Presented by Renee Bolinger (Australian National University)
Sometimes an agent D, acting on her best evidence, imposes defensive harm on an apparent aggressor A, but in fact A posed no genuine threat to D. When such a mistake is induced by A’s acting in a way that foreseeably appears threatening, A shares responsibility for the error, and has at most a diminished complaint of having been wronged. I argue that this is best explained by positing duties grounded in agents’ entitlements to a fair distribution of the risk of suffering unjust harm. I suggest that the content of these duties is filled in by social conventions: when individuals A behave in ways that conventionally signal that they pose a threat to an agent D, A cannot reasonably demand that D refrain from defensive action, so A has at most a diminished complaint against D’s defensive action. Since this account makes essential reference to the socially defined meaning of the marked signaling behaviors, I conclude that this gives us reason to think that the social context can make a difference to agents’ defensive permissions.
Bio: Renee is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Philosophy at Australian National University. Renne currently works on the moral significance of risk, and has research interersts in a variety of issues in moral and political philosophy as well as the philosophy of language, with particular interest in questions relating to responsibility for public meaning of our actions.
Venue
Saint Lucia