Colloquium: Manuel Vargas (University of San Francisco)
Department: Philosophy
Date and Time: May 16, 2014 | 3:00 PM-5:00 PMEvent Location: 55 HIB (Seminar Room)
Event Details
Negligence and Social Self-Governance
Negligence is a familiar if somewhat puzzling aspect of our responsibility practices. Negligence is distinguished from standard instances of culpable action (such as recklessness) in virtue of the negligent agent's failing to consider the considerations that speak against the act. The underlying explanation of negligence's culpability is usually put in terms of the thought that the agent "ought to have known better." This idea, familiar as it is, has proven difficult to accommodate in many standard approaches to moral responsibility. The very fact that the agent was unaware of the reasons that speak against the act can appear to suggest that the agent was not in control or even properly culpable for what we regard as negligent. The present account attempts to explain the puzzle and to offer an adequate solution to it in the context of a theory of moral responsibility.
Professor Manuel Vargas
University of San Francisco