Moral Relativism and Moral Persons

Overview: This module discusses the two important issues of Meta-ethics: Moral
relativism and moral persons. It is important to discuss these topics before proceeding to
different ethical theories.

Content:
1.Moral Relativism
As mentioned in the previous section, the moral beliefs and practices of people are
greatly influenced by the environment that surrounds them. How the individual was
brought up and the social and cultural elements that the person was exposed to contribute
to his/her understanding and judgment of what is right and wrong. Given such
phenomena, can we conclude that morality is relative, that is, what is right varies from
one person to another or from one culture to another? Or is morality objective, that is,
what is right is based on a universal principle that applies to all people regardless of
culture, religion, or ideology? This is one major meta-ethical issue in philosophy which
this section will address.
The view which holds that all moral principles are valid relative to a particular
society or individual, is called ethical relativism. It is to be distinguished from ethical
skepticism which claims that there are no valid moral principles at all (or at least we
cannot know whether there are any) and from ethical objectivism which asserts that there
are universally valid moral principles binding on all people. According to the relativist
perspective, the rightness or wrongness of an act depends on the moral norms of society
or the moral inclinations of the individual, and no absolute standard exists by which
differing rules or inclinations can be judged. So, what is morally right for a Chinese society
may be morally wrong in an American society, just as what is morally right for Pedro might
be morally wrong for Juan.
From this description, we can infer that there are two forms of ethical relativism:
cultural ethical relativism and individual ethical relativism. According to the former,
also known as ethical conventionalism, the rightness or wrongness of an action depends
on society's norms. According to the latter, also known as ethical subjectivism, the
rightness or wrongness of an action lies on the individual's own commitments. Of the two
cultural ethical relativism has been considered the more acceptable and reasonable
version and it will be the main focus of this section. But let us briefly say something about
individual ethical relativism, and why it has gained little support.
1.2 Individual ethical relativism
Individual ethical relativism holds that the basis of what is morally right or wrong ultimately
lies on the person's own standard, and there is no objective standard outside the
individual's perspective by which his/her moral belief or standard can be judged.
According to this view, a moral judgment or claim merely implies an attitude, opinion.
preference or feeling held by someone. Although social and cultural factors can come to
play in the formation of one's personal attitudes and preferences, what the theory
recognizes is that they constitute the individual's notion of what is morally right and wrong.
In the end, the individual is left with a personal standard of morality. In individual ethical
relativism, an act is morally right or wrong depending on the approval or disapproval of
the person of interest. In this line of thought, deceiving customers to gain profit from a
business may be morally right for one but morally wrong for another. But objectively, it is
neither right nor wrong. It is different from one individual to another. In a way, this form of
relativism follows the view of Protagoras, expressed in his famous statement "man is the
measure of all things," which holds that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil
as there are subjects in the world.
Though individual ethical relativism stands on basic arguments that also support
cultural ethical relativism, the former encounters strong resistance from different camps,
even from cultural relativists themselves, due to its radical stance on the subjectivism of
morality. Often, those who oppose this view would say that creating moral judgments like
taste or aesthetic judgments which are relative to the individual renders morality a useless
concept, since little or no interpersonal criticism or judgment is possible. Suppose you
heard a news of a policeman killing a suspected teenage drug-user, and were repulsed
by such act. Following individual ethical relativism, you cannot condemn the officer if his
ethical belief is that it is permissible to kill people who have become dependent on illegal
drugs to solve the drug problem in our society. In the same way, we are not in a position
to judge Adolf Hitler's obsession to annihilate the Jews as morally wrong. In fact, on the
basis of ethical subjectivism, Hitler could be considered as moral as Gandhi, so long as
each lived by his own standards. Each individual person is the measure of moral
judgment. But such view is difficult for a rational mind to accept since it contradicts the
very concept of morality it is supposed to characterize. Morality has to do with resolving
interpersonal dispute or conflict among individuals in order to promote the good life. It
aims to prevent a Hobbesian state of nature wherein life. is "solitary, nasty, poor, brutish
and short." However, in individual ethical relativism morality cannot do this for there is no
interpersonal basis by which to judge whether an act is morally good or bad, right or
wrong.
