ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the concept of moral responsibility, but confined the discussion, as far as possible, to those issues which are relevant for a general theory of social morality. Determinism has implications which are hard to square with ordinary convictions. For example, it forces us to reinterpret concepts such as praise, blame, reward, and punishment in a forward-looking direction, whereas they are essentially backward-looking concepts. In general, a successful plea of lack of knowledge is sufficient to absolve a person from moral responsibility for specific actions. As in case of compulsion, there are several subdivisions of this plea. Determinism can provide an account of how blaming and praising can exercise a causal stimulus which will affect a person’s behaviour. The postulate of the spectator standpoint has been formulated as ‘Every event has a cause’. But the term ‘cause’ is ambiguous: it can mean that which is a sufficient condition of an event, or that which is a necessary condition.
