In his Epistemic Blame (2024), Cameron Boult presents a comprehensive account of epistemic blame as negative relationship modification in response to intellectual conduct that impairs an epistemic relationship. I articulate an alternative conception, according to which the proper basis for a critical epistemic response is violating epistemic normative expectations, and the response consists in holding the target epistemically accountable in a non-blaming way. The key elements of epistemic accountability are non-instrumental downgrading of the target’s standing as a source, (...) partner, and user in social epistemic practices, and endorsement of taking responsibility for the violation. Like blame, this way of holding accountable carries a sting that goes beyond negative judgment, is sensitive to responsibility for the violation (and thus allows for excuses), and is second-personal. In these respects my view is closer to that of Boult than his critics, and can thus be described as a form of moderate rather than radical scepticism about epistemic blame. However, unlike paradigm blame, epistemic accountability is not accusatory or attitudinal, and is only weakly second-personal, since it doesn’t require standing or demand some form of atonement. It is thus best described as an epistemic analogue of blame rather than as a form of blame. (shrink)

For many, blame is a morally appropriate response only when the blamer has _standing_ to blame. This chapter calls this the standard account, and this chapter argues that it should be rejected. Defenders of the standard account have articulated several conditions that a person must meet in order to have standing. This chapter considers arguments given in support of each condition and show that these arguments are vulnerable to objections. Despite the criticisms, this chapter acknowledges that there is (...) a kernel of truth in the standard account: blame is _positional_; that is, blame’s moral propriety sometimes depends on the relationship between the blamer and the target. However, the standard account fails to adequately capture the positionality of blame. Despite what some philosophers suggest, the ethics of blame is not exhausted by considerations of fittingness and standing. As critics, targets, and third parties, we have special responsibilities, and this chapter closes by describing these responsibilities. (shrink)

Deep learning AI systems have proven a wide capacity to take over human-related activities such as car driving, medical diagnosing, or elderly care, often displaying behaviour with unpredictable consequences, including negative ones. This has raised the question whether highly autonomous AI may qualify as morally responsible agents. In this article, we develop a set of four conditions that an entity needs to meet in order to be ascribed moral responsibility, by drawing on Aristotelian ethics and contemporary philosophical research. We encode (...) these conditions and generate a flowchart that we call the Moral Responsibility Test. This test can be used as a tool both to evaluate whether an entity is a morally responsible agent and to inform human moral decision-making over the influencing variables of the context of action. We apply the test to the case of Artificial Moral Advisors and conclude that this form of AI cannot qualify as morally responsible agents. We further discuss the implications for the use of AMAs as moral enhancement and show that using AMAs to offload human responsibility is inadequate. We argue instead that AMAs could morally enhance users if they are interpreted as enablers for moral knowledge of the contextual variables surrounding human moral decision-making, with the implication that such a use might actually enlarge human moral responsibility. (shrink)