Does Being Morally Responsible Depend on the Ability to Hold Morally Responsible?

Does Being Morally Responsible Depend on the Abilityto Hold Morally Responsible?

Holly M. Smith

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Michael McKenna’s Conversation and Responsibility is a genuine tour de force: a

richly detailed, sustained argument for an innovative theory about the nature of

moral responsibility, one that offers multiple layers of theoretical architectonic. Its

depth repays equally deep examination, and I have learned a great deal from reading

and thinking about it. Any philosopher seeking a rigorous yet generous introduction

to the state of contemporary discussion on moral responsibility could hardly do

better than to read this book. It is true that I am not yet persuaded by McKenna’s

central thesis that the most illuminating way to understand moral responsibility is to

view it as a type of interpersonal conversation. And I am dubious that his strategy of

accounting for the ‘‘fittingness’’ of blaming responses in terms of the ‘‘intelligi-

bility’’ of such responses as part of a conversation can really be made to pan out.

Nonetheless I greatly appreciated a great number of the positions and proposals

made along the path to these conclusions. In particular I resonated with the fact that

in pursuing this investigation McKenna sets aside questions about free will; the fact

that he rejects proposals to understand an agent’s being morally responsible as

depending on the dispositions of others to respond to her with reactive attitudes, or

as depending on the appropriateness of such reactions; and the fact that he defines

blame- and praise-worthiness in terms of the agent’s quality of will as manifested in

her actions or possibly her non-voluntary responses. One of his arguments for the

importance of quality of will, in terms of the difficulty of explaining how the agent’s

quality of will could affect the degree of her blameworthiness without also being a

key component of blameworthiness per se, was especially striking. I found many of

his criticisms of other authors both effective and open-minded. This is a book that

we are lucky to have, and that McKenna may justly be proud of having written.

H. M. Smith (&)

Department of Philosophy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 106 Somerset Street,

5th Floor, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

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Philos Stud

DOI 10.1007/s11098-013-0256-x

Of course the role of a commentator is not merely to praise his work, but also to

raise questions about it. I turn to that task.

One of the boldest and most distinctive of McKenna’s theses is the claim that ‘‘a

morally responsible agent’s ability to be morally responsible for what she does is

dependent upon her ability to hold morally responsible.’’ [McKenna 2012, 88; my

emphasis1] In his view, an agent’s inability to hold others morally responsible

impairs her ability to act as a morally responsible agent. [78–80, 212] How does he

argue for this surprising claim?

He starts with an examination of the kinds of pleas that a person who is held

morally responsible for an act might enter to defend herself. Citing P. F. Strawson’s

discussion of pleas, McKenna notes that one type of plea is an excuse: such a plea

(for example, ‘‘I thought this was my coat; I didn’t realize it was yours’’) shows that

the person did not, contrary to appearances, act from a morally objectionable quality

of will. [75] A second type of plea is a justification: such a plea (for example, ‘‘If I

hadn’t handed over my wallet to the mugger, things would have gone even worse’’)

also works by demonstrating that the person did not act from a morally

objectionable quality of will, since the act was (and was believed by her to be)

actually the best thing she could have done in a hard situation. But neither of these

kinds of pleas shows that the agent is not a morally responsible person. Instead they

show that her quality of will and her conduct were not objectionable after all. [75]

By contrast, the third type of plea considered by Strawson and McKenna

advances grounds for thinking that ‘‘the person is not a morally responsible agent at

all, and so is not an apt target of praise or blame.’’ [76] These pleas are exemptions.

The most interesting cases in this category are ones in which there is a relatively

stable characteristic—an incapacity—of the person that exempts him or her from the

category of being a morally responsible agent. [76] Examples include ‘‘very young

children, the severely mentally retarded, the insane, those suffering from pervasive

delusions, and so forth.’’ [76] A person who has such an exemption is not a morally

responsible agent, is not an appropriate target of blame, and does not have a morally

objectionable quality of will, because she is unable to have a quality of will with the

relevant content. [211]

The question, then, is what kind of incapacity excludes these sorts of individuals

from the category of the morally responsible? After assessing several other

theorists’ explanations of the incapacity in question, McKenna posits his own

distinctive analysis. As I understand it, his account goes as follows. A morally

responsible agent must be capable of responding to a reasonably full range of the

moral reasons that bear on the appropriateness of her conduct. [81–83, 227] What

reasons are encompassed by this full range? The discussion mentions two different

kinds of reasons. First, there is the kind of reason that arises from the fact that the

agent’s action would hurt or harm another person. [83] The fact that my hitting your

sensitive tennis elbow would cause pain is a moral reason for me not to do so. This

might be cashed out as a reason to reduce the amount of pain in the world, or

alternatively as a reason arising from a general duty not to harm anyone needlessly.

