Moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission, in accordance with one's moral obligations. Deciding what if anything is morally obligatory is a principle concern of ethics.
People who have moral responsibility for an action are called moral agents. Agents are capable of reflecting on their situation, forming intentions about how they will act, and then carrying out that action. Free will is an important issue in the debate on whether individuals are ever morally responsible for their actions—and, if so, in what sense. Incompatibilists think that determinism is at odds with free will, whereas compatibilists think the two can coexist.
Moral responsibility is not necessarily the same as legal responsibility. A person is legally responsible for an event when it is that person who is liable to be penalised in the court system for an event. Although it may often be the case that when a person is morally responsible for an act, they are also legally responsible for it, the two states do not always coincide.
Read more about Moral Responsibility: Philosophical Stances, Experimental Research, Collective Moral Responsibility, Lack of Sense of Responsibility of Psychopaths
Famous quotes containing the words moral responsibility and/or moral:
“... life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is tragedy, it is comedy, it is psychical and physical pleasure, it is the interplay of a thousand rude or delicate motions and emotions, it is the grimmest and the merriest motley of phantasmagoria that could appeal to the gravest or the maddest brush ever put to palette; but it is steadily and sturdily and always moral responsibility.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The point is children lie to others for good and sufficient reasons, but they don’t kid themselves. They know who did what, but they feel no moral imperative to inform grownups.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)