A CAPACITARIAN ACCOUNT OF CULPABILITY FOR NEGLIGENCE

Abstract

Abstract Ascribing moral and legal responsibility for negligent actions and omissions has always been deeply contested because it seems to be in tension with the natural intuition that responsibility requires control. In this paper I show that we can accommodate culpability for negligence within a control-based account of responsibility if we adopt a “capacitarian” view of control, according to which agents have responsibility-relevant control whenever they have the requisite abilities and opportunity to bring about the morally desired outcome. After explaining the structure of negligent wrongdoing and motivating this conception of control, I show how it can be successfully employed to account for the culpability of negligent agents and to rebut several important arguments against the idea that negligence can be culpable in the first place. I also explain in what respects my proposal is superior to other capacitarian views found in the literature.