RESUMEN

Neuroimaging studies demonstrate that moral responsibility judgments activate the social cognition network, presumably reflecting mentalising processes. Conceptually, establishing an agent's intention is a sub-process of responsibility judgment. However, the relationship between both processes on a neural level is poorly understood. To date, neural correlates of responsibility and intention judgments have not been compared directly. The present fMRI study compares neural activation elicited by third-party judgments of responsibility and intention in response to animated pictorial stimuli showing harm events. Our results show that the social cognition network, in particular Angular Gyrus (AG) and right Temporo-Parietal Junction (RTPJ), showed stronger activation during responsibility vs. intention evaluation. No greater activations for the reverse contrast were observed. Our imaging results are consistent with conceptualisations of intention attribution as a sub-process of responsibility judgment. However, they question whether the activation of the social cognition network, particularly AG/RTPJ, during responsibility judgment is limited to intention evaluation.

RESUMEN

There are few concepts as relevant as that of intentional action in shaping our sense of self and the interaction with the environment. At the same time, few concepts are so elusive. Indeed, both conceptual and neuroscientific accounts of intentional agency have proven to be problematic. On the one hand, most conceptual views struggle in defining how agents can adequately exert control over their actions. On the other hand, neuroscience settles for definitions by exclusion whereby key features of human intentional actions, including goal-directness, remain underspecified. This paper reviews the existing literature and sketches how this gap might be filled. In particular, we defend a gradualist notion of intentional behavior, which revolves around the following key features: autonomy, flexibility in the integration of causal vectors, and control.

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Collaborativism is the view that moral reasoning is better when it is socially embedded. We propose that, when people take part in dialogic exchanges, they align in ways that open up novel avenues for sharing values and rationality criteria and, therefore, for exercising responsible agency. The hypothesis that collaborative interactions unfold through the alignment of minds and bodies helps articulate Doris's participatory approach to morality.

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RESUMEN

Diffusion of responsibility across agents has been proposed to underlie decreased helping and increased aggression in group behaviour. However, few studies have directly investigated effects of the presence of other people on how we experience the consequences of our actions. This EEG study investigated whether diffusion of responsibility simply reflects a post-hoc self-serving bias, or rather has direct effects on how we process the outcomes of our actions, and our experience of agency over them. Participants made voluntary actions whose outcomes were more or less negative. Presence of another potential agent reduced participants' sense of agency over those outcomes, even though it was always obvious who caused each outcome. Further, presence of another agent reduced the amplitude of feedback-related negativity evoked by outcome stimuli, suggesting reduced outcome monitoring. The presence of other agents may lead to diffusion of responsibility by weakening the neural linkage between one's actions and their outcomes.

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