Conventionalism is different from subjectivism since it recognizes the social nature
of morality. Although it rejects the existence of universal moral principles, it claims that
there are valid moral principles justified by virtue of their cultural acceptance. The
rightness or wrongness of an act is based on the cultural or social norms of the people in
which it is done and judged. The Muslim's practice of polygamy, for instance, should be
judged only within their own religious beliefs and norms. What distinguishes this meta-
ethical view from subjectivism, however, is that the basis of morality does not simply lie
on the individual's moral belief or inclination, but goes beyond it. The moral standards lie
on the social norms of the people. Thus, even if the person would personally believe that
abortion may be done in cases of rape or incest, the act may still be morally wrong if it
does not conform with the social standards in which the act is done. Given the social
agreement principle it holds, it provides an intersubjective basis of judging moral actions
makes it overcome the objections raised against ethical subjectivism. In the section. We
will look closely into the strengths of ethical conventionalism and the arguments that
justify this theory.

The Attractions of Ethical Relativism

People are drawn to cultural ethical relativism for several reasons. We will focus on the
three main arguments to support this particular doctrine, namely the Diversity Argument,
the Dependency Argument, and the Toleration Argument.
The Diversity Argument is premised on the factual or empirical claim that moral beliefs
and moral rules vary from culture to culture. Anthropologists have observed a range of
practices considered morally acceptable. some societies, but condemned in others. As
mentioned above, Muslim societies practice polygamy, while the Christians consider it
wrong. Some cultures accept homosexual union, while other cultures condemn it.
Abortion is permissible in some countries, but is not acceptable in other countries. It is
interesting to note certain practices of the Eskimo people: Eskimo customs allow
infanticide which is condemnable to most cultures; they also leave old people who are too
feeble to contribute to the family out in the snow to die. But to many anthropologists, there
is nothing particularly surprising about the Eskimos. Given their observation of various
societies around the world, they have been accustomed to the idea that conceptions of
right and wrong differ from culture to culture. What is good east of the river may be bad
west of the river. These different practices illustrate the diversity of moral beliefs in various
cultures, even in the same culture moral views and practices vary over time. In the
Philippines, Filipino women were not allowed to vote in national elections before, but
today it is wrong to deny them to the right frage. In the United States, slavery is now
viewed as immoral whereas just over hundred years ago, it was not. Societies over the
world have greatly altered their moral views on various matters such as abortion, same-
sex marriage, euthanasia, and sexuality as well. For the relativists, the only adequate way
to explain the differences of moral beliefs and practices across culture and across time is
to accept that morality is relative.
From the fact of moral diversity, the relativists derive the Dependency Argument which
lies on the view that moral beliefs are true or valid only relative to certain groups. An
individual's cultural norms, of which religious traditions are a part of, affect his/her views
of right and wrong. Hence, one's moral beliefs are basically products of his/her particular
social environment. According to Pojman (1999, 29), "morality does not exist on a
vacuum: rather, what is considered morally right or wrong must be seen in a context,
depending on the goals, wants, beliefs, history, and environment of the society in
question. The point here is that we cannot see things from an independent, noncultural
view point. We are simply culturally determined creatures.
This line of reasoning leads to the assertion that all knowledge and understanding
are relative. Harris, however, clarifies that there are two versions of such assertion. In its
strongest version, this position claims that all truth, even in the natural sciences, is relative
to the culture and conceptual framework within which it is expressed. In some cultures,
magic occupies the place that science occupies in our society. Strong relativists would
claim that we cannot say that science is right and magic wrong; rather, each is appropriate
to, and to be judged only in terms of, the culture in which it is situated.
The moderate version of relativism makes a slightly more modest claim. It says
that the meaning of human behavior is always relative to the culture in which it occurs.
Eating dog is part of the culture of the people of Sagada, a town in the Philippines
Mountain Province, and is widely practiced in the country's Cordillera region. However,
other societies even within the Philippines consider killing dogs as cruelty to animals and
is, thus, morally wrong. In most societies, killing cows is acceptable, but in India such act
is a sacrilege. The meaning of the act is different, depending on the society.
Consequently, the relativist argues, the moral dimension of our actions is similarly
dependent on cultural context for meaning. Morality is basically just the set of common
rules, habits, and customs that have earned social approval over time. Every morality
depends on a level of social acceptance.