1 Henceforward all references to McKenna (2012) will consist only of page numbers in brackets.

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[83] Let’s call these reasons ‘‘simple moral reasons.’’ Second, McKenna follows

Stephen Darwall (Darwall 2006) in proposing a second kind of reason, namely the

reason arising from the fact that you—the owner of the sore tennis elbow—demand

that I not hit it. [83] This reason is independent of the reason that my hitting your

elbow would cause pain, and arises because you are someone who, as a member of

the moral community, is entitled to make such demands. Following Darwall,

McKenna labels this type of reason a ‘‘second-personal’’ reason. [83]2

So, according to McKenna, the morally responsible agent must be capable of

responding to a reasonably full range of the moral reasons that bear on the

appropriateness of her conduct, of which we can distinguish at least these two. But,

argues McKenna, agents such as young children, the severely retarded, the insane,

and so forth, are exempt from moral responsibility, because they are not capable of

responding to a reasonably full range of these reasons. His focus is on the second of

these reasons, the second-personal reason arising from the fact that someone who is

a member of the moral community demands that I not engage in certain conduct.

Indeed it is the exempted person’s inability to respond to these second-personal

reasons that seems to carry the whole weight of McKenna’s argument. For example,

McKenna says that an isolated character Robinson Crusoe 3, who has access to

simple moral reasons but no access to Darwallian second-personal reasons, is not

blameworthy. [109–110; see also 84; 212]

What is the argument that an exempted person cannot recognize and respond to

second-personal reasons, and so is not morally responsible? It starts with the

premise that our practices of holding a person responsible express our reactive

attitudes—but these practices also serve as vehicles for expressing second-personal

reasons. [212] Taking his cue from Gary Watson (Watson 1987), McKenna asserts

that the exempt person cannot understand our practices of holding people

responsible, and so cannot understand the moral demands that are expressed

through them—but that a morally competent agent must be able to grasp and treat as

reasons those that apply to her. [84, 212] This means that there is no point in

expressing blame to the exempt person, because she cannot understand the ideas and

values one is trying to convey to her. [76, 77, 109] McKenna then extends this idea

by arguing that being able to understand the practice of holding someone

responsible involves being able to understand it from two perspectives. One must be

2 A third type of moral reason is discernible here, although McKenna does not seem to explicitly

introduce this as a reason for me not to hit your sore elbow. This is the reason arising from the fact that if I

do hit your elbow, then my action is likely to lead to your holding me responsible and engaging in

blaming behavior that will expose me to harms. The blaming behavior could include berating me,

withholding normal courtesies, reducing your displays of concern about my welfare, or engaging in

scolding glances or outright public reprimands. [p. 211] Such activities count as harming me because they

set back my welfare interests, even though the setbacks may be minimal. My welfare interests are set back

because your blaming behavior typically interferes with my ability to have satisfactory interpersonal

relations with others (especially but not exclusively with you), and your behavior makes it likely that my

psychic life is burdened by concerns about others’ attitudes towards me. [pp. 134–141, 219] Most of us

have reason to avoid these sorts of harms, so we have reason to avoid conducting ourselves in ways that

will lead to our being blamed. One might ask whether this is a moral reason to avoid blame, or just a

prudential reason. It’s also worth noting that this third type of reason would obtain even if it would be

unjust for the blamer to blame one for the allegedly wrongful conduct in question.

