Senses of Responsibility

In one paragraph, explain the main purpose of Chapter 6, and how the distinction between two senses of responsibility is employed in this aim.

In Chapter six Scanlon defines different types of responsibility and explains how considerations of choice and responsibility play into reasons for rejecting principles. He does this by more specifically contrasting two types of responsibility: attributability and substantive. Scanlon tries to answer the question of when a person is responsible in each sense. The first sense, attributability, deals with whether or not it is legitimate to praise or blame a person. To say that someone is responsible for an action in this sense means that it is appropriate to take it as a basis of moral appraisal of that person. The second sense is substantive responsibility and deals with whether the person can reasonably complain about the burdens that have resulted. This second sense involves what we owe to eachother. In this chapter Scanlon explains that these two senses of responsibility have to be differentiated because they have different moral roots.

In a second paragraph, explain what sorts of conditions undermine the legitimacy of moral appraisal (Section 5), and what relevance this has for the question of whether moral appraisal is inapplicable if Determinism is true.

Scanlon says that there are three conditions under which moral appraisal must be modified or withdrawn. The first says that moral appraisal is inappropriate if an action is not attributable to the agent. For example you can’t blame someone for a racist remark if someone else caused him or her to utter it by stimulating his or her brain with electrodes. The second says that moral appraisal must be withdrawn if there are conditions that do not block attribution of an action to an agent but change the character of what can be attributed. For example if under coercion or duress a bank teller hands