Cultural ethical relativism is also justified by the view that acknowledging the
differences among various societies in terms of their moral beliefs and practices leads to
respect, social harmony, and peaceful co-existence among the different cultural, religious,
and social groups. This is what is known as the toleration argument. According to this
reasoning, relativism may be the right way of looking at morality since it offers the promise
of tolerance and understanding, attitudes that most of us value highly. Early anthropology
was absolutist, measuring the entire world in terms of its own standards and generally
finding the rest of the world lacking. Thus, anthropologists in the past would often refer to
the peoples they studied as "barbarians" or "primitive societies." But as time went on, the
discipline made progress it moved towards a more relativistic stance recognizing that
societies different from one's own are not necessarily primitive or inferior. Each society is
to be judged in terms of its own standards, rather than in terms of other people's
ethnocentric expectations.
Given the many forms of conflicts among various cultures, religions, and ideologies
today that often result to violence and oppression, the tolerant. non-judgmental attitude
of respecting and recognizing the validity of cultural beliefs other than one's own has
become more relevant. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict states this idea forcefully at the end
of her influential work Patterns of Culture, when she expresses her hope that, on the basis
of the sort of anthropological research she has described, "we shall arrive at a more realist
social faith, accepting as grounds of hope and as new bases for tolerance the coexisting
and equally valid patterns of life which mankind has created for itself from the raw
materials of existence" (1946, 257). Benedict, in fact, takes the argument a step further,
arguing that the relativistic outlook champions can be positively beneficial in helping to
combat bigotry, racism, chauvinism, and other forms of prejudice.

The Challenges of Ethical Relativism

Despite the arguments advanced by relativists, their theory of morality has been
strongly criticized by some philosophers (Pojman 1999: Shaw 2002). One of the points
raised to refute it is the illogical flow of the relativist argument. According to the theory,
given that people have different moral beliefs and practices, we can conclude that morality
is relative. The problem in this line of reasoning is that even if the premise is true the
conclusion cannot be inferred to be true. Diversity of and disagreement in moral belief do
not prove that morality is relative. To illustrate this point, consider people's belief about
the sun and the earth. There was a point in time when some people believed that the sun
revolves around the earth. Some believed, however, based on their scientific study, such
as Copernicus and Galileo Galilee, that the earth is the one revolving around the sun.
Can we say that, because people disagree about this matter, there is no objective truth
in geography? Can we just dismiss the matter as a case of relativism, and need not
correct others' geocentric notion that the sun and other planets simply revolve around the
earth? It is clear here that there can be cases when members of some societies may
simply be mistaken of their beliefs. It is possible that people may be misinformed about a
particular moral matter, or may have distorted beliefs about a particular practice. Thus,
we cannot accept differences or disagreements in moral beliefs and practices as
justification for the relativism of morality.
The second point raised against ethical relativism has to do with the negative
implications of accepting such theory. One implication of accepting ethical relativism is
that it is senseless to criticize a particular cultural or social group's belief or practice
however abhorrent or inhumane it is. Suppose a group of people carried out suicide
attacks based on their religious belief that killing their enemies is in accordance with God's
will. Though such act resulted to the deaths of many innocent victims, we cannot judge
their action as immoral nor even correct their misdeed, since their action must be judged
according to their own moral doctrine as relativism would claim. However, we know that
we cannot turn a blind eye to such violent action and regard it as a matter of cultural
difference that must just be accepted. We ought to express our objection and
condemnation to certain cultural practices that mar human dignity (Madison, 2003).
Another implication of regarding social norms as the basis of the rightness or
wrongness of our actions is that we simply have to conform to the norms of our own
society to know what action ought to be done. If I am a member of a society that believes
that racial or sexist practices are morally permissible, then I must accept those practices
as morally right though my reason tells me that abortion is morally wrong, I cannot diverge
from the societal norms if it does not regard abortion as immoral. We may recall the same
point we raised earlier against equating morality with religion. We do not live up to our
status as a rational being if what is right or wrong simply depends on one's social or
cultural norms.
Moreover, moral progress will also be compromised if we follow the thesis of
ethical relativism. If the rightness or wrongness of actions is judged solely on the basis of
a culture's norms, how then can members of that society criticize these norms on moral
grounds? How can they argue that the existing norms should be changed? We know that
certain social changes are needed for the betterment of society as we acknowledge
certain inadequacies in our moral traditions. For society to achieve moral progress, it has
to be self-critical and put its own social norms into question. In many societies, the
soundness of practices and laws that discriminate against women, such as honor killing
or child marriages must be challenged. This can only be done if social norms themselves
can be subjected to critical scrutiny, rather than regarded as the ultimate basis of morality
Our ability to question our social norms has made us overcome the inhuman practices of
slavery in pre-Civil War United States, apartheid in South Africa, and the unfair denial of
Right to Suffrage for women in the Philippines.
