 First, the requirement of awareness of action (Mele 2010; Sliwa 2017). To be responsible for his action, John must be aware of what he is doing. If John falsely believes that the button is a light switch, then he isn’t aware that by pressing it he will start the treadmill and so it seems that he can’t be blamed for Mary’s fall and for her injuries. Similarly, if John correctly believes that pressing the button will start the treadmill but isn’t aware that Mary is standing on it, it seems that he isn’t blameworthy either. These seemings have to be refined, of course, since John’s ignorance of the button’s function or of Mary’s location can itself be blameworthy, in which case (most think) it fails to exculpate (Ginet 2000: 271). (For the classic discussion of what it takes for ignorance to be culpable see Holly Smith 1983 and  sect. 2  below. For discussions of whether culpable ignorance excuses, see Holly Smith 1983 and 2017; Montmarquet 1995.) The lesson, then, is that for an agent to be directly blameworthy for an action—that is, blameworthy in a way that doesn’t derive from previous instances of blameworthiness, such as culpability for the ignorance from which she acts—she must be aware that she is performing the action in question, and be aware of it under an appropriate description (Anscombe 1963; Levy 2014: 37). In this case, John must be aware that by pressing the button he is activating the treadmill with Mary on it or, alternatively, that by pressing the button and activating the treadmill he is causing Mary to fall to the ground. (Recall that this is just a first pass on the epistemic requirements on responsibility. We’ll see later on  (sect. 3.4)  that many philosophers deny that one must be aware of what one is doing in order to be directly responsible for it.)