In this podcast of her recent lecture, Professor Jeanette Kennett explores the connections between the folk psychological project of interpretation, the reactive attitudes and responsibility, (podcast ). The first section argues that the reactive attitudes originate in very fast and to a significant extent, non-voluntary processes involving constant facial feedback. These processes allow for smooth interaction between participants and are important to the interpretive practices that ground intimate relationships as well as to a great many less intense interactions. She then examines cases of facial paralysis (Moebius Syndrome and Botox studies) to support the argument that when these processes are interrupted or impaired, the interpretive project breaks down and social relationships suffer.
But do failures of interpretation lead, as Strawson suggests, to the suspension of the reactive attitudes relevant to responsibility assessments? Prof Kennett suggests that in many important instances they do not, considering the cases of children who murder, alien cultures, and psychopaths. In the second part she examines the supposed constitutive relation between the reactive attitudes and responsibility.
Jeanette Kennett is Professor of Moral Psychology and Deputy Director of the Centre for Agency Values and Ethics at Macquarie University. She has published widely on moral cognition, moral and criminal responsibility, and impairments of agency. She is currently lead investigator on an Australian Research Council funded project on Addiction and Moral Identity and is also a chief investigator on an ARC project examining implicit persuasion in direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising.
This seminar was co-hosted by The Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and the International Neuroethics Society