GET101/Ethics

Moral Personhood and Accountability

MODULES NO. 04 AND 05/LESSONS NO. 04 AND 05

Objectives:

1. To discover and discuss one’s moral personhood.

2. To appreciate one’s capacity to engage in moral argumentation.
3. To respond to the challenges of personhood and accountability.

MAIN TOPIC: Moral Personhood and Moral Accountability

Introduction

In the study of ethics, it is necessary and important to establish one’s moral personhood. The
understanding that moral judgments and moral decisions flow from moral persons who have
the capacity to judge and/or decide in a particular moral situation provides one the path
towards taking the person as an object of moral concern. Deeply connected with the ethical
concept of moral personhood is moral accountability. As the human person exercises his/her
rights, he/she must also see to it that he/she performs his duties and responsibilities.

Sub-topic 1: Moral Personhood

The common conception that only human persons with the capacity to know and to
freely act are morally responsible for their actions has been challenged through time.
This has to be clarified in moral discourse so as not to fall into false assumptions and
hasty generalizations. When one judges an act – for example, the act of murder – as
wrong, he/she could arrive at the generalization that the agent of that act commits a
wrongdoing that violates moral principles. That the agent is considered a moral person,
and thus, he/she is responsible for the act done. The act itself is wrong. There is no
question about it. What motivates one to question is the state of the person doing the
act. Hence, the concern boils down to what moral personhood is.

What must be established are “the defining features of moral personhood and the kinds
of beings that can be regarded as moral persons. A significant part of being a moral
person is being accountable for one’s actions; for when moral persons act as doers of
morally evaluable actions, they may deserve moral blame or praise for these
actions.”1After clarifying this concept of a moral person, one can proceed to
understanding the concept of moral accountability/responsibility. Moral persons are
beings or entities having moral status or standing. According to Paul Glenn in his book,
Ethics a Class Manual in Moral Philosophy, a moral person/moral agent must be
understood in the context of the distinction between act of man and human act wherein
1 Francis Julius N. Evangelista and Napoleon M. Mabaquiao, Jr. 2020. Ethics Theories and Applications.
Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., p. 20
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the former is the category of acts devoid of the accountability requirements while the
latter is the category of acts which satisfies the accountability requirements of
knowledge, freedom, and voluntariness. 2 The doer is accountable to his acts that are
knowingly, freely, and voluntarily done. This entails that when the doer acts knowingly
and freely, the act is said to be voluntary. In other words, there can be no voluntary act
in the absence of knowledge or freedom or both.

Another way of defining personhood is in terms of possession of rights: to be a person is

to be a bearer of rights. 3 Since what is being discussed is moral personhood, the rights
referred to, here, are moral rights, which makes a person a moral person, the object of
moral concern. Moral rights are always coupled with moral duties. The basic principle is
that if there are rights to exercise, then there must be duties to perform. It is, however,
important to note that the possession of moral rights is merely the minimum definition
of moral personhood; for, as we shall later on elaborate, there are moral persons who,
in addition to having moral rights, also have moral duties or obligations. 4 What is right?
Right is a moral power residing in a person, -- a power which all others are bound to
respect – of doing, possessing, or requiring something. 4 It is an essential element of
being a person. Every person has it. It is founded upon law. 6 The existence of a law
provides that a right is always coupled with an obligation. The exercise of a right is
fundamental and demands respect (obligation) from others. So anybody who asserts his
right and demands respect from others must also know how to respect the rights of
others. This “mutuality” under the law must be honoured and respected, too. Below are
categories of rights.5

Based on Duties Imposed by Rights

1. Negative Right – one’s possession of a right imposes only the duty of non-
interference on other people.
2. Positive Right – one’s possession of right imposes the duty of provision, in addition
to the duty of non-interference on other people.
In Terms of How Rights Are Required
1. Contractual Rights – the rights that we acquire when we enter into an agreement or
a contract with some other persons or institutions. Contractual rights are either
formal when the rights of the parties of the contract, along with their correlative

2 Paul Glenn extensively discusses the requirements for a moral agent to be held responsible for his/her
acts. His book contains the fundamentals of morality which a beginner in ethics may consider. It is a good book on
moral principles and the applications of those principles to specific moral situations.
3 Francis Julius N. Evangelista and Napoleon M. Mabaquiao, Jr. 2020. Ethics Theories and
Applications. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., p. 21 4 Ibid.
4 Paul J. Glenn, Ph.D., S.T.D. 1930. ETHICS A Class Manual in Moral Philosophy. St. Louis,
Mo: B. Herder Book Co., p. 136 6 Ibid.
5 The categories were imported from the book of Dr. Francis Julius N. Evangelista and Dr. Napoleon N.
Mabaquiao, Jr.
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Moral Personhood and Accountability

duties, are explicitly stated usually in some written document; or informal, if such
rights and duties are merely implied.
2. Legal Rights – the rights that we acquire when we become citizens of a certain
country or state.
3. Moral Rights – rights acquired when one becomes a moral person or a member of
the moral community.

