1 Of course there is a huge range of moral attitudes and practices in every society, many of which might be quite unaffected by insights concerning the lack of agential transparency and the causes of our moral judgments. When speaking of our “moral practices” in this general manner I refer to the basic and crucial assumptions without which the whole idea of “morality” and our nature as moral beings seem to collapse, e.g., the assumption that we are able to and often act in accordance with norms and values. 47 Intrapersonal Ascriptions of Responsibility by Maureen Sie […] theoretical and practical ethics lie on a continuum that leads from the particular to the general, from the application of values to the analysis of moral concepts, from shared moral beliefs to justified moral principles, and vice versa. This in itself is a complex and highly ambitious undertaking that renders any sharp demarcation between the two fields obsolete. (Gerhold K. Becker in Sie 2005: xi) Introduction Recent research in the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences reveals that sincere, fully developed moral agents who are mentally healthy are nevertheless capable of grave mistakes concerning their so-called agential contribution. That is, they sometimes judge that they acted whereas it can be shown that they did not, and, vice versa, they sometimes fail to recognize that they acted whereas it can be convincingly established that they did act. More about this later. In the wake of these findings a host of researchers have developed experiments designed to test our so-called moral agency: our capacity to judge and act for/on the basis of moral reasons. The results suggest that in this central human area too, we lack crucial agential transparency, offering reasons for our moral judgments that played no role in generating them and sticking to our moral judgments even when we are no longer capable of providing sound reasons for them. These findings are challenging, for, first of all, the practice of giving and asking for reasons is a central feature of our moral practices. 1 Secondly,