Does Being Morally Responsible Depend on …

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able to understand it from the perspective of the person being held responsible, but

also from the perspective of the person holding someone responsible. (McKenna is

careful to point out that we often hold ourselves responsible, as well as holding

other persons responsible. However, for simplicity of exposition I’ll describe the

second ‘‘perspective’’ in terms of holding others responsible.) He claims that these

two types of understanding, each from a different perspective, are so tightly

enmeshed with each other that it is not possible for us to understand the practice of

being held responsible without also understanding and being able to participate in

the practice of holding someone else responsible. [84ff] The analogy here is with

understanding a language, in which (according to McKenna) for someone to have a

competent understanding of a language involves both being able to interpret what

others say to one, and also being able to express oneself to others in the language.

Thus a morally responsible agent must both be able to hold others morally

responsible, and also to grasp what it is to be held morally responsible by others.

Indeed, for McKenna, being able to understand these practices as applied to oneself

is not enough to ensure the capacity to exercise moral responsible agency: being

able to hold another (or oneself) morally responsible is more crucial than being able

to grasp being held morally responsible oneself. [78, 84]

As a final step, McKenna argues that a ‘‘morally responsible agent’s acting skills

and her holding-responsible skills’’ are enmeshed with each other just as inseparably

as are her skills at understanding and engaging in the practices of holding

responsible. [86] A morally responsible agent acts with the understanding that

others stand prepared to interpret her actions by reference to a variety of

conventions for understanding the moral significance of actions, and in particular for

interpreting what a given type of action implies about the states of mind,

motivations, and intentions that gave rise to that action. [86] Such an agent must be

able to adjust her conduct accordingly, so that others will not misunderstand her (or,

in strategic action cases, so that they will misunderstand her). [86] If an agent cannot

understand when and why others engage in the practices of holding responsible,

then she won’t be able to appreciate and comply with the moral demands being

made on her, including the second-personal demands. [86–87] Her inability to

understand their responses to her is tightly tied to her inability to hold others

responsible, and her inability to hold others morally responsible ‘‘shields her from a

raft of considerations that otherwise could figure in her reasons and motives for

action.’’ [212] The prominent reasons in question are second-personal reasons,

which are what is expressed through the practices of holding morally responsible.

[212] Unable to access these crucial reasons, she is unable to act on them, and thus

her capacity for being morally responsible is inhibited. [212]

Let’s call this the ‘‘dependence’’ argument, and try to spell it out a little more

succinctly. As background I should say that the aspect of McKenna’s argument

based on an analogy with language seems to me misguided, in part because the

analogy involves a false claim about language competence. It’s true, of course, that

most people can both understand and express themselves in any language in which

they are proficient. However, there are counter-examples. For example, I took

‘‘reading German’’ language courses in graduate school that enabled me to read

German texts but left me unable to write or speak German. Someone who is mute

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from birth and never learns either sign language or how to write could still

understand a language, even though the person would not be able to express himself

in it. And one can easily imagine building a language interpretation device that only

has the capacity to read, interpret, and respond to bits of language, but no capacity

to itself make statements. Given this, my reconstruction of the argument will leave

out the analogy with language.

I’ll consider three bare-bones versions of McKenna’s argument. Here’s the first

version.

Dependence Argument I

1. The practices of holding morally responsible are only fully understood by

someone who both understands what it means for her to be held responsible,

and also is able to hold others morally responsible.

2. It is not possible to understand what it means to be held morally responsible

without also being able to hold others morally responsible.

3. The practices of holding morally responsible express second-personal moral

demands on the person held responsible.

4. Therefore a person can fully understand the practices of holding morally

responsible only if she can understand and respond to second-personal moral

reasons.

5. Thus a person who cannot understand and respond to second-personal moral

reasons can neither understand what it means for her to be held morally

responsible nor hold others morally responsible.

6. If a person cannot understand what it means for her to be held morally

responsible, she is not morally responsible. [69]

7. Thus someone who cannot understand and respond to second-personal moral

reasons is neither morally responsible nor able to hold others morally

responsible.

8. Hence someone who is unable to hold others responsible (because she does not

understand second-personal reasons) is someone who herself cannot be morally

responsible.

This argument seems to me to be flawed. The first thing to note is that at best it

establishes that being capable of being morally responsible is co-extensional with

being capable of holding others morally responsible, but it does not establish that

being capable of holding others morally responsible is dependent on the capacity to

hold others responsible. Instead, by Premise 5, it appears that both capacities are

dependent on a third capacity: the capacity to understand and respond to second-

personal reasons. Thus the argument does not genuinely establish that being

responsible is dependent on being able to hold others responsible.

