Responsibility Allocation and Human Rights
How does morality allocate responsibility for what it requires? I am concerned here with one fundamental part of this question, namely, how morality determines responsibility when multiple agents are capable of contributing to or completing a moral task, and special relationships capable of generati...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
[2017]
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In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2017, Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 627-642 |
IxTheo Classification: | NCC Social ethics NCD Political ethics VA Philosophy |
Further subjects: | B
Aggregation
B Cheapest cost avoider B Human Rights B Refugees B Responsibility B Contractualism |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | How does morality allocate responsibility for what it requires? I am concerned here with one fundamental part of this question, namely, how morality determines responsibility when multiple agents are capable of contributing to or completing a moral task, and special relationships capable of generating duties with respect to the task are non-existent, insufficient as a moral response, or partly indeterminate. On one view, responsibility falls to the agents who can bear it with the least burden. I show why this is initially attractive and mistaken. Instead, I defend an equity-based approach that accommodates the intuitions that both support and trouble the least-cost principle. One upshot is that sometimes we ought prefer a distribution of responsibility that is more expensive and less local than needed to complete the task. I illustrate the practical significance of the argument in terms of the human rights of refugees. |
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ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-017-9808-z |