The concept of a moral person has been defined and discussed in this module. Based on
the definition, humans are considered moral persons. It is because they possess certain
qualities other than being a human being. Yet, “moral persons, in principle, can either
be human or non-human. Non-human moral persons, in this regard, would refer to
those possessing the defining features of being a moral person but not of being a human
being. They may include animals, aliens, and artificial entities like corporations and
intelligent machines.”6 Moral persons are classified into two:

1. Moral Agents – when moral persons act as the sources of morally evaluable actions,
in that they are the doers of such actions. 9
2. Moral Patients (moral recipients) – when they act as the receivers of such actions, in
that such actions are done to them.7

Sub-topic 2: Moral Accountability

A moral person is a moral person not just because of the fundamental qualities but
dynamically because of the moral accountability that goes with the performance of any
action with knowledge and freedom. Moral accountability establishes the deep
connection between the doer(person) and action. The doer knows(partially or fully)
what the action is and the consequences of such action. The doer knows the obligations
that run with the action performed. And he/she has the freedom to perform or not to
perform the action. With these, the act, once performed, is said to be voluntary. If it is
voluntary, then the doer of the action is accountable to it.

But, is accountability the same as responsibility? By accountability, it is a natural product

of our rationality, which consists of our reason (intelligence) and free will (or freedom).
In the practical context of performing actions, our reason enables us to distinguish
between right and wrong actions, while our free will enables us to choose which action
that we would like to perform. Consequently, we deserve blame for freely choosing to
perform an action we know to be wrong (or for freely choosing not to perform an action
we know to be right); while we deserve praise for freely choosing to perform an action
we know to be right (or for freely choosing not to perform an action we know to be

6 Francis Julius N. Evangelista and Napoleon M. Mabaquiao, Jr. 2020 Ethics Theories and
Applications. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., p. 24 9 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
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wrong).8 In these descriptions of accountability, one would notice that knowledge and
freedom play important roles in the performance of an action, the reason why
accountability really exists whether one recognizes it or not.

There are two things emphasized here: a) accountability involves both praise and blame
(or reward and punishment); and b) deservingness is not negated by actualities. 12 The
first points to the consequence of an action. A good action must be praised because it is
good, whereas a bad action (evil) deserves blame and the doer is blameworthy. The
second emphasis in the concept of accountability means that the goal of morality is that
the person (doer) deserves to be happy even if the performance of an action results in
unhappiness. This is Kantian in that it stresses the deservingness to be happy rather
than happiness itself.

The aforementioned discussion on accountability brings one to the point of relating it to

the term “responsibility.” The sense of accountability in this module must be used
interchangeably with the sense of responsibility. Though responsibility has broader
scope in meaning, it must be understood in the context of how accountability is
understood above. The moral agent insofar as he/she is the doer of the action is morally
accountable or morally responsible for his/her action under certain conditions, not just
merely the doer of the action.

Furthermore, responsibility also means duty or obligation, or having certain duties or

obligations towards other people. 9 As a moral person, one has responsibilities out of the
duties and obligations he/she has to religiously respond to. In the deontological ethical
perspective, duties and obligations are born out of the relationships one is in or
establishes. For example, a father, in his relationship with his son, has duties and
obligations to his son, and the son, in his relationship with his father, has duties and
obligations to his father. The father should feed his son, send his son to school, take his
son away from troubles in his barkada, and so on and so forth. The son should respect
his father, help his father in his own capacity, and so on and so forth. Confucius, in his
ethical discourse on the basic relationships one has in his/her life, recognizes that those
relationships basically entail obligations that one has to respond to. There are two kinds
of responsibility as pointed out by Michael Zimmerman: responsibility understood as the
possession of duties, which he calls prospective responsibility, the kind of responsibility
directed towards what will or may happen, and responsibility understood as
accountability as retrospective responsibility, the kind of responsibility directed towards
what had happened already.14 Nonetheless, one has to be conscious of the requirements

8 Ibid., p. 31
12
Ibid.
9 From Zimmerman (2010) as cited by Francis Julius N. Evangelista and Napoleon M.
Mabaquiao, Jr. in their book, Ethics Theories and Applications published by Anvil Publishing, Inc. in
2020. 14 Ibid., 32
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for a person to be accountable or responsible for his/her actions, not just a mere cause
of the act.

There are conditions for moral accountability. “We shall call the first the attribution
conditions (or assignment conditions) for they determine whether moral accountability
can be attributed or assigned to a person for an action that he/she has done. Under this
set are the incriminating conditions, which would make one morally accountable for the
action under consideration; and the excusing conditions, which would spare one from
moral accountability for the action under consideration. We shall call the second set the
degree conditions because they determine the degree of one’s moral accountability.
Under this set are the mitigating and aggravating conditions. The conditions are
regarded as mitigating when they lessen the degree of one’s moral accountability; while
they are regarded as aggravating when they increase it. Analysis of the degree
conditions assumes that the person whose action is under consideration is held morally
accountable for the action in question; what is being determined is simply the degree of
his/her moral accountability.”10
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REFERENCES AND SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

Books and Journals

1. Evangelista, Francis Julius N. and Mabaquiao, Napoleon Jr. M. 2020. Ethics Theories
and Applications. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
2. Glenn, Paul J. 1930. ETHICS A Class Manual in Moral Philosophy. St. Louis, Mo.: B.
Herder Book Co.

10 Ibid., 33. You may refer to the book of Evangelista and Mabaquiao for the discussions on the conditions
for moral responsibility.