But there are other flaws as well. Imagine a person, let’s call her Eve 1, who is

only able to respond to the first ‘‘simple’’ type of moral reason I described above:

the fact that her hitting Adam’s sore elbow would cause pain. Eve 1 cares about

others’ pain, she cares about others’ happiness, and so forth, but she doesn’t


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recognize any other type of moral reason. In particular she doesn’t recognize

second-personal reasons, and further she isn’t familiar with the practices of holding

morally responsible. Still, although her moral universe is limited, she understands

that in hitting Adam’s sore elbow she has done something wrong, and she

understands why Adam is upset that his elbow has been hit, and upset with her for

being the cause of his pain.

In a variant on this story, suppose that Adam had said to Eve 1: ‘‘I demand, as a

member of the moral community, that you not hit my sore elbow.’’ Eve 1 wouldn’t

see this demand as an additional reason not to hit his elbow; she would just

understand him as pointing out, somewhat dramatically, that she has a simple moral

reason not to hit his elbow. She wouldn’t understand why he was more upset than

the Adam in the first version of this story, because she wouldn’t understand that he

regards himself as having two moral reasons, not just one, to be upset at her action.

Now consider Eve 2. Eve 2 is able to respond to simple moral reasons, such as

the fact that her hitting Adam’s sore elbow will cause him pain. She cares about

pain, but like Eve 1 she doesn’t recognize second-personal reasons: for her, the fact

that Adam demands not to be hit doesn’t cut any new moral ice. However, she’s

more sophisticated morally than Eve 1: she does understand and is able to

participate in practices of holding morally responsible. When she hits Adam’s

elbow, she understands why Adam is especially upset when he learns that she hit his

elbow out of the morally objectionable motive to cause him pain, and why he

berates her, tells her she’s despicable, and refuses to have lunch with her. Indeed,

she herself is capable of holding others responsible. For example, she blames Adam

when he deliberately trips her as she walks by his desk to the water cooler, and to

show her disapproval she refuses to go to the movies with him as she had promised.

McKenna claims that our practices of holding each other morally responsible

express second-personal moral demands on each other (Premise 3). He seems

committed to saying that there could be no Eve 2, an agent who understands simple

moral reasons (causing pain), does not understand second-personal reasons, but does

understand and participate in the practices of holding morally responsible. But the

Eve 2 case seems to me perfectly possible. There could be an Eve 2 who recognizes

only simple moral reason and yet understands and participates in the moral practices

of holding agents responsible when they act from a morally objectionable quality of

will. (After all, not everyone buys into Darwall’s second-personal moral reasons;

Eve might be a philosopher who didn’t have the benefit of training at Michigan.) Or

at least I don’t find any persuasive argument in McKenna’s book that shows an Eve

2 is not possible. Perhaps McKenna was misled about this because he describes the

holding-responsible practices as involving our making demands on each other [84,

87], and also describes Darwallian second-personal reasons as involving our making

demands on each other. But these are different kinds of demands. Darwallian

second-personal reasons arise from demands we make on each other to be treated in

a certain fashion—to be accorded respect and have our requests acknowledged and

honored, just because we are members of the moral community. The demands we

make on each other when engaged in the practices of holding responsible are very

different kinds of demands. Most obviously they include the demand to explain

one’s action or to apologize if it was done from an objectionable motive; they may

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include the demand to reform and to act better, and from better motives, in the

future. But it is far from clear that when Adam blames Eve for hitting his elbow he

is demanding that Eve not do that very act just because he had earlier demanded it,

or not do that very act from an objectionable motive. It’s far too late to make these

demands: Eve has already acted from the motive she had. But the demand that Eve

explain her action or apologize is very different from the demand involved in

second-personal moral reasons, that she refrain from hitting Adam’s elbow out of

respect for Adam as a member of the moral community. These demands are distinct,

even though it could be argued that we only demand apologies from agents who can

themselves make second-personal demands on us.

