This book empirically investigates the social practice of ascribing moral responsibility to others for the things they failed to do, and it discusses the philosophical relevance of this practice.0In our everyday life, we often blame others for things they failed to do. For instance, we might blame our neighbour for not watering our plants during our vacation. Interestingly, the attribution of blame is typically accompanied by the attribution of causal responsibility. We do not only blame our neighbour for not watering our plants, but we do so because we believe that not watering the plants caused them to dry up and die. In this book, I investigate how we make moral and causal judgments about omissions. I discuss different philosophical perspectives on this matter, and I outline to what extent the actual social practice is in line with philosophical theories.

Besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. Omitting and refraining are not simply special cases of action; they require their own distinctive treatment. This book offers the first comprehensive account of these phenomena, addressing questions of metaphysics, agency, and moral responsibility.

This edited volume of new essays explores the principles that govern moral responsibility and legal liability for omissive conduct--behavior that did not occur. Many contributors here try to make sense of the possibility of moral responsibility for omissions, including those that occur unwittingly. The disagreements among them concern the grounds of moral responsibility in these cases: the constellation of states and traits that constitute the self, or the quality of one's will, or exercises of evaluative judgment, or the ability and opportunity to avoid the omission, or the tracing back to a time when one had the witting ability to take steps to avoid future omission. Some contributors consider whether omissions need to be under one's control if one is to be morally responsible for them, as well as which sense of "control" is relevant, if it is, to the question of moral responsibility. Yet others consider whether it is possible for an agent to be morally responsible for an omission that she could not have avoided. On the legal side, contributors also consider various issues concerning the status of omissions in the law: whether circumstances that are usually described as involving legal liability for omissions are better described as involving legal liability for entire courses of conduct; the conditions (such as creation of the peril) under which one can be legally liable for an omission to rescue; why a defendant's legal guilt for a crime can be predicated on an omission to act only if the defendant was under a legal duty to engage in the omitted act; and whether this "duty requirement" is grounded in the desirability of shielding from legal liability those who are not criminally culpable or in the constraint that one's body and property may not be appropriated for the general good. Included with the essays is an introduction to the topic by the volume editors. The book will be of interest to moral philosophers, philosophers of law, and other legal scholars.

This edited volume of new essays explores the principles that govern moral responsibility and legal liability for omissive conduct--behavior that did not occur. Many contributors here try to make sense of the possibility of moral responsibility for omissions, including those that occur unwittingly. The disagreements among them concern the grounds of moral responsibility in these cases: the constellation of states and traits that constitute the self, or the quality of one's will, or exercises of evaluative judgment, or the ability and opportunity to avoid the omission, or the tracing back to a time when one had the witting ability to take steps to avoid future omission. Some contributors consider whether omissions need to be under one's control if one is to be morally responsible for them, as well as which sense of "control" is relevant, if it is, to the question of moral responsibility. Yet others consider whether it is possible for an agent to be morally responsible for an omission that she could not have avoided. On the legal side, contributors also consider various issues concerning the status of omissions in the law: whether circumstances that are usually described as involving legal liability for omissions are better described as involving legal liability for entire courses of conduct; the conditions (such as creation of the peril) under which one can be legally liable for an omission to rescue; why a defendant's legal guilt for a crime can be predicated on an omission to act only if the defendant was under a legal duty to engage in the omitted act; and whether this "duty requirement" is grounded in the desirability of shielding from legal liability those who are not criminally culpable or in the constraint that one's body and property may not be appropriated for the general good. Included with the essays is an introduction to the topic by the volume editors. The book will be of interest to moral philosophers, philosophers of law, and other legal scholars.

Neil Levy presents a new theory of freedom and responsibility. He defends a particular account of consciousness—the global workspace view—and argues that consciousness plays an especially important role in action. There are good reasons to think that the naïve assumption, that consciousness is needed for moral responsibility, is in fact true.

A comparative and collaborative study of the foundational principles and concepts that underpin different domestic systems of criminal law.

A collection of John Martin Fischer's essays on free will and moral responsibility. Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that moral responsibility does not require free will in the sense that implies alternative possibilities and a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility.

This book provides a comprehensive, systematic theory of moral responsibility. The authors explore the conditions under which individuals are morally responsible for actions, omissions, consequences, and emotions. The leading idea in the book is that moral responsibility is based on 'guidance control'. This control has two components: the mechanism that issues in the relevant behavior must be the agent's own mechanism, and it must be appropriately responsive to reasons. The book develops an account of both components. The authors go on to offer a sustained defense of the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism.

This book offers a set of essays, old and new, examining the positive obligations of individuals and the state in matters of criminal law. The centrepiece is a new, extended essay on the criminalisation of omissions-examining the duties to act imposed on individuals and organisations by the criminal law, and assessing their moral and social foundations. Alongside this is another new essay on the state's positive obligations to put in place criminal laws to protect certain individual rights. Introducing the volume is the author's much-cited essay on criminalisation, 'Is the Criminal Law a Lost Cause?'. The book sets out to shed new light on contemporary arguments about the proper boundaries of the criminal law, not least by exploring the justifications for imposing positive duties (reinforced by the criminal law) on individuals and their relation to the positive obligations of the state.

Idealism is a family of metaphysical views each of which gives priority to the mental. The best-known forms of idealism in Western philosophy are Berkeleyan idealism, which gives ontological priority to the mental (minds and ideas) over the physical (bodies), and Kantian idealism, which gives a kind of explanatory priority to the mental (the structure of the understanding) over the physical (the structure of the empirical world). Although idealism was once a dominant view in Western philosophy, it has suffered almost total neglect over the last several decades. This book rectifies this situation by bringing together seventeen essays by leading philosophers on the topic of metaphysical idealism. The various essays explain, attack, or defend a variety of idealistic theories, including not only Berkeleyan and Kantian idealisms but also those developed in traditions less familiar to analytic philosophers, including Buddhism and Hassidic Judaism. Although a number of the articles draw on historical sources, all will be of interest to philosophers working in contemporary metaphysics. This volume aims to spark a revival of serious philosophical interest in metaphysical idealism.