Relation Between Moral and Causal Responsibility for an Event - Essay Example

RELATION BETWEEN MORAL AND CAUSAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR AN EVENT By The notion of responsibility concerns two different cases, the first is where responsibility carries the sense of causal efficacy and the other it connotes moral judgement and behaviour. The question as to whether morality plays a causal role in behaviors across societies remains a pertinent one. Some instances in life present situations that to say the least are agonizing moral dilemmas. Solving such situations require rationality as a form of judgement. Consider, for instance, the 2002 hostage crisis in Moscow theatre. The use of a narcotic gas that apparently led to more than 120 deaths of innocent civilians received pretty much criticism. But what choice did the government have, wait for the terrorists to detonate their bombs and kill nearly all the 700 citizens that were taken hostage, or employ the gas as they did, kill the over 100 as it happened and save the remaining majority? While some agree that the option taken by the government regarding this issue practically aimed at deterring future attacks of similar aspects, others are of the opinion that the government should have formulated a better attack formula that would have saved the lives of all the hostages, thereby dispensing with the ‘sacrificial lamb’ idea. Nevertheless, having an inclusive reconciliation of such cases with moral principles is never an easy adventure. Any student of philosophy knows that stylized cases that present such agonizing dilemmas exist. For instance, Benard Williams in Moral luck tells of a story of Jim and the Indians, in which Jim is invited by the local leader to execute one out of the twenty locals paraded, after which the remaining nineteen are set free. A refusal from Jim would imply the local leader killing all the twenty individuals. Three options are available here, either Jim can make up his mind and be a utilitarian, in which case he will choose to execute one of them and save the remaining nineteen. A tough choice that is based on the principle that the utility of the many far much outweighs that of the few, and hence the risk is worth taking. Secondly, Jim can choose to walk away, in which case the leader will have to kill all the twenty individuals, but that is not the catch. Jim will entirely live with the guilt that had it made a different choice, only one out of these twenty individuals would be dead. However, Jim will have the assurance that the local leader is responsible for their deaths, and not him. In this case, the argument is that the life of one person is not expendable. The final option belong s to the clique that view the whole of the scenario as absurd, and thus cannot exist in real life. Nevertheless, how do these consequences of these actions relate and influence the perspective of a society towards rationalism? Common sense dictates that moral responsibility encompasses causal responsibility. That if the chances of an event happening given that one acts in a particular way is zero, then the said person has no control over the event, and it would be wrong to put any blame on the person regarding the event. This implies that individual should not be held morally responsible when they fail to achieve something that is way beyond their reach. Contrary to this, some people believe that causal responsibility entails moral responsibility. A good majority who subscribe to this notion believe in total responsibility as being the absolute doctrine. The wide belief behind this doctrine is that any scenario presents a choice, which in Jim’s case for instance, would favour killing one person, and saving the lives of the remaining ones. The remaining lot, where I belong as well, believe that causal responsibility does not entail moral responsibility. This is because the life instances that we have encountered and even those observed from past events do not explicitly provide a reasonable scenario in which causal responsibility exists and moral responsibility is completely absent. Vargas explores the deterministic approach proposed by Strawson, and observes that his theory is two-fold. On one hand, the theory attempts to provide reasons for exemption from responsibility based on circumstantial inappropriateness of the said agent to bear the responsibilities (2004, p. 5). The second maintains that responsibility is an integral part of the human social life, and must be upheld always (Vargas 2004, p. 4-6). To analyze these two scenarios, it is worth noting that agent based accounts propagate the notion that responsibility facts are fixed by features of the agent and his/her actions. However, the truth is that responsibility ascriptions can play a myriad of roles in the moral lives of persons, and can mark out facts about the responsibility as well as give indications on the appropriateness of certain actions. Due to this reason Vargas proposes a revisionist approach that involves the acceptance of conceptual analysis as a way of getting information concerning the property of responsibility, and also a conceptual error theory that results from failure to eliminate all non-compatibilist conditions. The revisionist theory exploits two key components of the deterministic principle, normative adequacy and naturalistic plausibility. Vargas therefore proposes a revised concept of responsibility that entails normative standard to enforce some level of conservatism about the revision. The new approach provides a principled adjudication of debates in the theory of debates regarding agency. It also gives a new perspective on moral psychology of holding agents responsible. What this implies in our case example of Jim walking away is that the agent becomes the leader and thus Jim is exonerated of any responsibility. In the event that Jim pulls the trigger, the agent of responsibility will be transferred to him. However, this will be a form of attributed responsibility, and not all especially in the sense of accountability or liability presuppose causal responsibility. Since responsibilities are limited by the range of causal powers, only to the extent of the effects we can produce or can causally influence, there is no connection between an agent being the cause of an effect and his being morally responsible for it. Hart and Gardner, 2008 suggests that a man is responsible for his action, worthy for blame and liable to punishment implies the lumping together of all the varied connotations of responsibility, and thus implies that responsible is enough ground for liability to punishment. However, this might only be true in the cases of role responsibility, such as that of the master to the ship, who is held responsible if the ship founders and he