So Premise 3 in the Dependence Argument I seems false, and insofar as the

Dependence Argument I depends on it, the argument does not succeed. This

objection depends on my claim that McKenna actually asserts Premise 3, according

to which the practices of holding morally responsible express second-personal

moral demands on the person held responsible. There certainly seems to be lots of

textual support for this. But perhaps McKenna would not be overly unhappy to

retract this premise, and acknowledge that, while the practices of holding morally

responsible express some moral demands on the person being held responsible, they

do not necessarily have to express second-personal demands on her. If he relaxed

this requirement and adopted this more lenient strategy, the dependence argument

would then be restated as follows:

Dependence Argument II






30. The practices of holding morally responsible express either simple moral

demands or second-personal moral demands on the person held responsible.


responsible only if she can understand and respond either to simple moral

demands or to second-personal moral reasons.

50. Thus a person who cannot understand and respond either to simple moral reasons

or to second-personal moral reasons can neither understand what it means for her

to be held morally responsible nor hold others morally responsible.


responsible, she is not morally responsible.

70. Thus someone who cannot understand and respond either to simple moral

reasons or to second-personal moral reasons is neither morally responsible nor

able to hold others morally responsible.


understand either simple moral reasons or second-personal reasons) is someone

who herself cannot be morally responsible.


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The Dependence Argument II, like the Dependence Argument I, is weaker than the

argument McKenna needs, because it too only establishes, at best, co-extensionality

between being responsible and being capable of holding others responsible.

Furthermore, Premise 30 of this second version of McKenna’s argument seems

vulnerable to the second complaint previously registered for Premise 3 in

Dependence Argument I. While it may be true that in holding someone morally

responsible I am expressing moral demands on the person, the demands I am

expressing are demands that she explain herself or apologize, not the demand that

she act (or have acted) from either simple or second-personal reasons. It’s too late

for this demand. Hence, if the Dependence Argument II depends on Premise 30, it

fails to go through, since this version of the premise also seems false.

But McKenna may have a response to this challenge. His long-form formal

account of what it is to hold someone morally responsible goes as follows:

HMB2: A holds B morally responsible and blameworthy for act x if (1) A

believes B is blameworthy for x-ing, (2) A endorses the moral basis for

judging that x-ing is morally wrong, (3) A desires that B not have x-ed, (4) A’s

reason for desiring that B not have x-ed is that conditions 1 and 2 are satisfied,

and (5) because conditions 1 through 4 are satisfied, A is either disposed to

regard and in some cases respond to B negatively, or believes that it would be

appropriate to do so. [25]

On this account, if Adam holds Eve morally responsible for hitting his sore elbow,

Adam believes that Eve is blameworthy for hitting his elbow, and he endorses the

moral basis for judging that her hitting his elbow is wrong. Thus he endorses the

simple or second-personal reason that, in his opinion, she had not to hit his elbow.

Invoking account HMB2, McKenna could claim that in holding Eve morally

responsible Adam actually is expressing his endorsement of this reason not to so act

(even if, strictly speaking, he cannot coherently demand of her that she have

acknowledged this reason at the time she acted).3

One difficulty with this strategy is that it appears to require that Adam express his

blame for Eve through some overt behavior on his part—scolding her, berating her,

or refusing to have lunch with her. But McKenna is clear that one can hold another

person responsible in a purely private manner, without ever engaging in any overt

behavior that expresses one’s attitudes. [26] In such cases an attitude is

‘‘manifested,’’ although privately, in the blamer’s experiencing a feeling of

resentment or indignation. But this sort of manifesting is not ‘‘expressing’’ in any

sense that involves genuine communication. In general in trying to interpret

McKenna’s argument I had difficulty in determining whether he was, or needed to

be, talking about overt behavior, instead of inner episodes of experiencing certain

attitudes. The talk about ‘‘practices’’ all seems to involve overt behavior, although

the conclusion of the main argument on which I am focusing is that someone who is

3 One question here is whether HMB2 implies that, when an agent holds another person responsible,

there is some moral reason that the agent specifically endorses according to which it is wrong for the

person to x—or is it sufficient that the agent believes there is some moral reason or other making x-ing

wrong, even though the agent has no particular moral reason in mind?

