Description
Written by global, multidisciplinary experts, Responsibility for Extreme Beliefs and Behaviors explores the relation between responsibility and extreme beliefs and behaviors. The book is divided into three parts. The first part examines the issue of who or what is responsible, such as individuals, groups, the community, or even structural factors. It also addresses how individual responsibility relates to group responsibility. The second part concerns agency and various kinds of responsibility. It studies to what extent we can ascribe agency, both moral and epistemic, to extremists, and explores how epistemic agency depends on cognitive and affective capacities, self-knowledge, and intellectual self-trust, self-esteem, and self-respect. Moreover, it examines which environments foster extreme beliefs and behaviors and whether extremists and terrorists can be described as evil and how that bears on responsibility. The third and final part investigates when responsibility attributions are appropriate. It looks at various excusing and exculpating conditions of individual or group responsibility for extreme beliefs. It studies indoctrination and how much room it leaves for responsibility, and considers factors such as experiencing peer pressure, being in an epistemic bubble or echo chamber, and living in a society dealing with fake news and propaganda, and to what extent such factors can provide an excuse. In doing so, it takes not only the legal but equally the moral and epistemic dimensions of responsibility into account and how these relate to one another.
Table of Contents
List of TablesList of ContributorsIntroduction: Extreme Beliefs and ResponsibilityRik Peels, Naomi Kloosterboer, and Chris RanalliPart I Who Is Responsible?Chapter 1: Terrorism, Multidimensionalism, and MyopiaIan James KiddChapter 2: Brainwashing Versus "Free Choice: Responsibility for Criminal Acts by Cult MembersJanja LalichChapter 3: Responsibility for White Ignorance: A Multidimensional Framework for InquiryAnnette MartínChapter 4: Are Terrorists Collectively Responsible for Their Extreme Beliefs?Anne SchwenkenbecherChapter 5: Responsibility for Extremism Without ExtremistsJoshua DiPaolo and Molly O'Rourke-FrielPart II Agency and Different Kinds of ResponsibilityChapter 6: Blameworthiness for Fundamentalist BeliefsAnne MeylanChapter 7: Exercises of Agency and the Role of Sacred Values in RadicalizationNaomi Kloosterboer and Nora KindermannChapter 8: Online Expressions of Extreme Beliefs: Individual Criminal LiabilityKeiran HardyChapter 9: Victim or Perpetrator: Moving Beyond the Dichotomy to Understand Child Terrorist AgencyKatherine E. BrownChapter 10: The Role of Self-Trust in Evaluating Extreme BeliefsNadja El KassarChapter 11: Terrorism, Evil, and ResponsibilityRik PeelsPart III Responsibility AttributionsChapter 12: Religious Delusion and (Extreme) Religious Belief in Attributing Criminal ResponsibilityEugenia LancellottaChapter 13: Moral Responsibility and the Coercive Appeal to Religious TruthCarla BagnoliChapter 14: Should American Criminal Law Recognize Coercive Indoctrination as a Mitigating Factor?Ken M. LevyChapter 15: Manipulation and Responsibility for Belief: Or How We Can Be Responsible for What We Believe Inside Echo ChambersChris RanalliIndex
