A Challenge for the Scaffolding View of Responsibility

AbstractAccording to Victoria McGeer ’s “scaffolding view” (SV) (McGeer 2019), responsibility is a matter of moral reasons-sensitivity (MRS) which, in turn, requiresonly a “susceptibility to the scaffolding power of the reactive attitudes, experienced as a form of moral address” (2019: 315). This claim prompts aprima facie challenge: doesn ’t this susceptibility lead to doing the right things for the wrong reasons? Although the SV offers a nuanced and sophisticated answer to this challenge, one that moreover respects the social nature of moral knowledge and the fragility of moral motivation, it does not succeed. It redefines MRS to fit our responsibility practices in a way that overlooks our (fragile) capacity for “genuine MRS.” The first and primary objective of this paper is to contrast SV-MRS with genuine MRS. The second objective is to suggest that rather than redefining MRS (which is both unwarranted and costly), we s hould accept that there is a gap between our practices (and thus responsible agency) and genuine MRS.

Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - November 14, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research