Ignorance and Moral Responsibility: A Quality of Will Approach

Abstract

My central aim in the dissertation is to defend an account of the epistemic condition of moral responsibility that distinguishes culpable ignorance from non-culpable ignorance. The view that I defend is that ignorance is culpable just when an agent flouts or ignores moral reasons that underlie her epistemic norms or obligations. This view is a quality-of- will theory of moral responsibility that emphasizes the agent’s reasons-responsiveness. It holds that only relevant epistemic obligations are those that require acts of investigation or reflection.