Metaphysics of Moral Responsibility: Comments on a Paper by E. Loginov, M. Gavrilov, A. Mertsalov and A. Iunusov

Abstract

In my paper, I critically discuss the third part of an article by E. Loginov, M. Gavrilov, A. Mertsalov and A. Iunusov “Prolegomena to Moral Responsibility”. In the third part of the Prolegomena, the authors present an analysis of the structure of the concept of moral respon­sibility. An important feature of the structure is the distinction between the fittingness of moral assessment and the fittingness of moral consequences. My objection is that there are no sufficiently weighty reasons that could justify making this distinction in the structure pro­vided by the authors. It seems more reasonable to identify the fact of an agent’s being morally responsible with fittingness of certain moral consequences. The authors also claim that cases in which a factor that belongs to an agent but lacks moral relevance is mistakenly described as having moral relevance is a distinct kind of case in which an agent is held responsible in an incorrect way. I show that the difference of this kind of mistake in holding people responsible from mistakes, which result from holding an agent responsible for a factor which does not be­long to this agent in the way that is relevant for moral assessment, is unclear.