survives. It is also applicable to capacity responsibility, where one is solely responsible for his/her action, such as the government opting to gas the entire theatre in a bid to dislodge it of the terrorists in the case of the Russian Theater hostage situation. This translates to responsibility being a significant measure of liability, and hence blameworthiness. Causal responsibility is thus linked to actions or omissions, and to other things such as events and conditions, that may influence the outcome in a given way. Regarding the above example concerning Jim, there is no apparent causal responsibility from his side, regardless of whatever choice he opts for. However, the leader incurs a causal responsibility in the event that Jim walks away and he gets to execute all the twenty individuals. Nonetheless, our course is interested with Jim’s action, and not that of the leader. Consider a case where one person is offended or injured by the actions of another. Naturally, the person to which the offence has been committed against will have to feel some resentment with the said perpetrator. In the event that the victim attempts to understand the situation and works towards forgiveness, then the victim will harbor thoughts such as the probability that the perpetrator was pushed towards the same by other factor. What this argument leads us to is that it identifies the fact that the agent’s attitude and intention were consistent with the injury inflicted. This implies that culture and human conscience attempts to absolve the perpetrator of any wrongdoing, and thus label him either as not in his right mind as at the time of infliction, abnormal or just acting out of his usual senses. Strawson notes that this readiness to absolve one of any mistake lies in our innate attitudes that allow us to understand things from a remorseful perspective, morally so to speak, as opposed to initiating punishment (Strawson, 1974, p. 1-4). If for instance one person says something and the other person gets annoyed, the decision on who is at fault is an imperative one. Causal responsibility exists in both parties. The person who mentions something that the other finds offensive is causally responsible for an obvious reason, were it not for the utterances, nobody would have been offended, thus regardless of whether it was intentional or not, the responsibility remains. On the other hand, the recipient of the said offence is causally responsible since his life should have unfolded differently so that he would not have found the statement in question offensive. No single statement can be offensive to every living being. This means that our attempts to apportion moral responsibility are always skewed to the side on which causal responsibility is greater and more explicit (Strawson, 1974, p. 3-4). However, an intent based approach would seem convenient for such a case. For instance, if the perpetrator, i.e. the person whose words are found offensive by the other, had all the clear intention of offending the recipient in this case, then moral responsibility rests on him as the offender. This approach eliminates causality-based arguments in similar issues. In the field of law, insanity defense rests on the chances of being able to distinguish between cases in which the agent acted knowingly while in full control of himself, in which case they are held morally responsible for their actions, from the cases where the actions happened without complete knowledge committer, unintended or was compelled by some external factors. Nevertheless, the defendant in the latter case may have causally been responsible for the harm, but is acquitted of moral responsibility. Furthermore, even fully competent moral agents may sometimes end up being causally responsible for producing effects for which they had no intention to produce, and neither did they have any deliberate motive to produce. A case example is when one accidentally knocks over a cup of coffee. This idea can be extended to a case where the subject is a fellow human being, to which case responsibility is normally attributed to intentionality and moral agency. This assumed generality of intentionality and moral agency generally forms the basis for moral ascriptions, as opposed to causal responsibility, and which forms the necessary preconditions for further ascription responsibility in the broad sense of accountability, culpability and even liability. Causation by omission, and thus moral responsibility for failures, can be handled by allowing for negative causation. Causes are not factors, and even with positive causation, the need to use pragmatic considerations with an aim of narrowing down to the relevant causes is crucial. Several events that contribute to causal sequences observed in any event exist, one of which is human decisions. Each of these sequences has a line of origin, with some going back to periods preceding our births, while others arise during our daily deliberations and/or interactions. Nonetheless, regardless of the origin, these sequences translate to a form of action, in light of which we can now analyze Jim’s cases. The first case implies the logic for pulling the trigger holds up to killing the 19th person, and beyond which it becomes not only complicated, but impossible to calculate the utility sum. This means that by pulling the trigger, anyone else with the same reasoning will do the same, assuming this cycle continues successively with different individuals in place of Jim, then at long last only one person will be left standing, and thus no utility. Furthermore, one might be tempted to ask that what if the man Jim ends up killing would have been the next inventor of something that could change the course of history. The second scenario means Jim is not in any way directly responsible for any death. However, does this mean that Jim’s act gives a clear-cut distinction between an act and an omission that could see him absolved from moral responsibility of the 20 deaths? What could have been the probable reaction from the public had the Russian military failed to devise the plan they executed during the Theatre hostage situation, and instead watch as the terrorists blow up the building killing all the 800 people? Finally, maybe categorizing Jim’s dilemma as absurd would do, but then already a perfect example that depicts such exclusivity of action choices is present with the Russian hostage, and hence we can deduce that causal responsibility does not entail moral responsibility. Works Cited Hart, H.L.A & Gardner, J. (2008). Punishment and responsibility: Essays in the philosophy of law. Strawson, P. F. (1974). Freedom and resentment. London, Methuen. Vargas, R. M. (2004). Responsibility and the aims of theory: Strawson and revisionism. California, Blackwell Publishers. Read More