There is something painful about being blamed. Blame, as philosophers have put it, has a sting. Sometimes, however, it can sting to not be blamed—in particular, it can feel patronizing to have someone judge us not blameworthy. This is particularly the case when this judgment is formed in a way that suggests that we are not rational enough to be morally responsible. Mentally disabled people are often patronized in this way, sometimes with devastating downstream consequences. But what is it to patronize someone, such that doing so bears these immediate and long-term effects? And what is it to blame someone, such that to withhold blame can be to commit this wrong?

This dissertation aims to answer these questions. On the view I develop and defend, Agent A patronizes Agent B when (1) A forms a judgment that underestimates the degree to which B possesses some valuable rational capacity; (2) This underestimation is due to A’s failure to adhere to the relevant standard of epistemic care in forming that judgment; and (3) A’s epistemic failure involves a failure to suitably attend to B as an agent. This view can explain what is patronizing, when it is patronizing, about withholding blame from someone. On many plausible views, judging someone blameworthy involves judging her to be capable of responding to reasons. Withholding blame is patronizing, then, when it results from underestimating an agent’s reasons-responsiveness without sufficiently attending to her.

I explore some theoretical and ethical consequences of this view of patronizing. On the theoretical side, I argue that a successful theory of blame must explain how blame is the sort of thing the withholding of which can be patronizing. I show that some existing theories, namely attributionist theories, violate this constraint. On the ethical side, I explore how our obligation to avoid patronizing interacts with our widely recognized obligation to avoid wrongful blaming. I argue that some marginalized agents, such as autistic agents, are systemically patronized. I demonstrate that my view of patronizing can help us articulate this complex moral situation and can suggest a way forward.

Philosophers have developed rich frameworks with which to analyze the normativity of various objectionable forms of non-rational influence, such as manipulation. However, rational influence is seen as the paradigm of permissible influence, and as such, its normative contours have been underexplored. Tracking idiomatic expressions and aphorisms that often emerge in interpersonal interactions, like “Mind your own business,” and “Pick your battles” I address four themes central to evaluating the (im)permissibility of rational influence. In chapter 1, I argue that key features of close personal relationships, namely vulnerability, care, and trust, complicate the normative status of efforts to rationally influence others. I suggest that there are cases in which these features can make it inappropriate or disrespectful to influence another by providing them with even good reasons. In chapter 2, I explore the claim that we need standing (some sort of status or authority) to offer certain sorts of reasons to others, as when we give advice. It is widely held, for instance, that it is inappropriate to offer reasons to others when the underlying matter is not our business. I argue that whether something is our business turns partly on whether we stand in a relationship to the influencee that licenses expectations that they respond to the kind of reason we address to them, be it a request, a demand, advice, etc. In chapter 3, I argue that certain features of special relationships, like expectations of mutual care and trust, can make otherwise generally objectionable forms of nonrational influence, like minor manipulations, permissible. When used appropriately, these forms of influence can even be beneficial to the relationship and its members. Finally, in chapter 4, I turn to trust, which is often construed both as a form of influence and a necessary condition for successful influence. I offer a novel account of unwelcome trust and argue that this phenomenon reveals what we (normatively) expect from others when we trust them. Namely, we expect those we trust to adopt a certain orientation of care toward us, and this is sometimes construed as burdensome or unwelcome because of its connection to special interpersonal relationships.

Most people acknowledge that epistemic considerations matter for moral responsibility. For example, it matters for responsibility whether a pharmacist knowingly or unknowingly gave a customer the wrong medication. It might be that even though the pharmacist made an unwitting error, she’s still responsible for her wrongdoing – but we would want to know more about the nature and etiology of her epistemic state. Despite this near universal recognition that these considerations matter, however, the epistemic dimension of moral responsibility has traditionally taken a backseat to issues regarding free will. The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand how this epistemic dimension influences responsibility and construct a core theory. In chapter one, I introduce the epistemic dimension and address some important issues that aren’t central to my project before moving on to the main project at hand. In chapter two, I evaluate the prospects for attributionism, an approach to moral responsibility that grounds responsibility in an agent’s evaluative orientation. In chapter three, I then consider a rival approach, capacitarianism, which emphasizes the capacities of an agent. In chapter four, I expand on the awareness of risk condition that forms the foundation of my account of the epistemic dimension. Finally, in chapter five, I address remaining issues regarding my account of the epistemic dimension. The centerpiece of the dissertation is my theory of the awareness of risk condition. I argue that in order to be blameworthy for some outcome, the agent must have: (1) an occurrent belief of the general risk of her conduct, and (2) a disposition to believe the specific risk of her conduct. As far as the occurrent belief, the agent must entertain a belief about the riskiness of her actions at the time of wrongdoing, but this doesn’t mean she must explicitly entertain that belief. As for the disposition to believe, I articulate a notion whereby such dispositions are grounded in other beliefs and perceptions and require some mediating process to form the relevant belief

