The paper argues that individuals can be praiseworthy for good actions done unknowingly, suggesting a moral balance with negligence.
I argue that agents can be praiseworthy for doing the right thing despite their being unaware of their doing that thing (and not only that it is right). Differently put, I propose that negligence has a positive counterpart, which I dub “posigence.” To motivate this proposal, I introduce cases in which an agent has sufficient reason to act in a way that promotes her own well-being but sets back (or at least, fails to promote) the interests of another, but inadvertently omits to do so, manifesting therein good quality of will.
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Daniel Telech (2026) studied this question.
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