Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2018
I respond to the Behavioral and Brain Sciences commentaries on my book, Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency. I defend and amend both the skeptical challenge to morally responsible agency, that is, the book's impetus, and the anti-skeptical theory I develop to address that challenge. Regarding the skeptical challenge, I argue that it must be taken more seriously than some of my sanguine commentators assert, and consider some ways its impact might be blunted, such as by appeal to individual differences and the practical efficacy of human behavior. Regarding my positive theory, I defend the role of values in morally responsible agency against numerous criticisms, and consider various suggestions for elaborating my social, “collaborativist” account of morally responsible agency. In closing, I comment on the appropriate aspirations for theorizing about moral responsibility and agency.
Target article
Précis of Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency
Related commentaries (28)
A limited skeptical threat
A related proposal: An interactionist perspective on reason
Acknowledging and managing deep constraints on moral agency and the self
Acting without knowledge
Agency enhancement and social psychology
Agency is realized by subpersonal mechanisms too
Another rescue mission: Does it make sense?
Getting by with a little help from our friends
Grounding responsibility in something (more) solid
Innate valuation, existential framing, and one head for multiple moral hats
Learning to talk to ourselves: Development, ignorance, and agency
Manipulation, oppression, and the deep self
Moral agency among the ruins
Negotiating responsibility
On properly characterizing moral agency
Responsibility: Cognitive fragments and collaborative coherence?
Seeing for ourselves: Insights into the development of moral behaviour from models of visual perception and misperception
Talking to others' selves: Why a valuational paradigm of agency fails to provide an adequate theoretical framework for moral responsibility, social accountability, and legal liability
Talking to others: The importance of responsibility attributions by observers
The dark side of dialog
The Nietzschean precedent for anti-reflective, dialogical agency
The participatory dimension of individual responsibility
The practice of everyday life provides supporters and inviters of morally responsible agency
The tangled web of agency
To kill a bee: The aptness and moralistic heuristics of reactive attitudes
What does agency afford the self?
Why value values?
“Defeaters” don't matter
Author response
Collaborating agents: Values, sociality, and moral responsibility