The third point raised against ethical relativism, and perhaps the strongest
argument to refute it, lies on the assertion that despite the fact that some moral beliefs
and practices vary among cultures, there are still universal-moral standards that exist.
Though people have different cultures, customs, traditions, religions, and ideologies, they
still have something in common emanating from their shared humanity. Respect for life,
pursuit for truth and justice, desire for peace, to cite some, are values that all human
persons, no matter how primitive or sophisticated their culture or civilization is, would
recognize and acknowledge as worth pursuing. Imagine what it would be like for a society
to place no value at all on truth telling communication would be extremely difficult. How
could any group or tribe survive if there is no regard to the preciousness of life or no
prohibition on murder? Suppose society does not refrain people from killing others. No
one will feel safe in such society and eventually, such society will collapse.
In relation to this, critics of relativism claim that indeed, societies may differ in their
cultural practices, but the fundamental moral principles underlying these practices do not.
Consider the Buddhist practice of refraining from eating the meat of animals. It seems
their moral values differ from non-Buddhist people. But it is important to look into the
reason why they do not consume animals. Suppose it is because they believe that after
death the souls of humans inhabit the bodies of animals so that it is possible that their
loved ones may be in those animals. Can we say their moral values are different from
those of non-Buddhists? No. The difference lies in their religious beliefs, not in their moral
values. Everyone, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, believes that it is wrong to eat our loved
ones. It is common to all of us as humans. We simply differ in our religious, cultural, or
ideological beliefs.
 Despite the shortcomings of ethical relativism to account for the nature of morality.
there are certain things we can learn from this theory as we delve more into the complex
issues of morality. This theory reminds us to keep an open mind in terms of judging others'
moral beliefs and practices, since much of what we understand to be right or wrong is
deeply influenced by our respective cultures which differ from each other. Thus, we
cannor just impose our own beliefs to others as they may be products of our own cultural
conditioning and so are biased to certain perspectives or outlooks, Instead of judging
others' beliefs, we must explore the reasons underlying them while examining as well the
reasons for our own beliefs and practices.

2.Moral Persons
2.1 Moral Personhood
In judging whether an action is morally good or bad, or morally right or wrong, we
determine whether this action conforms to or violates our moral standards or principles.
For instance, we judge an act of killing to be morally wrong because it violates our moral
principle which states that we ought not to kill or that we ought to respect a person's right
to life. In doing so, we, however, already assume that the entities or beings involved in
the action (its source and receiver) have moral status or are moral persons.
When we say, for instance, that killing is morally wrong, we presumably refer to
acts of that involve humans only, as when a terrorist kills innocent people or a policeman
kills an unarmed drug suspect. We presumably do not refer to instances of this act that
only involve animals, as when a spider kills a mosquito or a cat kills a mouse. And this is
because for an action to be either morally good or bad, its source and recipient must both
be moral persons. We generally regard humans as moral persons both in terms of being
sources and recipients of actions, while we do not generally regard animals as moral
persons at least in terms of being sources of actions they may be regarded as moral
persons but only in terms of being recipients of the actions of moral persons (as when
humans kill or hurt them).
Moral persons are therefore classified as either moral patients, when they act as
the receivers of morally evaluable actions, or moral agents, when they act as the sources
or doers of morally evaluable actions. More specifically, moral persons are either
agentive, when they can act as moral agents; or non-agentive when they can only be
moral patients.
2.2 Moral Accountability
A concept closely related to moral personhood is moral accountability. Moral agents,
as discussed above, can be morally accountable for their actions towards moral patients.
In discussing the nature of moral accountability, we first clarify its meaning in terms of
how it relates to the various uses of the word "responsibility" and differs from the legal
kind of accountability; after which we examine the conditions for its attribution and factors
influencing its degree.
We understand accountability as the deservingness of blame or praise for the
actions that we perform. Accountability is a natural product of our rationality, which
consists of our reason (or intelligence) and free will (or freedom). In the practical context
of performing actions, our reason enables us to distinguish between right and wrong
actions, while our free will enables us to choose which action that we would like to
perform. Consequently, we deserve blame for freely choosing to perform an action we
know to be wrong (or for freely choosing not to perform an action we know to be right);
while we deserve praise for freely choosing to perform an action we know to be right (or
for freely choosing not to perform an action we know to be wrong).
