Situations and Responsiveness to Reasons*

Abstract

Abstract Some classical studies in social psychology suggest that we are more sensitive to situational factors, and less responsive to reasons, than we normally recognize we are. In recent years, moral responsibility theorists have examined the question whether those studies represent a serious threat to our moral responsibility. A common response to the “situationist threat” has been to defend the reasons‐responsiveness of ordinary human agents by appeal to a theory of reasons‐responsiveness that appeals to patterns of counterfactual scenarios or possible worlds. In this paper I identify a problem with that response and I offer a better solution.