Compelled Action And Moral Responsibility

Do the actors need to bear moral responsibility for actions in a compelled state?Consider the following cases:1)the captain threw the cargo into the sea to protect the crew in the storm;2)The warehouse keeper handed over the key to open the warehouse door under the cruel physical torture of bandits;3)In order to save the kidnapped mother,the actor was coerced to kill the strangers nearby;4)Some people threatened to cut off actor A's thumb and demanded A to blow up a hospital.A blew up the hospital under duress.Generally speaking,the above cases are all compelled actions of the actors under compulsion.According to our daily moral intuition,the compelled actions are not based on voluntariness and therefore do not need to be held responsible.1)2)3)To some extent,they conform to this moral intuition.Even if people have doubts about the conclusion that the actors in these cases need to be held responsible,they will still have compassion or sympathy for them.However,case 4)although it is also a compelled action,we will think that the actor in this action need to take responsibility for his actions,which is not in line with our daily moral intuition.It is this kind of thinking that inspired the author to explore the connection between compelled action and moral responsibility.Of course,this article will limit the exploration of this problem to Aristotle's ethics,in order to draw ancient wisdom from classical ethics to solve this ethical problem.Whether a compelled action should bear moral responsibility depends on the actor's contribution or participation in the action.According to Aristotle,an important criterion to measure this contribution or participation is voluntariness:if the action is voluntary,then the action will be praised or criticized by people's morality.If the action is not voluntary,people will give sympathy or compassion.In other words,only voluntary actions can be evaluated morally.Thus,Aristotle thinks about the moral responsibility of actions from the perspective of voluntary actions.However,the problem is that voluntariness is a necessary condition for actors to be responsible for their actions,but is it a sufficient condition?In Aristotle's opinion,the answer is no.Children and animals also have voluntary actions,but we often exclude them from the responsible actors.Therefore,a responsible action should have other conditions besides voluntariness.For this reason,by analyzing the characteristics of a responsible action,and applying the results of the analysis to the compelled action,we can judge whether the compelled action has the characteristics of the responsible action,and then we can judge whether the compelled action belongs to the responsible action.Through the analysis of Aristotle's relevant ethical texts,this paper reveals that apart from the voluntary nature of the actors,an actor must have other characteristics if he wants to be the bearer of moral responsibility.This paper introduces two models to analyze this.The two models are one by Susan Sauve Meyer and the other by T.H.Irwin.According to Susan Sauve Meyer's model,only the voluntary actions of actors with moral character need to bear moral responsibility.According to Irwin's model,the voluntary actions of the actors with rational decision-making ability need to bear moral responsibility.The difference between the two models lies in essence:one connects responsible action to character and the other to reason.So,on the issue of moral responsibility,is character or rationality the priority or basis?The analysis of this paper shows that rationality is indispensable both from the perspective of character formation,that is,from the perspective of choice,and from the perspective of character formation through habituation process.In terms of moral responsibility,rationality has a higher priority than character,which determines that this paper will choose Irwin's model and apply it to analyze compelled actions to judge whether compelled actions have the characteristics of responsible actions,and then prove whether compelled actions belong to actions that need to be responsible.According to the normative requirements of Irwin's model,the morally responsible action should be the voluntary action of an actor with rational decision ability,which includes two conditions:rational decision and voluntary action.Through the interpretation of Aristotle's relevant ethical texts,it is certain that Aristotle's compelled action can undoubtedly meet the voluntary conditions,but whether it is also an act decided by reason is not self-evident and needs further analysis.By applying Heinaman's concept of "rational ability" to further explain Irwin's model and drawing on Frankfurt's valuable theoretical experience in analyzing compelled actions,this paper makes a textual research on two different types of compelled actions——rational compelled actions and psychological compelled actions,and points out that the actors under rational compulsion have full rational ability and can therefore make effective actions,while the actors under extreme psychological compulsion lose their rational ability and cannot make effective decisions.According to this,the research conclusion drawn by the paper is:the actions made by the actors under extreme psychological compulsion are those that do not need to bear moral responsibility,while the actions made by the actors under rational compulsion and psychological compulsion that will not lead to loss of rational ability are those that need to bear moral responsibility.