The folk concept of moral agency

Whether a particular entity is a ‘moral agent’ determines the sense in which its behaviour is morally evaluable. Theories of moral agency aim to capture and explain commonsense distinctions between the possession or absence of moral agency across different kinds of being. But little is known about the ordinary concept of moral agency, its application across different entities, and its relation to the more specific notion of moral responsibility. In this paper, we investigate the folk concept of moral agency through philosophical analysis and two empirical studies. We draw conceptual distinctions between three components of moral agency: intentional action (acting rather than behaving), moral action (acting morally rightly or wrongly), and responsible action (being blameworthy for one's actions). We then investigate whether people differentiate between the three components of moral agency, and the extent to which their judgments depend on the perceived psychological and behavioural capacities of the entity in question. We find that people attribute varying degrees of moral agency to different entities while differentiating between the proposed components. These moral agency attributions are partly, but not fully, explained by people's attributions of underlying capacities. While intentional action ascriptions were linked to the attribution of mental states like desires, beliefs, and sensations, moral action and moral responsibility were linked to ascriptions of capacities for a ‘deep self’. Philosophical theories of moral agency should account for these patterns in folk attributions.