ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses them with the aim of formulating a conception of individual responsibility that captures both our commonsense and philosophical convictions about what it means to be responsible for actions and other events we cause by acting. It explains why individual responsibility is more fundamental than corporate, group, or role responsibility. Conative, affective, and volitional capacities, as well as the cognitive capacity for practical reasoning, all figure in the etiology of action. Theoretical reasoning also is relevant to action to the extent that one’s beliefs about the circumstances in which one acts and about the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions can influence the reason for and intention to perform a particular action. The mental states and events that lead to actions, unperformed actions, and the consequences of our performed and unperformed actions constitute the content of moral responsibility, of what we are morally responsible for.
