Towards Formal Definitions of Blameworthiness, Intention, and Moral Responsibility

TL;DR

This paper introduces formal definitions for blameworthiness, intention, and moral responsibility based on epistemic states, providing a framework that aligns with commonsense judgments in complex moral scenarios.

Contribution

It offers novel formal definitions of blameworthiness, intention, and moral responsibility grounded in probabilistic causal models and utility functions.

Findings

Definitions align with commonsense moral judgments

Provides insights into complex moral responsibility cases

Framework applicable to various moral and causal reasoning scenarios

Abstract

We provide formal definitions of degree of blameworthiness and intention relative to an epistemic state (a probability over causal models and a utility function on outcomes). These, together with a definition of actual causality, provide the key ingredients for moral responsibility judgments. We show that these definitions give insight into commonsense intuitions in a variety of puzzling cases from the literature.