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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Emotions associated with self-blame (guilt, remorse) and others' blame (anger, resentment) play a central role in the process of taking responsibility for wrongdoing.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Kantian accounts of moral agency locate responsibility-taking in rational acknowledgment of the moral law, not in affective states, which are heteronomous and vary with temperament and circumstance.
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    • 2.Martha Nussbaum's recent work argues that retributive anger (resentment) rests on a payback fallacy and should be excised from justice practices, undermining the claim that others' blame emotions play a legitimate central role.
      ?

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    • 3.If resentment is normatively defective as a basis for holding others responsible, then a process of taking responsibility that is structurally responsive to such emotions inherits that defect.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aristotle's account of virtue requires that moral emotions track objective desert, but guilt and resentment are notoriously unreliable guides—prone to excess, deficiency, and misdirection regardless of actual wrongdoing.
      ?

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    • 2.If the emotions central to taking responsibility are systematically distorted by factors like trauma, socialization, and power imbalance, grounding responsibility-taking in them conflates psychological contingency with normative adequacy.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.On a communicative retributivist account, treating offenders as responsible agents involves pointing out when they have done wrong and expecting them to take responsibility for their wrongful actions.
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    • 2.Taking responsibility for one's wrongdoing requires that one acknowledge it as wrongdoing, commit to reforming one's behaviour, and begin to reconcile with one's community by making reparation for the wrongdoing.
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    • 3.Acknowledging wrongdoing, committing to reform, and making reparation are processes in which emotions of self-blame and others' blame play a central role.
      ?

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