Philosophy Speakers: Stephen Darwall (Yale), “Taking Account of Character”

The Philosophy Speakers Program presents STEPHEN DARWALL, “Taking Account of Character” Location: Social Sciences Building, Room 1253 About the Talk Philosophers often distinguish between responsibility as attributability and responsibility as accountability. The former involves attributing an agent’s action to some motivational feature of her character as a reflection of her virtue or vice. Such attributions are thus aretaic. Holding someone accountable, on the one hand, has a distinctive connection to the deontic, to moral obligations or requirements with which we are accountable for complying. I begin by developing these differences and showing how they can explain some otherwise puzzling empirical findings n our attribution of intention (the so-called “Knobe effect”). Then I argue that there are nonetheless ways in which we are nonetheless ways in which we are accountable for aspects of our character. About the Speaker Stephen Darwall is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Yale University and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. He specializes in moral and political philosophy and the history of ethics. A leading thinker in the foundation of ethics and the history of moral philosophy, he is the author of The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640-1740, which cemented his position as the world’s foremost authority on the British moral philosophers, and a textbook, Philosophical Ethics, which is widely used throughout the world. His most recent books include The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Harvard 2006); Morality, Authority and Law: Essays in Second Personal Ethics I (Oxford 2013); and Honor, History, and Relationship: Essays in Second-Personal Ethics II (Oxford 2014). An associate editor of Ethics and a founding co-editor of Philosophers’ Imprint, he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Past President of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division, and has held the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship on four occasions. For more Philosophy Events go to http://phil.ucalgary.ca/calendar
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