MODIFIERS OF

RESPONSIBILITY
Ethics in Theory and Practice
Presumed Arguments

• Voluntariness is said to be complete and

perfect if the agent has full knowledge and
full consent.
• If either the knowledge where wholly
lacking or the consent were wholly lacking,
there could be no voluntariness
Question/s for Discussion
• What sort of things render
voluntariness imperfect, reducing
the specifically human character
of the act and making the agent
less responsible?
Five (5) modifiers of responsibility
• Ignorance, affecting the knowledge
• Strong emotion, affecting the consent of
the will
• Intellectual fear, opposing to the will a
contrary wish
• Force, actual use of physical compulsion
• Habit, a tendency acquired by repetition
Five (5) modifiers of responsibility
• Ignorance
- the lack of knowledge affects the
voluntariness of a human act so as to make
the act less human act.
- the only ignorance that has ethical
import is ignorance an agent ought not to
have; an ignorance that ought not to exist.
 Three (3) kinds of Ignorance
• Ignorance that can be overcome by
acquiring the requisite knowledge is called
vincible ignorance
• Ignorance that cannot be overcome
because the requisite knowledge cannot be
acquired is called invincible ignorance
• Ignorance deliberately cultivated in order to
avoid knowing what ought to be known is
called affected or studied ignorance
Invincible Ignorance
• Precludes responsibility
• The knowledge is simply unobtainable
2 reasons: a). Being unaware of his or
her ignorance, the person does
not know there is any knowledge
to be acquired.
b.) being aware of his/her ignorance,
the person’s effort to obtain the
knowledge are no avail.
Invincible Ignorance
• since in either case the
knowledge is unobtainable and
since no one can be held to do
the impossible, what is done in
invincible ignorance is not
voluntary, and so the agent is not
responsible
Vincible Ignorance
• does not preclude responsibility, but lessens it
• The person knows that he or she is ignorant
and that the knowledge is obtainable
• If a person deliberately fails to make sufficient
effort to overcome the ignorance and so allows
the ignorance to remain, the effects that follow
from such ignorance are indirectly voluntary.
• By willing to remain in ignorance, the person is
responsible for the consequences
Vincible Ignorance
• The blameworthiness of vincible
ignorance depends on the amount of
effort put forth to overcome it, and the
amount of effort called for depends
on the importance of the matter and
the obligation of the agent to possess
such knowledge
Affected Ignorance
• In a way lessens, in a way increases,
responsibility.
- the ignorance, deliberately cultivated,
increases the responsibility if the person
intends to use the ignorance as an
excuse.
- It lessens, for example, to lessen the risk
of punishment or to avoid having to carry
out a known duty.
 2. Strong Emotion
• Strong emotion increases the force of
the willed act, but to the degree such
emotion lessens voluntariness it also
lessens responsibility, and so the act is
to that degree less a human act.
Strong emotions, (a) if prior to
the act ,is called antecedent
and may preclude responsibility
by making deliberation and
therefore voluntariness
impossible; usually such
emotions lessens responsibility;
(b) if generated after and as a
result of our own deliberate
choice, is called consequent and
does not lessen responsibility but
may increase it.
 Key points
• Very strong or violent antecedent emotion
may preclude responsibility.
• Very strong or violent antecedent emotion
usually lessens responsibility.
• Strong or violent consequent emotion
does not lessen responsibility but may
increase it.
3. Fear
• Intellectual fear
• consisting of an understanding of a
threatened evil and a movement of the will
to avoid this evil by rationally devised
means,
• affects voluntariness only when it is the
motive for acting and does not preclude
responsibility lessens it because of the
contrary wish mingled with our actual will
Fear

• The aim of fear is to protect the self

from anticipated evil
• It is intellectual fear only when we act
from fear as a motive for acting and
not merely with fear as
accompaniment of our act.
 Key points

• Intellectual fear does not preclude

responsibility. Why?
-This kind of fear does not produce
panic and loss of self- control, the
person still makes a deliberate choice
for an escape to an impending evil.
 Key points
• Intellectual fear lessens responsibility
- an act motivated by intellectual fear is
one that we deliberately will; however, we
would not will it except for the fear we
experience.
- reluctance weakens the consent of
the will, lessens our self control.
- the person chooses something rather
no obliged to do.
4.Force
• Force is the actual use of physical
might to make us against our will
• We must considered force in its
strictest sense as not merely a threat
but as the actual use of physical
might
• The Victim of force has no
responsibility if he or she does not
consent
Habit
• Habit is a constant way of acting and
is acquired by the repetition of the
same act.
• The acquisition of a habit may be:
a. directly voluntary/deliberately to
acquire , and if so, the agent has
complete responsibility not only for a
habit but for the acts that results from it
Habit
• b.) indirectly voluntary, and because the
habit is formed by deliberately doing acts
we know to be habit forming, the agent
has complete responsibility for the habit,
which was foreseen, and for the acts
resulting from the habit.
• We may not intend to acquire a habit for
its own sake but voluntarily perform acts
that we know are habit forming.
Habit
• C.) involuntary/unintentionally acquired,
and as long as the agent remains unaware
of his or her habit, the agent is not
responsible for the habit or for the acts
resulting from the habit
• In this case we are not responsible for the
existence of the habit or the acts that
unintentionally follow from it, so long as we
remain ignorant that we have the habit.
 What will happen if we decide to
let the habit remain?
• Our possession of the habit now
becomes directly voluntary. And the
acts unintentionally follow from the
habit are indirectly voluntary.
• the agent has complete
responsibility for it and the resulting
acts.
 What will happen if we decide to
get rid of the habit?
• if the agent chooses to get rid of the
habit and deliberately works at
countering it, the acts that
inadvertently reappear would be
less voluntary and so the agent
would be less responsible or, in
some case, not responsible at all.
 What will happen if we decide to
get rid of the habit?

• We are now the victim of tow opposite

pulls, a.) the voluntary decision of our
will to suppress or get rid of the habit
and the b.) involuntary persistence of
the habit itself.