Two things are worth emphasizing when it comes to accountability. First,
accountability involves both praise and blame (or reward and punishment), for it is usual
to associate accountability with blame or punishment only (see Umake, 2010, 602). As
we put the blame on people for their wrongdoings, we should also praise them for their
good deeds. Second. deservingness is not negated by actualities. A person may deserve
to receive something and yet may not actually receive it. But the fact that he/she does not
receive it does not negate the fact that he/she deserves to receive it. Immanuel Kant's
view on the ship between morality and happiness sheds light on this point. According to
Kant, the goal of morality is not happiness but the deservingness of happiness; and so,
the morally good person is one who deserves happiness regardless of whether or not
he/she is in fact happy. It may happen for whatever reason, that the person who deserves
to be happy is not actually happy; and the person who does not deserve to be happy is
happy. This, however, does not change the situation that the morally good person
deserves to be happy. The same holds true in the case of moral accountability. The
person who deserves moral blame, for instance, may not really be experiencing the
mental sufferings (such as guilt or shame) that go with moral blame, He/she may in fact
be happy with the wrongdoing that he/she has intentionally done, and perhaps even feel
proud about it. But this possibility does not change the fact that he/she deserves moral
blame for his/her wrongdoing.
2.3 Moral Accountability and Moral Responsibility
Now, it is customary to use the word "accountability" interchangeably with the word
Aside from sharing a meaning with the word "accountability," the word "responsibility,"
however, has other meanings with which accountability may be confused. Another
meaning of responsibility is causation (see Uniake, 2010, 596). Here, being responsible
for something simply means being the cause of that something. The entities that can be
responsible in this sense involve both inanimate entities, like storms and stones, and
animate ones, like animals and humans. Thus, we sometimes say, for instance that the
storm was responsible for the floods that devastated the city; and that the lion was
responsible for the death of the deer. In saying these, we simply mean that the storm
caused the floods and the lion caused the death of the deer. We surely do not mean, in
addition, that the storm and the lion were accountable for these events.

When the cause of something is a person, say a human person, the person is usually
referred to, in philosophy, as an agent (or personal agent). (In contrast, a non-personal
cause, such as an inanimate object. is usually just referred to as a cause.) Being an agent
is one necessary condition for accountability, in that the person accountable for an action
must be the action's agent. But there are other necessary conditions for accountability as
we shall later on discuss, consequently, just by being an agent of an action does not
immediately make someone accountable for this action. In this sense, when we say that
Juan was responsible for the writings on the wall, we simply mean that Juan did the writing
on the wall, or he was the agent of the said action. But it will be wrong to immediate infer
from this that Juan, therefore, deserves either blame or praise for this action. It
Still, another meaning of the word "responsibility is duty or obligation, or having
certain duties or obligations towards other people (see Zimmerman, 2010, 607-08) When
we say that parents have certain responsibilities towards their children, we mean that
parents have certain duties or obligations towards their children. This particular meaning
of responsibility is closely related to accountability in that the act of performing and not
performing one's duties gives rise to accountability. Parents, for instance, are accountable
for not performing their duties towards their children, which is what i usually meant when
we say that parents are responsible for their children. Michael Zimmerman (2010, 608),
in this connection, refers to responsibility understood as the possession of duties and
prospective responsibility, the kind of responsibility directed towards what will or may
happen. In contrast, he refers to the responsibility understood as accountability as
retrospective responsibility, the kind of responsibility directed towards what had happened
already. Having duties towards a person concerns future actions towards this person; but
being deserving of blame or praise for an action concerns an action that has already been
done. Thus, the parents' prospective responsibility toward their children consists of
actions that they have to de towards their children as a matter of duty; but their
retrospective responsibility towards the same consists of actions that they have already
done to their children for which they deserve blame or praise.
