Moral Responsibility and Quality of Will

It is frequently claimed that moral responsibility is a function of quality of will. This chapter investigates whether and, if so, how this is the case. First, it is noted that the term “quality of will” may be too narrow to fully capture the kinds of mental characteristics, both epistemic and non-epistemic, that are relevant to a person’s being morally responsible for something. Then the questions are raised just which kinds of mental characteristics are relevant and how they should be said to be relevant. In response to these questions, an account is given of the concepts of praise and blame and of the worthiness of praise and blame, on the basis of which it is suggested that (a) there are different kinds of praise and blame, (b) there are correspondingly different kinds of praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, and (c) there are accordingly different kinds of moral responsibility.