Introduction

This chapter provides the philosophical motivation for investigating responsibility for attitudes. The philosophical motivation stems from a conflict between the apparent involuntariness of attitudes – due to their nature as mental states – and our practice of holding each other responsible for our attitudes. It is argued that this conflict arises in particular because attitudes are states that are rationally evaluable or responsive to reasons. The chapter then introduces the ethics of mind as a field of philosophical research that is concerned with making sense of our mental responsibility, and with providing accounts of the norms that govern our attitudes. Finally, the subsequent chapters are outlined and contextualized with each other. The approach of this book is to consider how we blame each other for irrational attitudes in order to highlight the direct responsibility that we have for our own attitudes.