2. 4 Moral Responsibility (Evaluating Actions)
When we are faced with a morally significant situation, we often turn to the nature
of the action and decide whether the action done is right or wrong. Although these two
categories are common in moral discourse, they can mean different things and can be
categorized in several ways. Before we go to these details, it is important to mention
morally neutral actions. These are acts that are permissible one way or another. For
instance, choosing whether to use a black or a blue pen is a morally neutral act. Any of
these two options are morally neutral since none of them is morally required and the
choice would have no morally significant implications. Now that we’ve set that definition
straight, let us move forward to the categories of right and wrong actions:
1) A right act is an act that is either morally required for people to do or brings
about positive moral implications and consequences. The second criterion is put forward
in order to leave morally neutral actions from the category of right acts, as some moral
philosophers have tried to do. It just seems more appropriate that when we talk about
right actions, we are talking about actions that bring about a certain moral good or produce
morally significant consequences. Choosing a black over a blue pen does not clearly
produce that particular good or consequence. It would make it more confusing to call it
(in a moral sense) a right act. With that in mind, there are two kinds of right action:
a. An obligatory act is one that morality requires you to perform; it is not
permissible for you to refrain from doing it. One example would be fulfilling a promise.
When somebody makes a promise, it is that person’s prima facie obligation to fulfill it.
(That is why, promise is made to be broken is a morally abhorrent cliché.) Unless there
are overriding obligations that impede a person from fulfilling the promise, she is not
morally allowed to break it. She has a moral obligation to fulfill any promise she has made.
b. A supererogatory act is an action that is commonly known as actions that
go beyond the call of duty. Supererogatory acts may be divided into two: minimal
supererogation and heroic action. Minimally supererogatory acts are good actions that go
beyond the call of duty but do not involve a major self-sacrifice on the part of the doer.
Some common examples would be giving a piece of yellow paper for your classmates
when there is a quiz or giving small amount of money to them when they run out of money
for certain payments. Heroic actions are such because they involve major self-sacrifice,
either one sacrifices one’s life or one’s career in order to do the right thing. The third
example given in the beginning of this chapter is an act of heroism. The act of saving a
friend from death while risking one’s life in the process is an act of utmost good but is not
obligatory. No one is morally required to risk his life to save others from danger or death.
And yet such an act is highly esteemed and is clearly morally valuable.
2) A wrong act is either an act that is morally forbidden for people to do or
something that is bad but not necessarily prohibited.
a. A morally forbidden act is an act that people have an obligation not to
perform. These are actions that we ought not do; it is not permissible for us to do them.
Examples of such acts are theft, murder and promise-breaking.
b. An infravetatory act is an act that is bad but not necessarily morally
prohibited. For instance, it is bad but not wrong to refuse to offer your seat in a public
bus to a standing old lady. It may be morally callous for you to do it but morality does not
require you to refrain from doing it. After all, you might think that you are entitled to the
first come, first serve policy of the bus.
 2. 5 Moral and Legal Accountability
To further understand the nature of moral accountability, let us briefly examine
what makes moral accountability different from the other types of accountability? For our
purposes, let us focus on the differences moral accountability has with legal
accountability. One difference is the kind of standards or principles used in ascertaining
the quality (rightness or wrongness) of an act, for which one may deserve blame or praise.
Legal accountability uses legal standards (laws/statutes) whereas moral accountability
uses moral standards (moral rules or principles). As statues do not always embody moral
rules (like laws that are discriminatory), legal accountability, likewise, does not always
reflect moral accountability. Consequently, the person who deserves moral blame may
not deserve legal punishment; and the person who does not deserve moral blame may
deserve legal punishment. Furthermore, assuming that they embody moral rules, statutes
are not always properly implemented. Consequently, the person who deserves moral
blame may not be legally punished: and the person who does not deserve moral blame
may be legally punished. Another difference concerns their kind of sanctions or penalties
for wrongdoers. Legal sanctions for criminal offenses-especially in penal systems
following the classical theory in criminal justice are said to be external in that they come
in the form of physical punishments (like being deprived of physical freedom as when one
is put to jail). Moral sanctions (moral blame, or fault), on the other hand, are said to be
internal in that they come in the form of mental sufferings such as guilt or remorse, shame,
self-hatred, low self-esteem, and the like

2.6 Conditions for Moral AccountabilityThe conditions for moral accountability can be
classified into two general sets. We shall call the first the attribution conditions (or
assignment conditions) for they determine whether moral accountability can be attributed
or assigned to a person for an action that he/she has done. Under this set are the
incriminating conditions, which would make one morally accountable for the action under
consideration; and the excusing conditions, which would spare one from moral
accountability for the action under consideration. We shall call the second set the degree
conditions because they determine the degree of one's moral accountability. Under this
set are the mitigating and aggravating conditions. The conditions are regarded as
mitigating when they lessen the degree of one's moral accountability; while they are
regarded as aggravating when they increase it. Analysis of the degree conditions
assumes that the person whose action is under consideration is held morally accountable
for the action in question: what is being determined is simply the degree of his/her moral
accountability.

