2025/12/19 by Margaret Shea · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Free Will and Agency #Philosophical Ethics and Theory
paper · doi:10.1086/738311
openalex created_date 2025/12/19 · openalex publication_date 2025/12/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Some morally required acts are wrong and blameworthy. In certain cases—Alone/Together dilemmas, single-agent dilemmas, and Actualist “Professor Procrastinate” cases—an agent is required to perform each of two incompatible actions, such that performing some act required of her is a way of failing to perform another act which is also required of her. The required act she performs is thereby wrong. According to my theory, Deontic Status Tracing, whether an agent is blameworthy for such an act depends on what explains its bizarre deontic status—namely, whether it is her fault that this act is simultaneously required and wrong.