Responsibility Allocation and Human Rights

How does morality allocate responsibility for what it requires? I am concerned here with one fundamental part of this question, namely, how morality determines responsibility when multiple agents are capable of contributing to or completing a moral task, and special relationships capable of generati...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Reeves, Anthony R. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V [2017]
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2017, Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 627-642
RelBib Classification:NCC Social ethics
NCD Political ethics
VA Philosophy
Further subjects:B Aggregation
B Cheapest cost avoider
B Human Rights
B Refugees
B Responsibility
B Contractualism
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:How does morality allocate responsibility for what it requires? I am concerned here with one fundamental part of this question, namely, how morality determines responsibility when multiple agents are capable of contributing to or completing a moral task, and special relationships capable of generating duties with respect to the task are non-existent, insufficient as a moral response, or partly indeterminate. On one view, responsibility falls to the agents who can bear it with the least burden. I show why this is initially attractive and mistaken. Instead, I defend an equity-based approach that accommodates the intuitions that both support and trouble the least-cost principle. One upshot is that sometimes we ought prefer a distribution of responsibility that is more expensive and less local than needed to complete the task. I illustrate the practical significance of the argument in terms of the human rights of refugees.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-017-9808-z