a. The Attribution Conditions

As earlier noted, agency or causation is one necessary condition for accountability.
According to the agency condition, a person is only accountable for actions in which
he/she is the cause. This condition, however, is not sufficient for there are two other
necessary conditions: the knowledge condition, referring to the condition in which a
person knows or has the capacity to know the moral quality (the moral goodness or
badness) of his/her action; and the intentionality condition, referring to the condition in
which a person intends or freely chooses to perform an action he/she is doing. Taken
together, these three conditions constitute the incriminating conditions. A person is
accountable for an action if and only if he/she: (a) is the agent of the action; (b) knows or
has the capacity to know that the action is good or bad; and (c) intentionally performs the
action. It is necessary for all these conditions to concur to make a person morally
accountable for his/her action (Haksar, 1998, 5633). If at least one of them does not occur,
then the person is excused from moral accountability. In other words, moral accountability
cannot be assigned to this person.
The conditions in which at least one of the three attribution conditions does not
occur constitute the excusing conditions for moral accountability. We may, however, refer
to the absence or non-occurrence of each of the incriminating conditions as follows: non
agency for the agency condition, ignorance for the knowledge condition, and
involuntariness for the intentionality condition. In this light, we can express the excusing
conditions as consisting of non-agency, ignorance, and involuntariness. Now, if the non-
occurrence of at least one of the incriminating conditions excuses one from moral
accountability, it follows that the occurrence of at least one of the excusing conditions
(being the negations of the attribution conditions) excuses one from moral accountability.
Specifically, a person is not morally accountable for an action that occurred if he/she failed
to have at least one of the following: (a) volition to perform the act; (b) knowledge whether
the act is either good or bad (or have the capacity to know such); or (c) intention to perform
the act. It might be that this person: (1) did the action and knew the action to be good or
bad, but it was not his/her intention to do so: (2) did the action and intentionally did so,
but he/she did not know it to be either good or bad; or (3) simply did not do the action or
was not the one who did the action.
The ignorance condition, however, needs some qualification and elaboration.
Consider the case of a young child who mistook a real gun for a toy and, wanting to play
with his older brother, shot and eventually killed the latter. The young child did not really
intend to kill his older brother, he just wanted to play with him. But even if the child did
want to kill his older brother, assuming it was an immediate reaction to their quarrel, he
did not know yet or fully understand the immorality of killing a person. In this case, it is
appropriate to excuse the child from moral accountability. But now consider the following
situation. Suppose a factory manager did not or failed to do preventive measures to
protect the health of his workers from the hazardous fumes emitted in his factory. As a
result, a number of his workers got seriously sick. Later on, when an investigation was
done, this manager explained that he did not know then that such fumes were hazardous.
Should the manager be excused from accountability in virtue of his ignorance? Was this
a case where the ignorance condition truly occurred? We surely would not excuse him
from accountability. For not only was he capable of knowing the effects of the factory
fumes on the health of his workers, but it was in fact his duty to know such things.
A distinction can thus be made between the following two kinds of ignorance. The
first is called blameless ignorance refers to the kind of ignorance where the ignorant
personcannot be said to have known better, either because it is not really the duty of the
person to know what he/she is ignorant of, or because the person does not have the
capacity to know what he/she is supposed to know. Blameless ignorance is the excusing
or exempting type of ignorance. The second, which we shall call blameful for
blameworthy) ignorance, refers to kind of ignorance where the ignorant person can be
said to have known better, because the ignorant person has the capacity to know what
he/she should have known and it is his/her duty to know it. This is an irresponsible kind
of ignorance for it results from the ignorant person's negligence to do his/her duty to know
certain things. Blameful ignorance is thus not an excusing kind of ignorance. In our
previous examples, the ignorance of the child was blameless, while that of the factory
manager was blameworthy.
To further shed light on this distinction, let us briefly examine the example provided
by Haksar (1998, 5633): "In order to be morally accountable, an agent does not always
have to know or even have the correct opinion about what the moral requirements are.
