Trauma and Diachronic Reasons-Responsive Moral Responsibility

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2026.284

Keywords:

Epistemic freezing, Narrative foreclosure, Excuse and mitigation, Self-governance, Psychiatric impairment

Abstract

This paper develops a taxonomy of trauma-related disruptions for responsibility assessment within a reasons-responsive framework. It identifies four disruptions: epistemic freezing, foreshortened future, narrative foreclosure, and loss of epistemic access to others. These are domain-sensitive impairments in the exercise of agency, not global losses of standing capacities. Understood this way, assessment can distinguish episodic excuse, mitigation, and domain-restricted responsibility. The taxonomy extends existing reasons-responsive accounts. Such accounts can absorb each disruption once it has been identified, but they do not supply the means of identifying or distinguishing them.

References

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Published

2026-10-01

How to Cite

Castleberry, J. B. (2026). Trauma and Diachronic Reasons-Responsive Moral Responsibility. Philosophy of Medicine, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.5195/pom.2026.284

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2026)

Section

Analysis

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Copyright (c) 2026 Jacob B. Castleberry

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