"How you can be responsible for things you didn't cause or intend"

A lecture by Jenna Donohue, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Arkansas.

If I am morally complicit in your wrongful action, then I am morally responsible for that wrongful action, in the absence of excuse or justification for my behavior.  But this can seem puzzling: we often think that we need to be in control of our actions in order to be responsible for them, and I am (usually) not in control of yours.  And yet the intuition that moral complicity is possible (and actual) stands.  Some theorists have tried to thread the needle by defending intentions-based theories of moral complicity: I am morally complicit in your wrongful action when and because I intend that wrongful action.  In this paper, I argue that such theories miss the mark because they fail to recognize the variety of ways in which I can be complicit that do not arise via my intentions.  I will articulate a deliberative view of complicity, according to which I am complicit when and because I fail to fulfill my interpersonal deliberative duties.  Finally, I will argue that only the deliberative view allows appropriate space for respect for agency of both the wrongdoer and her potential victims.