The capacity for finding out such things can be enough. For instance, some Nazis who
persecuted Jews may have thought sincerely that they were doing the right thing; but if
they could and should have known better, then they can be censured for moral
negligence. Had they thought things through, which they could and should have done,
they would have realized how wrong such acts were." We can gather from Haksar's
remarks that it can be granted that some Nazis did not know that what they did to the
Jews was morally wrong because they sincerely thought that what they were doing was
right. Nonetheless, their ignorance does not excuse them from their moral accountability,
for they could and thus should have known better. They did not think things through, of
which they were very much capable. This then was a case of blameful ignorance.
But what determines whether a person should know better in a given situation?
The following considerations are helpful: Does the person have the capacity to know what
he/she ought to know in a given situation? And given the person's role in a given situation,
is it his/her duty to know what ought to be known in such a situation? What determines
one's capacity to know can vary depending on the nature of the given situation. It can
include maturity, mental health, and access to relevant information. On the other hand,
what determines one's duty to know is one's role in a given situation. For instance, being
a factory manager, to know whether the fumes emitted in one's factory are toxic or
detrimental to the health of the workers is within the range of information that one in that
position has the duty to know.

b. The Degree Conditions

 Moral accountability comes in degrees. Some of the circumstances surrounding
the actions we have knowingly and intentionally performed affect the degree of our moral
accountability for these actions. We refer to these circumstances or factors as the degree
conditions of moral accountability. When these conditions tend to lessen the degree of
moral accountability, they are regarded as mitigaring; but when they tend to increase such
degree, they are regarded as aggravating. There are four such conditions (see Velasquez
2014, 60-61).
The first is the degree of knowledge of the moral wrongfulness of the action along with
the relevant facts related to the action. Here, the more knowledgeable a person is, the
greater is his/her moral accountability. The less knowledgeable a person is, the lesser is
his/her moral accountability. Suppose, for instance, that a defective design of a certain
kind of car resulted in accidents which killed and seriously injured some people, During
the investigation, it was found out that an employee overseeing the manufacture of the
cars and the chief engineer, who headed the committee that designed the car, knew
about the defective design of the car, but they connived to hide the information from the
management. Given that both are accountable for the incidents that resulted, who
deserved a higher degree of accountability? From the viewpoint of who understood the
seriousness of the defective car design and the risks it entailed more, the chief
engineer. would have a higher degree of accountability than the employee.

The second is the degree of pressure or difficulty in life that forces one to
perform wrongdoing. There are moments where we feel forced to do certain actions we
know to be morally wrong. Because we know such actions to be morally wrong and
choose to perform them anyway, we are then morally accountable for these actions. But
the degree of pressure (or the difficulty in life that we are addressing) that leads us to
perform such actions affects the degree of our moral accountability. Here, the greater the
pressure, the lesser the moral responsibility. The lesser the pressure, the greater the
moral accountability. Thus, suppose two people were guilty of stealing the same amount
of money. One did it to pay for the operation of his daughter suffering from a serious
ailment. The other did it to be buy an expensive gadget for his own enjoyment and
pleasure. Given that both were accountable for their actions, who had the higher or lesser
degree of accountability? The one who stole to be able to pay for the medical operation
did it under a greater pressure or difficulty in life, and thus have a lesser degree of
accountability.
The third is the degree of the intensity (or seriousness) of the injury caused by
the wrongdoing. The greater the intensity of the injury, the greater the moral
accountability. The lesser the intensity of the injury, the lesser the moral accountability.
Again, suppose two people stole the same amount of money. One stole it from someone
who intended to use the money to pay for the operation of his/her ailing daughter. The
other one stole it from someone who intended to use the money to buy an expensive
gadget for his/her own enjoyment and pleasure. Who had the higher degree of
accountability? The intensity of the injury caused by the one who stole the money from
the person who intended to use the money to pay for the operation of his/her ailing
daughter was greater compared to the other one who also stole the same amount of
money from the person who intended to use the money for personal pleasure. Thus, the
former person deserved a greater degree of accountability. (In the novel Les Miserables,
Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread from a bakery. His moral accountability would have
been greater if he had stolen it from a poor person who had it for his family's dinner.)
The fourth is the degree of involvement (or participation) in a group or collective
act of moral wrongdoing. The greater the involvement, the greater the moral
accountability. The lesser the involvement, the lesser the moral accountability. This
condition explains why the accountability of an accomplice, one who helps someone
accomplish the latters criminal intention, is lesser than that of the principal criminal, the
one who actually and directly does the criminal act.