To this point, I have provided reasons to think attributability sufficient for accountability in diagnosing cases of moral ignorance. Such reasons might sway a reflective agnostic regarding the debate between attributability and accountability concerning the nature of moral responsibility. Yet a committed accountability theorist may want more. He may think I have begged the question against accountability by assuming attributability true and using its features in arguing that attributability best captures cases involving moral ignorance. A full exposition on the nature of moral responsibility goes beyond the scope of this current project, but I want to look at a small slice of the literature to show why one might think accountability theorists misguided when it comes to wanting more out of the desert-based notion of moral responsibility than what is provided by New Attributionism.
As mentioned in section 3.3, Gary Watson (1996, 2004) thinks of responsibility as coming in two distinct versions. Attributability focuses on aretaic appraisals of a person’s moral character. Such views are sometimes called self-disclosure views or real self views. Accountability focuses on whether it would be appropriate to hold someone accountable for her behavior. This happens when it is fair to impose on the person certain burdens such as social sanctions licensed by the reactive attitudes. Attributability is not sufficient for accountability on this proposal. It is not enough that an agent’s attitudes and actions reflect who she is as a practical agent. Being subject to adverse treatment in the form of the reactive attitudes and forms of punishment also requires that the agent had a fair opportunity to avoid being exposed to such
treatment.177 If the agent had a morally deprived, insulated, or abusive upbringing that
(in some sense) made them into who they are as the author of their attitudes and actions, then the agent is not accountable for those attitudes and actions even if they are attributable to her. Watson’s approach is nice in that it captures why someone like, to use Watson’s hallmark example, a “moral monster” like Robert Alton Harris is not subject to the full range of reactive attitudes. He suffered a horrific and abusive upbringing. Though he grew into an adult that inflicted harm, torture, and death on human and animal victims, he has suffered enough and is not a fair target of further adverse treatment. This is because he did not have a fair opportunity to avoid becoming the person he became. Yet, Watson’s two-prong view of moral responsibility is subject to an important criticism. This criticism or, rather, confusion underlies why I think many accountability theorists think attributability insufficient for accountability.178
Angela Smith (2008) argues that Watson’s two faces of moral responsibility rest on an ambiguity in the notion of accountability.179 Watson argues that conditions
required for accountability go beyond conditions required for attributability. Attributability has “different and less stringent” conditions than those required for accountability. Further, as Smith summarizes regarding Watson’s stance, “self- disclosure [attributability] views do not justify many of the activities and responses associated with our current practices of moral responsibility” (2008: 377). Smith
177 Watson (1996: 237).
178 Instead of embracing one form of moral responsibility with different varieties or species, the accountability theorist thinks there are two different genus’s or types of moral responsibility. By contrast, New Attributionism collapses the genus’s into one genus with different species.
179 For an additional exposition of the distinction between being responsible versus holding responsible see Smith (2007).
responds to Watson that there is an ambiguity in “accountability”, namely judging blameworthy versus active blaming. Smith grants that thinking of accountability in terms of activity blaming is thinking of it as a notion that is governed by conditions beyond attributability, such as the condition Watson (1996: 237) cites as the agent having, “had a fair opportunity to avoid being subject to that adverse treatment.” Smith explains that after clearing up the ambiguity this shows that,
there is a distinction between judging a person to be responsible and culpable for her behavior, on the one hand, and engaging in various forms of blaming activity (including punishment), on the other. But the fact that there may be further conditions governing our blaming activities does not, I believe, support the claim that attributability views are working with a different and weaker conception of the relevant forms of moral appraisal. (2008: 377)
Smith grants that accountability disambiguated as involving blaming practices may have additional conditions on it. This is because actually blaming people for actions for which they are blameworthy imposes more of a burden of justification on those practices. In the Robert Alton Harris case, it may be inappropriate to subject him to various types of ill-treatment, such as actually blaming and punishing him, given his upbringing.180 Though he is blameworthy for his actions, as he is the author of them
in the attributability sense, imposing further burdens on him beyond that required to keep him from harming others in the future may seem unnecessarily harsh or cruel. Judgements of culpability for attitudes and actions are governed by attributability conditions. These conditions concern a different disambiguation of “accountability,”
namely it being appropriate for you to give an account of the reasons you took to justify doing what you did. This concerns what you actually value, what you think true and good, and whether those things reflect who you are as a moral agent. Robert Alton Harris thought his horrific actions appropriate. He embraced them upon reflection and, obviously, they severely impaired the relationships people could enter into with him. They are attributable to him, he is answerable for them, and he is blameworthy and accountable for his actions.
Lastly, to close this interlude, let me mention that thinking of accountability in terms of actual blaming responses is governed by additional factors. That is, as Smith clarifies, active blame includes, “a variety of moral and non-moral norms…which have nothing to do with the basic conditions of moral responsibility.” These norms involving determining whether one is justified in blaming the person. Such actual blaming responses are governed by, “our relation to the person, our stake in the matter, the significance of the fault, and the person’s own response to her failure.”181
They are also governed, as already mentioned, by what Watson mistakenly took as definitive of accountability, such as whether the person had a fair chance to avoid adverse treatment in terms of being subject to the reactive attitudes. These concerns with history, what the agent could have done differently, and standing to blame determine whether public or social censure is appropriate and whether and to what extent the person should be punished.182
181 For example, it may be inappropriate to actually blame someone when they express sincere remorse for their actions. However, cavalier dismissals of the moral magnitude of the faults and harms at issue may amplify the degree to which one is justified in actually blaming and punishing the person.
182 For someone who resists the attributionist line and posits three distinct forms of responsibility, which are underwritten by three different agential capacities, see the work of David Shoemaker (2011). Shoemaker targets Smith’s view, but the conceptions at play get hard to track, as Shoemaker is not