TT13 Uehiro Seminar: Attention, Action, and Responsibility

There is a tendency to think of action as a relatively high-level concept, minimally requiring the input of the experiencing subject through the subject's attention. To account for the known effects of practice and skill, I propose instead a four-step account of action, within which only two of the four steps benefit from the subject's attention. This account reveals a potential disconnect between the subject of experience and the morally responsible agent. This disconnect allows for praise and blame (i.e. moral responsibility) in cases where the subject is unaware of his or her action, which I will discuss through a couple of examples.