The defence-first approach to responsibility

university of neuchâtel

This project aims to use defences to tackle questions of responsibility afresh. The standard approach first identifies conditions for responsibility (or culpability), such as choice and knowledge, and then applies these conditions to specific questions such as whether one is responsible for forgettings. Our defence-first approach flips the script. Instead of asking whether a condition X is required for responsibility, we ask whether its absence exculpates—that is, whether it provides a justification, an excuse, or an exemption. For instance, instead of asking whether explicit choice is necessary for responsibility, we ask whether the absence of choice justifies, whether it excuses, and whether it exempts.

The main contribution of our approach is thus to make thorny questions about responsibility more tractable, by decomposing each such question into three.