The problem with this position is that responsibility as thus conceived does not appear to be an empirical concept. Many economists and sociologists accordingly regard the attempt to distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving poor as doomed to fail. On the other hand, the notion of responsibility is taught, learned and understood, arguably with beneficial consequences. The present issue of The Monist will deal with these and related questions on the topic of responsibility. The distance between one person and another can be assessed in a variety of ways.
Persons can be physically, or geographically, distant.
But they can also be affectively distant, for example when they are related to each other by no special ties of family or friendship or community. Intuitively, we have stronger moral obligations to those who are physically or affectively near than to those who are physically or affectively remote. Distance seems to set moral boundaries, and distant strangers seem to be of minimal moral concern. The present issue of The Monist is devoted to the question of how we are to gauge the moral significance of physical or affective distance. Contributions are invited which seek answers to questions such as these in ways which will throw light on the concepts of moral distance and moral boundaries.