RESPONSIBILITY · The Roots of Responsibility: Metaphysics, Humanity, and Society

Philosophical research on responsibility today stems from early modern debates about causal necessity and freedom of the will, and ultimately from the Stoic problem of reconciling ethics with physics. It is therefore mainly focused on scepticism about the existence of free will and on the question whether moral responsibility is compatible with physical determinism. The main premises of this project are that this focus is too narrow, and that the traditional problems can only be solved with a deeper understanding of the network of human capacities responsibility involves and the social and interpersonal context in which questions about responsibility arise. This in turn depends on a wide range of philosophical and scientific research that has been neglected in debates about determinism, responsibility and free will, in particular, legal theory, where the literature on the relationships between responsibility, liability and culpability is more sophisticated and more nuanced than it is in philosophy; biological systems theory, which has shown how the activity of more complex systems can harness stochasticity in the activity of the less complex systems of which they are composed; and the philosophy of action, in which the physical, psychological, ethical and intellectual dimensions of human agency are now more clearly articulated and better understood. The Roots of Responsibility will draw on all of these resources, in order to develop a comprehensive theory of responsibility, which cuts across traditional boundaries between metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of law. It will foster collaborative research in these branches of philosophy, and include expertise in psychology and theoretical biology at the relevant stages.