We have the pleasure to invite you to another research seminar. Maximilian Theisen is going to give a talk: "The Exculpatory Potential of Moral Ignorance: Evidence From a Blame-Updating Paradigm”. The seminar will take place exceptionally on Wednesday 10th of January at 5:30 p.m. in the room 25 on Grodzka Street and via MS Teams.

Abstract

In this talk, Maximilian Theisen (Heidelberg University, Germany) will present joint work from a collaboration with James Andow (Manchester University, UK) on the exculpatory potential of moral ignorance. Over the past few decades, philosophers have started to scrutinize the epistemic conditions on moral responsibility. One central focus of this debate is whether ignorance of moral norms can excuse wrongdoing in the same way as ignorance of the factual circumstances of an action can excuse wrongdoing. Volitionists link the exculpatory potential of moral ignorance to the fulfillment of the agent’s procedural obligations. Quality of Will theorists have suggested the further conditions of the inaccessibility of the moral truth and high moral difficulty. In a pre-registered experiment (N = 251), Theisen and Andow tested whether these three conditions reduce ascriptions of blame for everyday moral transgressions (act blameworthiness) and for moral ignorance about their wrongness (belief blameworthiness). Their findings suggest that moral ignorance might in principle be perceived as exculpatory, but that its exculpatory potential depends on specific conditions that are rarely met in reality. The implications of these findings for debates on epistemic conditions on moral responsibility and on the normative relevance of moral epistemic states will be discussed.

 

Link to the MS Teams meeting