The Hard Problem of Responsibility

According to standard versions of reason-responsiveness agents are fit to be held responsible for a failure to act as reasons require when they had the capacity to act in that way, there were no excuses available to hinder the exercise of that capacity, and still they failed to exercise it. But this analysis suggests that such a failure has to be a fluke that is due to sheer chance or an unknown glitch. And in that case there is no obvious reason to blame the agent for the failure. This chapter seeks to recast the reason-responsiveness approach so that it can deal with this crucial problem.