Choice, ownership and responsibility
type: CreativeWork
description: My dissertation is to answer these two questions: "Does moral responsibility require choice?" and "If not, what does it require?" Classic accounts of moral responsibility, such as libertarian accounts, assume a volition condition - we are not morally responsible for a behavior unless we have directly or indirectly chosen it. I call this view volitionism. Non-volitionism, on the other hand, claims that no such choice is necessary for moral responsibility. I propose and defend a non-volitionist account of moral responsibility. I first argue against volitionism by comparing a paradigm case of choice with some typical cases of non-choice mental activities and showing that no responsibility-generating power can be found uniquely in choice. Then, I examine some current non-volitionist accounts and argue that they all face a serious challenge - the Problem of Brain Manipulation. Finally, based on what I call the normative Strawsonian framework, I propose a non-volitionist account of moral responsibility that meets this challenge. According to my account, moral responsibility for a behavior requires that, roughly, the behavior be caused by a certain evaluative attitude or judgment of which the agent can claim deep ownership.
abstract: My dissertation is to answer these two questions: "Does moral responsibility require choice?" and "If not, what does it require?" Classic accounts of moral responsibility, such as libertarian accounts, assume a volition condition - we are not morally responsible for a behavior unless we have directly or indirectly chosen it. I call this view volitionism. Non-volitionism, on the other hand, claims that no such choice is necessary for moral responsibility. I propose and defend a non-volitionist account of moral responsibility. I first argue against volitionism by comparing a paradigm case of choice with some typical cases of non-choice mental activities and showing that no responsibility-generating power can be found uniquely in choice. Then, I examine some current non-volitionist accounts and argue that they all face a serious challenge - the Problem of Brain Manipulation. Finally, based on what I call the normative Strawsonian framework, I propose a non-volitionist account of moral responsibility that meets this challenge. According to my account, moral responsibility for a behavior requires that, roughly, the behavior be caused by a certain evaluative attitude or judgment of which the agent can claim deep ownership.
author: Liu, Xiaofei
language: eng
language: English
keywords: moral responsibility, choice, non-volitionism, compatibilism
date published: 2012
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:08:43Z
provider: University of Missouri
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Missouri--Columbia

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/15083

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.32469/10355/15083