Responsibility Project
The Sense of Responsibility Worth Worrying About
The project The Sense of Responsibility Worth Worrying About was funded by the the Austrian Science Fund FWF (grant DOI 10.55776/P34851) and ran from October 2021 until October 2025. Leonhard Menges was the PI, and the project employed Shawn Wang and Maria Seim as post-docs (consecutively) and Leonie Eichhorn as doctoral student.
– Publications –
Paper “A Better Method for Blame: Functional and Paradigm-based accounts”
Maria Seim’s paper “A Better Method for Blame: Functional and Paradigm-based accounts” was accepted for publication by Philosophy.
Paper “How AI Systems Can Be Blameworthy”
Leonhard Menges’, Hannah Altehenger’s and Peter Schulte’s paper “How AI Systems Can Be Blameworthy” was accepted for publication by Philosophia.
Paper “Qualities of Will and Ambivalent Moral Worth”
Leonie Eichhorn’s paper “Qualities of Will and Ambivalent Moral Worth” was accepted for publication by the Philosophical Quarterly.
Paper “Rethinking Functionalist Accounts of Blame”
Shawn Wang’s paper “Rethinking Functionalist Accounts of Blame” was accepted for publication by The Journal of Ethics.
Paper “The Point of Blaming AI Systems”
Leonhard Menges’ and Hannah Altehenger’s paper “The Point of Blaming AI Systems” was accepted for publication by the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.
Book chapter “Blaming”, in Routledge Handbook of Responsibility
Leonhard Menges has contributed a chapter, “Blaming”, to the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy, edited by Max Kiener.
Paper “Responsibility, Free Will, and the Concept of Basic Desert”
Leonhard Menges’ paper “Responsibility, Free Will, and the Concept of Basic Desert” was accepted for publication by Philosophical Studies.
Paper “On the Top-Down Argument for the Ability to Do Otherwise”
Leonhard Menges’ paper “On the Top-Down Argument for the Ability to Do Otherwise” was accepted for publication by Erkenntnis.
Paper “The Kind of Blame Skeptics Should Be Skeptical About”
Leonhard Menges’ paper “The Kind of Blame Skeptics Should be Skeptical About” was published in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
– Activities –
Workshop “The Sense of Responsibility Worth Worrying About Vol. 2”
On 01–02 July 2025, the Salzburg Ethics Group organized the responsibility project’s final workshop “The Sense of Responsibility Worth Worrying About Vol. 2”. Speakers were David Shoemaker and Gus Turyn, Hannah Altehenger, David Heering, Mahdiyeh Moosavi, Ninni Suni, Leonhard Menges, Maria Seim, and Leonie Eichhorn. The schedule can be found here.
Workshop “The Sense of Responsibility Worth Worrying About”
On 26–27 June 2024, the Salzburg Ethics Group held the workshop “The Sense of Responsibility Worth Worrying About”. Speakers were Nomy Arpaly, Derk Pereboom, Paulina Sliwa, Shawn Wang, and the Salzburg Ethics Group members Leonhard Menges, Maria Seim, Lizzy Ventham, and Leonie Eichhorn.
Workshop with Glen Pettigrove on “Anger and Forgiveness”
On 5–6 July 2023, the Salzburg Ethics Group hosted an in-person workshop in Salzburg with Glen Pettigrove, centered on his book manuscript on forgiveness and anger. Comments on the manuscript were given by Irene Buchholz and Andrew Law, Daphne Brandenburg, Kathleen Connelly, and Andreas Müller. Talks were given by Daphne Brandenburg, Andreas Brekke Carlsson, Per Erik Milam, and Shawn Wang.
Workshop “Topics in Moral Responsibility”
On 6–8 July 2022, the Salzburg Ethics Group and Hannah Altehenger hosted an online workshop on topics in moral responsibility. The keynote speakers were Victoria McGeer and Matthew Talbert. Papers were contributed for discussion by Rachel Achs, Alisabeth Ayers, Andreas Brekke Carlsson, Leonhard Menges, Daniel Telech, and Shawn Wang.
Project Description
At the heart of the project is a thesis called responsibility skepticism. It holds that there is good reason to doubt that in our world people are morally responsible for their actions. This position is taken to support the normative position that certain aspects of our blame practices are unjust. The goal of the project is to clarify what the discussion of responsibility skepticism should be about: What should skeptics mean when they speak of responsibility or unjust blame? And how should one understand the property of being morally responsible when trying to refute skeptical arguments? The central hypothesis of the project is that the notion of moral claim forfeiture should play an important role in the discussion of responsibility skepticism: skeptics should be understood as saying that, according to them, no person in our world forfeits moral claims simply because he or she willfully and knowingly commits an offense. Defenders of moral responsibility should deny exactly this position––this is the proposal to be elaborated in the project.
Salzburg Ethics Group 