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unable to hold others responsible is someone who herself cannot be morally

responsible, where ‘‘holding’’ and ‘‘being responsible’’ are clearly understood as

episodes that can be purely private—even though the argument as McKenna

develops it makes what appears to be crucial references to ‘‘practices.’’ Since I

wasn’t able to sort all this out, I won’t try to pursue this line of inquiry here, and will

hope that he clarifies it.

But there is a second difficulty with what I’m calling McKenna’s Dependence

Argument II. If we turn to his account of what it is to be morally blameworthy (a

special case of being morally responsible), we find he says this:

MB0: A person is morally [responsible and]4 blameworthy for her action x if

[and only if] she knows that x is morally wrong, she performs x freely, and in

x-ing she acts from a morally objectionable quality of will; [and if she acts in

ignorance, her ignorance is either culpable or she has derivative responsibility

for it].5 [61]

Thus (setting aside cases of culpable ignorance and derivative responsibility) we

know that a person is blameworthy only if she knows x is morally wrong (or, as

many theorists would say, only if she believes x is morally wrong; knowledge seems

unnecessary, although it is possible that true belief is necessary). Now, according to

my second interpretation of McKenna’s argument for the dependence of being

responsible on being able to hold someone responsible, what really does the work in

establishing his conclusion is the assumption that when a person holds someone

morally responsible, she thereby endorses at least some moral reasons for acting.

According to HMB2, Adam, for example, in blaming Eve, endorses as a reason for

the wrongness of her hitting his elbow that she thereby caused him pain. But, by

MB’, we already know that a person cannot be morally responsible unless she

endorses at least some moral reason relevant to her act. So we didn’t need the

Dependence Argument to show that a morally responsible person must believe that

there are moral reasons not to act as she does. All we need is MB’, McKenna’s

account of being morally responsible. So it appears that we didn’t need the complex

detour through the Dependence Argument, or more generally the conversational

account of moral responsibility, to establish this fact. In fact the morally responsible

person’s being responsible doesn’t depend on her being able to hold others

responsible; rather it depends on her believing there are moral reasons to act, a

belief that underlies both her own moral responsibility and her capacity to hold

others morally responsible.

I’ll take a third and final shot at interpreting what McKenna might have meant in

developing his dependence argument. Perhaps, in saying that the practices of

holding morally responsible express second-personal moral demands on the person

4 I’ve added this phrase to maintain the parallel with HMB2.5 McKenna’s statements of MB’ and its predecessor MB [15] are statements of sufficient conditions only,

since he believes a full statement of necessary and sufficient conditions must accommodate issues of

culpable ignorance and derivative responsibility. Since these are not germane to the argument here, I have

incorporated an attempt to deal with these issues into a statement of MB’ as a statement of necessary and

sufficient conditions.


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held responsible (Premise 3 in Dependence Argument I), what McKenna really

means is that the special demands made by Adam when he holds Eve responsible for

hitting his sore elbow are themselves a species of second-personal demands. It’s not

that in holding her responsible he’s demanding that Eve respect his status as a

member of the moral community by not hitting his elbow when he has asked her not

to do so. Rather he’s demanding that she owes him, as a member of the moral

community, an explanation or apology for her action. So the second-personal

demands that Adam expresses are demands for this kind of behavior from Eve, not

demands that she have acted differently in the first place. He’s placing new moral

demands on her, which he has the authority to do because he deserves a certain sort

of respect from her. Thus we would have to add a third type of moral reason to our

initial catalog of moral reasons: the special second-personal reason a person has to

respond to a demand from a member of the moral community that she explain her

action or apologize. In light of this, we might interpret McKenna’s dependence

argument in a third way:

Dependence Argument III






300. The practices of holding morally responsible express a special second-personal

moral demand on the person held responsible, specifically the demand that she

either explain her action or apologize.6


responsible only if she can understand and respond to this special second-

personal moral reason that she either explain her action or apologize.

500. Thus a person who cannot understand and respond to this special second-

personal moral reason can neither understand what it means for her to be held

morally responsible nor hold others morally responsible.


responsible, she is not morally responsible.

700. Thus someone who cannot understand and respond to the special second-

personal moral reason to explain her action or apologize is neither morally

responsible nor able to hold others morally responsible.


understand the special second-personal reason) is someone who herself cannot

be morally responsible.

