# Contested concept: moral responsibility

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

---

- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: The disagreement over whether determinism undermines desert is a disagreement over the basis of responsibility, such as origination versus responsiveness, more than over the facts of causation.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/moral responsibility` (data: `/concept/moral responsibility.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Requires being the first cause or originator of one's choices, with no antecedent cause** — used in 6 claim(s)
- **Cannot be coherently grounded under either determinism or indeterminism** — used in 3 claim(s)
- **Requires only that behavior respond to praise and blame, or be done voluntarily; uncaused behavior is not required** — used in 3 claim(s)
- **Requires both voluntary action and origination** — used in 2 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [[Fear of determinism in the context of "genetics" and "evolution"] is "a confusion of *explanation* with *exculpation*".](/claim/claim_0324ee99acf1.md) _(sense: Requires only that behavior respond to praise and blame, or be done voluntarily; uncaused behavior is not required)_
- [Being responsible for one's choices is the first cause of those choices, where first cause means that there is no antecedent cause of that …](/claim/claim_07ed1c54cec8.md) _(sense: Requires being the first cause or originator of one's choices, with no antecedent cause)_
- [To be responsible in some situation S, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S −1.](/claim/claim_096da8fb88ec.md) _(sense: Requires being the first cause or originator of one's choices, with no antecedent cause)_
- [Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility.](/claim/claim_2c677f41be31.md) _(sense: Cannot be coherently grounded under either determinism or indeterminism)_
- [If an action is inexplicable and random, then it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence the agent cannot be responsible for it.](/claim/claim_3501964ad5c8.md) _(sense: Cannot be coherently grounded under either determinism or indeterminism)_
- [[For libertarianism, even with physical indeterminism,] it is difficult to assign *Origination* (responsibility for "free" indeterministic …](/claim/claim_5740eeb8bb22.md) _(sense: Requires being the first cause or originator of one's choices, with no antecedent cause)_
- [Both notions of freedom [voluntary action and origination] are required to explain freedom of will and responsibility.](/claim/claim_6b8e94f1529d.md) _(sense: Requires both voluntary action and origination)_
- [Moral responsibility, moral desert, praise, culpability, and other such judgements can logically apply only to actions that are freely chos…](/claim/claim_743d31796f46.md) _(sense: Requires being the first cause or originator of one's choices, with no antecedent cause)_
- [Responsibility does not require that behavior be uncaused, as long as behavior responds to praise and blame.](/claim/claim_7815a284ba2a.md) _(sense: Requires only that behavior respond to praise and blame, or be done voluntarily; uncaused behavior is not required)_
- [To abandon these notions of freedom [voluntary action and origination] would be to abandon moral responsibility.](/claim/claim_7f455a1f4203.md) _(sense: Requires both voluntary action and origination)_
- [If one is responsible for what one does in a given situation, then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects](/claim/claim_910f6dec2b83.md) _(sense: Requires being the first cause or originator of one's choices, with no antecedent cause)_
- ["instinct and utility between them can safely be trusted to carry on the social business of punishment and praise" regardless of metaphysic…](/claim/claim_c1ce708c24dd.md) _(sense: Requires only that behavior respond to praise and blame, or be done voluntarily; uncaused behavior is not required)_
- [To be responsible for the way one was at S, one must have been responsible for the way one was at S−1, and so on](/claim/claim_f55fce19c100.md) _(sense: Requires being the first cause or originator of one's choices, with no antecedent cause)_
- [If an action could not have been done freely, then the agent is not responsible for it.](/claim/claim_fec2b5f645fd.md) _(sense: Cannot be coherently grounded under either determinism or indeterminism)_