liberal neutrality, one ought to reject the Responsibility Argument.

The inaugural lecture focuses on the question of the origin of values. Three different solutions of that question are provided. All of them correspond to the positions fomulated within the debate on universals. I discuss most broadly the pragmatic conception of values, according to which they are both ontologically subjective and epistemologically objective. The lecture is closed by discussing the question of cultural responsibility and the ways it could be spread and educated.

Inwieweit kann die Eigenverantwortung des Einzelnen (z. B. Schweden) Situationen meistern, in denen Massenkonformität erforderlich ist? Sollten die Grundrechte eingeschränkt werden?
Welche Verantwortung haben Wissenschaftler, die eine „Herdenimmunität“ erfordern, und populistische Führer, die die Bedrohung leugnen? Sind autoritäre Gesellschaften besser auf die
Bekämpfung des Virus vorbereitet als liberale? Angesichts unterschiedlicher Verbreitung aufgrund unterschiedlicher nationaler Maßnahmen: Sind „Nationen“ die richtige Kategorie in einer
globalisierten Welt? Rechtfertigt der Kampf gegen ein Virus den Anstieg nicht virusbedingter Todesfälle (bei Patienten, Arbeitslosen)? Welche Konsequenzen haben Triage, isoliertes Sterben, Einschränkungen von Kontakten / religiösen Praktiken und Gesichtsmaskierung? Sind sie
gerechtfertigt?

In this paper I propose a way of characterising human agency in terms of the concept of a two-way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise-and blameworthiness. In the theory of action, agency is often characterised in terms of intentionality. Accordingly, there is agency when, and only when, something is done intentionally. And doing something intentionally is construed as doing it for a reason. In this paper, I propose an alternative way of characterising human agency in terms of the concept of a particular kind of causal power: a 'two-way' causal power. This approach is compatible with the intentional approach but I think it is preferable to it. For one thing, and although I won't discuss this in detail, it facilitates seeing human agency as a special case of the agency that is found throughout the natural world, both in animate and inanimate things, since that notion of agency also involves the idea of causal powers.

En este texto se presenta brevemente el concepto de responsabilidad en la forma en que Alf Ross lo entendió. Para ello, en primer lugar, se contextualiza su análisis dentro de los problemas que surgieron al momento de dar cuenta de los conceptos jurídicos fundamentales dentro de la filosofía del derecho del siglo veinte y, en segundo lugar, se muestran las propuestas de Ross para evitar dichos problemas. Por último, se analiza la forma en que dichas propuestas influyeron en su comprensión de la responsabilidad.

El autor agradece la invitación de la revista a participar en este número.

Whether it is backlash from the publication of controversial papers or calls for no-platforming, the question of freedom of expression in academia seems to be more pertinent than ever. The conflict here seems to then be one of freedom and responsibility: Freedom to engage in new and perhaps contrary ideas and responsibility to those whom these ideas impact. I address these themes by analyzing recent paper, by Emily Chamlee-Wright that questions when it might be appropriate to resist pressure from the status quo and speak despite the potential for negative feedback.  I wish to supplement her account with the need to temper this question of appropriate deference with one of social responsibility. Like Chamlee-Wright, I argue that these have “both positive and negative effects on the quality of public and academic discourse”, but for different reasons. Stereotype and bias inherent in some speech and scholarship may harm the discursive environment and encourage self-censorship as well. These expanded threats in turn require a different solution that would urge deference when scholarship pertains to and impacts certain marginalized identity categories. Self-Censorship does not necessarily mean a lowered quality academic or public discourse, but a necessary element in balancing the concerns of power and perspective.