Reconceptualising blame, blameworthiness and basic desert: a new perspective on moral responsibility (and moral responsibility skepticism)
Publication Date
July 27, 2026
Creator
Shields, Sean
University of Nottingham
Abstract
This thesis makes two broad sets of arguments, as reflected in its two distinct parts. In Part One, the first set of arguments concern how we might profitably reconceptualise moral responsibility. What motivates this is partly a sense of frustration at how concepts which are undoubtedly central to the moral responsibility debate – blame, blameworthiness, and moral responsibility itself – have been so variably, and quite often ambiguously, interpreted. As a result, it can be difficult to know to what extent (apparently) competing theories of moral responsibility are in fact talking about the same thing.
Of course, in any area of philosophical enquiry, assumptions about basic concepts must be made. There is a danger of spending too long defining our terms and never reaching the more interesting destinations of enquiry to which we might want to set sail. But my growing impression was that the moral responsibility debate is especially afflicted with a lack of clarity about some of its most fundamental concepts. I felt there was room, and need, for a new perspective. In the first half of the thesis, I therefore propose an original overarching conception of moral responsibility. If theories of moral responsibility are in the same business, this overarching conception represents my attempt at defining the business they are in.
The second set of arguments, in Part Two, relate to a specific kind of moral responsibility: basic desert. During my initial research into the moral responsibility literature, I became convinced that this is a species of moral responsibility with especially profound importance. In particular, I found the established arguments in favour of skepticism about basic desert enormously powerful, and I was interested in exploring their practical significance. However, as my research developed, I increasingly sensed that the notion of basic desert had not been as clearly articulated as I had initially thought. The question of what basic desert is remains unsettled, and this needs attention first. Part Two of the thesis therefore addresses this, and aims to establish the kind of moral responsibility which the established arguments for basic desert skepticism in fact serve to undermine. The central upshot of my discussion is that what has been presented as basic desert skepticism can in fact be reconstrued as basic reason skepticism. This recentres the skepticism in what I think is a clarifying way: it now principally reveals how familiar features of our agency which are typically taken to have an important kind of normative significance, in fact lack such significance. The practical implications of such skepticism are thereby potentially even more wide-ranging than has been previously appreciated.
The two parts of the thesis therefore address distinct issues, but they share a similar motivation. They are each a response to what I perceive as a lack of clarity in how we ought to understand the relevant concepts. The conceptual framework I set out in Part One of the thesis, I hope to show, provides a clarifying lens for the arguments made in Part Two. Nonetheless the arguments of Part Two do not depend upon on accepting the arguments of Part One. In this sense the two parts of the thesis therefore stand apart and have independent merit.
Item Type
ethesis
Thesis Type
PhD
Supervisors
Subjects (LC)
Associated Schools / Departments
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