Moralised Essentialism and Identity Closure in Moral Character Judgement

Accepting an excuse lowers blame, but whether it changes what observers think of the person is unsettled. An excuse admits an act was wrong but pleads reduced responsibility. Read as folk psychology, character accounts of excuse imply that an excuse making an act less revealing should soften judgement of the person. Moralised Essentialism predicts otherwise. Its central rule, identity closure, holds that once a wrong is taken to reveal who the actor is, excuses explain the act and reduce blame but leave the view of the person unchanged. The claim is that excuses stop reaching that judgement, not that they carry less weight. As excuses strengthen, observers should attribute the act more to the situation and blame less, while their judgements of who the actor is, and their forecasts of the actor’s conduct elsewhere, barely move. Retraction and reinterpretation, unlike excuses, change what the act was and should lower those judgements, which strict belief perseverance denies. A proposed experiment fixes two tests beforehand. Meaningful revision of those judgements under excuses observers credit as mitigating would reject the account. Judgements that hold or rise after accepted retraction or reinterpretation would reject closure as the explanation of their stability under excuses.