6 The actual content of such a special second-personal demand would doubtless be more complex, but for

our purposes this statement of it can stand in for the fully stated demand.

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That McKenna may have in mind this third version of the dependence argument

may be supported by his discussion of socially isolated Robinson Crusoe 3. Robinson

3 can apply moral predicates, and so can understand that his beating his dog Rover is

cruel and wrong. But he has no concept of an interpersonal moral responsibility

exchange in which one agent blames, or holds responsible, another. He has no idea

what it would mean to be blamed, or to be held to account for his actions. [108–109]

McKenna asks whether it would be appropriate to blame Robinson 3 for beating

Rover. He admits that there would be no point to blaming Robinson 3, since he would

not understand what was being said to him. However, he notes that the propriety of

blaming Robinson can come apart from the question of whether Robinson is

blameworthy. Nonetheless he concludes that while Robinson is a moral agent, and

acts wrongly in beating his dog, nevertheless he is not blameworthy for his act,

because he has ‘‘no access to Darwallian second-person reasons,’’ so can’t even

‘‘consider a distinctive class of reasons not to act as he does.’’ [109] McKenna says of

Robinson 3 that ‘‘As a moral-responsibility idiot, one who is incapable of grasping

and understanding the interpersonal exchanges central to a conversational theory, he

is not blameworthy.’’ [110] This is expressed in Premise 6, which is needed in all

three versions of the Dependence Argument. Unfortunately the passages cited from

McKenna are not sufficiently clear about the specific second-personal reasons on

which Robinson is alleged to have no grasp. In saying that they are ‘‘a distinctive

class of reasons not to act as he does [my emphasis],’’ McKenna’s phrasing strongly

suggests that he has in mind the first kind of second-personal reasons referred to in

my statement of the Dependence Argument I: for example, the second-personal

reason Eve has not to hit Adam’s elbow because he asked her not to. If this is the

import of the argument, then we are really dealing with the first dependence

argument, which I have argued is defeated by my case of Eve 2, who understands

simple moral reasons and practices for holding morally responsible, but not second-

personal reasons. But possibly McKenna has in mind the special category of second-

personal reasons that arise when a member of the moral community demands that we

explain or apologize for our actions. Then the question is whether a person who

understands other kinds of second-personal reasons, but doesn’t understand this

particular type of such reasons, can be blameworthy. McKenna says he cannot. Here

it seems to me it’s correct to concede that there would be no point in blaming such a

person, and also to agree that such a person would not be able to blame others or hold

them morally responsible. He doesn’t have the concepts to do so. But, contra

McKenna, I believe it would be correct to say that Robinson 3 is in fact morally

responsible and blameworthy for cruelly beating his dog. He may not have a grasp of

the full range of moral reasons, but he has a grasp of enough of this range that he

satisfies McKenna’s account of being morally responsible: MB0: A person is morally

[responsible and] blameworthy for his action x if he knows that x is morally wrong,

he performs x freely, and in x-ing he acts from a morally objectionable quality of

will. Thus (contra Conclusion 800) Robinson 3 provides an example of someone who

cannot hold others responsible, but who is himself responsible when he cruelly beats

his dog.

My conclusion is that the three versions I have outlined of McKenna’s

Dependence Argument at most establish that both being morally responsible, and


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holding someone else to be morally responsible, depend on an agent’s endorsing

moral reasons for acting. Contrary to his bold claim, they do not show that an

agent’s being morally responsible is dependent on his ability to hold others

responsible. And since Premise 6 in all three versions seems false, they do not even

establish co-extensionality between these two states. Nor do they seem to establish

the truth of a secondary claim that McKenna makes, namely that an agent’s capacity

to be responsible and to hold others responsible depend on his endorsing or

expressing second-personal moral reasons.

References

Darwall, Stephen. (2006). The second-person standpoint: Morality, respect, accountability. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

McKenna, Michael. (2012). Conversation and responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Watson, Gary. (1987). Responsibility, the limits of evil: Variations on a Strawsonian theme. In Ferdinand

Schoeman (Ed.), Responsibility, character, and the emotions: New essays in moral psychology

(pp. 256–286). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

H. M. Smith

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Does Being Morally Responsible Depend on the Ability to Hold Morally Responsible?