Imagine you are a soldier who spots an “enemy” child who is about to throw an explosive at your camp; you know it is wrong to kill a child, but the alternative is to fail to protect members of your unit. You shoot and kill the child and are later praised for your action. But you don’t feel proud, even though you don’t think there was any better action you could have taken; instead, you have an anguished sense of responsibility for the child’s death. Or imagine you are a nurse who administers the wrong medication because of an error that someone else made on a patient’s chart; no one blames you, but you are haunted by your role in the patient’s subsequent death. These situations are marked by a peculiar asymmetry between what we tend to hold ourselves responsible for and what others can rightly hold us responsible for. I

Lisa Tessman, professor of philosophy at SUNY Binghamton, makes sense of this asymmetry by arguing that our sense of responsibility can be fitting. It can reflect what really matters to us - regardless of whether it reflects what, according to shared normative expectations, can rightly matter.

Refreshments will be provided from Hamilton Whole Foods.

This event is sponsored by The Jerome Balmuth and Marion Hoeflich Endowment.