NEGLIGENCE, INADVERTENCE, AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY: AN ASSESSMENT OF KING'S 'THE PROBLEM WITH NEGLIGENCE'

This paper is an assessment of the conclusion that negligent agents are not morally responsible for the damages they cause, reached by Matt King in "The Problem with Negligence" (2009). King's argument involves two difficult issues that are often disregarded in discussions about moral responsibility. One is that it is not clear why we usually attribute responsibility in cases of negligence but not in cases of inadvertence even though both phenomena are characterized by the absence of conscious mental elements. The other is that any explanation of the responsibility attributed in cases of negligence and in paradigmatic cases should shed light on the features that both cases share. I will review these issues involved in King's argument in order to avoid his conclusion and to clarify some important matters of our attribution of responsibility in cases of negligence and in cases of inadvertence.