response variable See REGRESSION ANALYSIS. responsibility, a condition that relates an agent to actions of, and consequences connected to, that agent, and is always necessary and sometimes sufficient for the appropriateness of certain kinds of appraisals of that agent. Responsibility has no single definition, but is several closely connected specific concepts.
Role responsibility. Agents are identified by social roles that they occupy, say parent or professor. Typically duties are associated with such roles – to care for the needs of their children, to attend classes and publish research papers. A person in a social role is ‘responsible for’ the execution of those duties. One who carries out such duties is ‘a responsible person’ or ‘is behaving responsibly.’
Causal responsibility. Events, including but not limited to human actions, cause other events. The cause is ‘responsible’ for the effect. Causal responsibility does not imply consciousness; objects and natural phenomena may have causal responsibility.
Liability responsibility. Practices of praise and blame include constraints on the mental stance that an agent must have toward an action or a consequence of action, in order for praise or blame to be appropriate. To meet such constraints is to meet a fundamental necessary condition for liability for praise or blame – hence the expression ‘liability responsibility’. These constraints include such factors as intention, knowledge, recklessness toward consequences, absence of mistake, accident, inevitability of choice. An agent with the capability for liability responsibility may lack it on some occasion – when mistaken, for example.
Capacity responsibility. Practices of praise and blame assume a level of intellectual and emotional capability. The severely mentally disadvantaged or the very young, for example, do not have the capacity to meet the conditions for liability responsibility. They are not ‘responsible’ in that they lack capacity responsibility. Both morality and law embody and respect these distinctions, though law institutionalizes and formalizes them. Final or ‘bottom-line’ assignment of responsibility equivalent to indeed deserving praise or blame standardly requires each of the latter three specific kinds of responsibility. The first kind supplies some normative standards for praise or blame. See also CAUSATION, DIMINISHED CAPAC- ITY, FREE WILL , HART, INTENTION , MENS RE. R.A.Sh.