Taking things at face value, we are free and responsible agents. That is to say, sometimes we act in ways that merit praise and blame. I believe that the theory that best makes sense of this fact—supposing that it is one—is the agent-causal theory of free will. At the heart of the agent-causal theory is the idea that agents are directly causally involved in the production of their free actions; we cannot wholly account for the agent’s causal role in free will by referring to, as has been typically thought, things going on inside the agent’s head. For much of the last century, most writers have neglected to take the theory seriously, often outright dismissing it. I argue that this neglect has not been justified. There is more to be said for the view than critics have previously realized. Furthermore, probing these criticisms and honing the agent-causal theory helps to shed light on a number of important issues for the free will dialectic.

The aim of this project is two-fold: first, it aims to address substantive objections traditionally leveraged against agent causation, and, second, it aims to begin to develop the agent-causal view in ways that make the view more plausible. Chapter 1 starts by introducing the background and framework that will be in place for the rest of the discussion. Chapter 2 addresses a long-standing concern about agent causation, which says that the commitment to substance causation is too ontologically demanding. I argue that agent causation does not necessarily require substance causation and is in fact compatible with certain event-causal frameworks. Chapter 3 addresses an empirical objection which says that agent causation conflicts with what we know about the laws of physics. I argue that the objection overstates the empirical evidence against agent causation. Chapters 4 and 5 turn to the positive project of elucidating under-discussed aspects of agent causation. Chapter 4 examines how best to account for acting on a reason within an agent-causalist framework. It is argued that the most plausible account involves taking the relation of acting on a reason as a primitive. And Chapter 5 then considers what a reasons-responsive account of agent causation might look like. It is argued that a straightforward integration between agent causation and the standard reasons-responsive account is implausible. Nonetheless, the failure of integration reveals a general problem for reasons-responsive accounts, suggesting that the most plausible account of reasons-responsiveness will be non-modal.

I argue for an ahistorical account of moral responsibility. An agent is responsible for her behavior, and is thus a fitting target of reactive attitudes such as praise and blame, if and only if the agent acts while in the possession of the reasons-responsiveness capacities to recognize reasons and to act in accord with the reasons she recognizes. We need not augment this account with conditions tied to the agent’s history, as the account can provide satisfying explanations for cases of culpable incapacity (where the agent is incapacitated because of her prior misbehavior) and of bad history (where the agent’s wrongdoing is the product of having been neglected or mistreated). This ahistorical account of moral responsibility shows us that responsibility is about the sort of agent you are when you act, not about what happened in your past.

This dissertation in part aims to use the case of addiction to consider which theory of moral responsibility best accounts for and explains the features core to assessments of blameworthiness. In this project, I argue that Reasons Responsiveness theories provide a better framework for tracking and explaining the features necessary to responsible agency than Quality of Will theories. I also show how the condition of addiction can help refine theoretical commitments made by Reasons Responsiveness theories with regard to assessing blameworthiness for wrongdoing. Further, I give direction as to how we should think about addiction in theorizing about responsibility, including how we might conceptualize the condition, which of its features are most important in assessments of responsibility, and whether, why, and how significantly the condition might undermine responsible agency. After clarifying my assumptions about moral responsibility in chapter 1, in chapter 2 I argue against conceptualizing addiction as irresistibly compelling addictive substance use. I also offer some paradigmatic cases of addiction that have been influential in philosophical discussions about moral responsibility and introduce complications to these cases given the richer notion of addiction I defend. In chapter 3, I challenge the claim that Quality of Will views alone rightly account for moral responsibility in the case of Frankfurt’s so-called “willing addict.” I contend that the stipulations about addiction, wrongdoing, and control in the cases invite implicit assumptions that impact how the cases are often sorted in terms of blameworthiness and excuse. In chapter 4, I contend that structural Quality of Will views depend on the feature of effort to distinguish relevantly different cases of so-called “unwillingness” with regard to wrongdoing. Yet, I argue that this dependence on effort puts the views at a loss for explaining cases in which effort is absent because responsible agency seems undermined in some important way. In chapter 5, I argue that non-structural Quality of Will views cannot explain how addiction can mitigate blameworthiness for addiction-explained wrongdoing. Finally, in chapter 6, I offer guidance for how capacitarian Reasons Responsiveness views might explain the relevance of culpability for addiction in assessments of blameworthiness for addiction-explained wrongdoing.