Adriana PLACANI

"the ascription of retrospective moral responsibility for risk imposition"

This project re-conceptualizes retrospective moral responsibility in order to address cases of risk imposition. Moral theories have traditionally addressed retrospective responsibility ascriptions in contexts of complete certainty, where actual harms or wrongs are assumed to have occurred. These theories have implemented and relied on responsibility models that, by virtue of the assumption of certainty, omit the importance, moral ramifications, and grounds for responsibility attributions in cases of risk. On the face of it, then, it appears that traditional responsibility models are unable to address the moral and ethical nuances of risks because of their built-in suppositions. Rather than forsaking such models wholesale, this project’s working hypothesis is that they can be modified and extended to accommodate risk cases. The project’s aim is to re-conceptualize traditional responsibility theories so that risk cases may be properly addressed and, in so doing, develop a novel normative framework for the justified allocation and assessment of individual moral responsibility for risk impositions.