responsibility
Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion
Editorial synthesis · provisional
Definition
Responsibility concerns answerability for acts and for worlds one's activity helps produce. In personal attribution, an act belongs to an organized self acting from reasons and character. In distributed obligation, duties of response, repair and redesign differ with knowledge, control, role and leverage; distribution neither erases personal accountability nor places the burden on those most harmed.
Explanation
AB grounds personal answerability in the stabilized self's resolution of an open situation. Its institutional discussion adds that blame cannot carry the whole task: clinicians, organizers and legislators have different powers, and injured people must not be charged with repairing institutions. PB affirms distribution without dissolution, extends responsibility into irreversible futures, and links protection of nature to identification and dependence. It explicitly refuses to derive morality from relation alone.
RB1 locates responsibility's stakes in an unfinished field of constrained possibility; its quantum discussion denies that the theorem proves morally responsible freedom. RB2 connects responsibility to shaping future possibilities while qualifying that impermanence alone yields no ethics and the thermodynamic arrow does not automatically yield responsibility. RB3 develops individual, role, institutional and systemic layers. Its climate discussion makes duties track leverage, rejecting both private purity and systemic resignation.
Scope and attribution
Five local treatments, without crediting RB1 with RB3's institutional architecture.
AB — The Actual Book
An organized self can answer for acts; institutional duties additionally locate powers to repair conditions, without burdening injured people with redesign.
Occurrence locators: 7, 69, 71, 102, 124, 137, 149, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 168, 169, 170, 172, 176, 186, 187, 188, 192, 196, 197, 198, 199, 208, 209; Glossary: 225; Thinker register: 230; Notes: 246, 247, 248, 249; Appendix: 278, 280, 282, 286, 287, 289; Authorship account: 274, 275, 276.
PB — The Possible Book
Distributed responsibility extends to irreversible futures and protection of nature. Moral commitment is not deduced from relation.
Occurrence locators: 37, 38, 39, 63, 64, 65, 96, 104, 105, 106, 107, 127, 156; Reproduced AI exchange: 18; Literary application: 129, 130; Reproduced historical essay: 201.
RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real
Responsibility is a stake of constrained possibility, not something proved by quantum indeterminacy.
Occurrence locators: 4, 139, 266, 292, 297.
RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being
Actions shape future possibilities, but impermanence and thermodynamic direction do not automatically entail ethical responsibility.
Occurrence locators: 191, 211, 225, 226, 292, 294, 295, 296.
RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations
Individual, role, institutional and systemic layers are distinguished; climate obligations track leverage.
Occurrence locators: 1, 115, 137, 142, 156, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 166, 168, 170, 173, 174, 177, 180, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 197, 198, 200, 201, 205, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215, 220, 221, 222, 223, 227, 230, 231, 234, 241, 242, 244, 246, 247, 252, 255, 259, 260, 263, 265, 266, 267, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286, 287, 290, 292, 294, 295, 297, 299, 300, 302, 303, 304, 305, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 318, 320, 321, 322, 324, 342, 343; Reproduced AI exchange: 401; Authorship account: 405, 406; Case Regimes table: 323.
Background used in the editorial explanation
Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.