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    The would-be assassin who did not even try to kill may sh... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The would-be assassin who did not even try to kill may share the same degree of responsibility as the successful and unsuccessful assassins.

    Moral Responsibility
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The would-be assassin is willing to kill under favorable circumstances.
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    • 2.The degree of responsibility attributed to the successful and unsuccessful assassins may depend not so much on the fact that they both tried to kill as on the fact that they were both willing to kill.
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    • 3.The would-be assassin shares their willingness to kill.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Moral responsibility requires not merely a disposition to act but the actualization of that disposition through an overt attempt or action.
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    • 2.Kant's distinction between imperfect and perfect duties reflects the philosophical consensus that willing without acting occupies a categorically different moral register than acting itself.
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    • 3.A counterfactual willingness that never manifests under actual circumstances cannot be assessed with the same confidence as demonstrated conduct, making equal responsibility attribution epistemically unjustified.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Aristotle's account in Nicomachean Ethics grounds full moral responsibility in praxis—deliberate action—not merely in stable character dispositions or conditional intentions.
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    • 2.The would-be assassin's willingness remains merely hypothetical until tested by actual circumstances, and unhypothesized conditions (e.g., last-minute moral reconsideration) cannot be ruled out.
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    • 3.Fischer and Ravizza's reasons-responsiveness framework assigns responsibility through the actual exercise of one's mechanism of agency, not through counterfactual exercises of it.
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    Moral Responsibility

    Related

    A counterfactual willingness that never manifests under actual circumstances can...Aristotle's account in Nicomachean Ethics grounds full moral responsibility in p...Fischer and Ravizza's reasons-responsiveness framework assigns responsibility th...Kant's distinction between imperfect and perfect duties reflects the philosophic...
    +5 moreShow less
    Moral responsibility requires not merely a disposition to act but the actualizat...The degree of responsibility attributed to the successful and unsuccessful assas...The would-be assassin is willing to kill under favorable circumstances.The would-be assassin shares their willingness to kill.The would-be assassin's willingness remains merely hypothetical until tested by ...

    Similar

    The degree of responsibility attributed to the successful and unsucces...90%The successful and unsuccessful assassins are morally responsible and ...86%The would-be assassin is willing to kill under favorable circumstances...84%The would-be assassin shares their willingness to kill.82%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: moral-responsibility
    Discussion of willingness-based responsibility
    View source passageHide passage
    But now consider a different would-be assassin who does not even try to kill anyone, but only because his circumstances did not favor this option. This would-be assassin is willing to kill under favorable circumstances (and so he may seem to have had good circumstantial moral luck since he was not in those circumstances). Perhaps the degree of responsibility attributed to the successful and unsuccessful assassins described above depends not so much on the fact that they both tried to kill as on the fact that they were both willing to kill; in this case, the would-be assassin just introduced ma...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage explicitly presents this reasoning chain — that if responsibility depends on willingness to kill rather than trying to kill, then the would-be assassin who shares that willingness may share the same degree of responsibility — and the premises logically support the conclusion.

    Confidence: Clearly presented reasoning in the text, though offered tentatively.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit