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Situations and Responsiveness to Reasons *
Author(s) -
Sartorio Carolina
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
noûs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.574
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1468-0068
pISSN - 0029-4624
DOI - 10.1111/nous.12212
Subject(s) - counterfactual thinking , situationism , situational ethics , moral responsibility , appeal , social psychology , psychology , blame , moral disengagement , epistemology , environmental ethics , political science , law , philosophy
Some classical studies in social psychology suggest that we are more sensitive to situational factors, and less responsive to reasons, than we normally recognize we are. In recent years, moral responsibility theorists have examined the question whether those studies represent a serious threat to our moral responsibility. A common response to the “situationist threat” has been to defend the reasons‐responsiveness of ordinary human agents by appeal to a theory of reasons‐responsiveness that appeals to patterns of counterfactual scenarios or possible worlds. In this paper I identify a problem with that response and I offer a better solution.