Ethics Seminar: "Absurd Responsibility"

Professor Stephen Kearns (Florida State University) will be visiting the BU Ethics Seminarto give a talk titled "Absurd Responsibility." This is based on part of a completed book manuscript on absurdity. Abstract The realist about responsibility points out that we have several features which plausibly render us fitting subjects of reactive behavior, while the skeptic points out that we have several features which plausibly render us unfitting subjects of such behavior. Rather than taking the realist and skeptic to be fundamentally contradicting each other, we can instead take from them the lesson that we are evaluatively absurd with respect to our responsibility; we are, at the same time, fitting and unfitting, just and unjust, objects of reactive attitudes and treatment.