Moral responsibility

• People who are unable to understand the difference between right and wrong:

  • Children
  • Brainwashed people
  • Those with damage to the frontal cortex
• How is right and wrong learnt?


  • Religious beliefs
  • Social context
  • Innate senses of morality
• A priori is latin for innate
• Hume argues that humans have an innate ability to understand right and wrong
• Hume called the innate sense of morality the "faculty of sympathy"
• Hume argued that the faculty of sympathy is universal as everyone feels the need to help those in need and do what is right
• A person can only be held morally responsible for an action if they committed it freely
• Freedom is a condition of moral responsibility
• We should accept responsibility for the actions we freely perform
• If we're forced to commit an action, we are not worthy of blame
• If we are forced to commit a good action, we should not get praise for it