"Bleve" <
[email protected]> writes:
> David Trudgett wrote:
>> "Bleve" <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>> > This calls up the issue of responsibility.
>>
>> You should recall that we were discussing withholding medical care
>> (perhaps only if the person can't afford it), not personal
>> responsibility per se.
>
> You make a choice, and "society" makes a choice about what it's
> prepared to pay for.
Yes, this is undoubtedly the case, and I don't see how anyone could
dispute it. Yet, what we are discussing is *precisely* the issue
concerning the choice that our hypothetical "society" makes in that
regard (glossing over our sloppy use of 'society' for now). What we
are *really* talking about is how much we are going to care for each
other. That is the bottom line.
The Christian's (and in my opinion, any good person's) answer to the
bottom line is that we should care for each other as if we were each
the other's flesh and blood. Would I let my child (of any age) suffer
a life of avoidable pain because he rode a bicycle without a helmet
contrary to the law? No I would not, and neither would any good
person. But there is no difference between my child and my neighbour's
child (of any age) that has any bearing on this question. This means
that there is no difference between you and I, and that therefore I
should do for you what I would do for myself. You had better hope I'm
not a masochist ;-)
In contrast to that view, there is the selfish, animalistic view where
dog eats dog, so to speak, and it's everyone for himself in a game of
survival of the fittest. From this perspective, we do as little as
possible for each other in order to maximise our own wealth. We only
provide health care so that people can go on producing for the
consumer society, not because they deserve it as human beings. We only
provide education in order to manufacture productive workers, not
because the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom is an essential part of
what makes us human. And in the provision of these things, we always
feel dissatisfied and peeved that other people should be a drain on
our wealth.
So the choice is not "society's", it is yours and mine. A "society" is
not a person and cannot make choices. It is you and I who make
choices, and you and I get to decide how much we are going to care for
each other. (Don't get all romantic on me.) Each of us has a choice
between selfishness, greed and self-interest on one hand, and love on
the other. All you have to do is make that choice and forget about
that mythical "society" person.
>
>> The upshot of this aspect of the law is that it has injustice built
>> right into its very foundation. Those who do suffer from a real and
>> unavoidable lapse in concentration will be judged in the same way
>> as the liar and the person who could care less about safety.
>
> You're confusing responsibility with retribution, and event with
> intent.
In fact, I'm not. It is a function of your understanding what I am
saying. Perhaps I am not being clear enough. For my part, I understand
perfectly well what your position is, but I am telling you that your
view of the issue is incomplete.
> Accidents are not the same thing as deliberate breaches of the
> rules.
That's obvious, but accidents happen with or without breaching
"rules", and you are advocating for the instance in which they happen
while (someone else's) "rule" is being breached, that a human being
should stop being treated like a human being, and in that way be
punished for breaking the "rule". It does not matter how clever the
sophistry is that is used to justify this action, it cannot disguise
the essential nature of retribution inherent in such an attitude.
It is not a matter of simple "consequences" as you try to make out,
because we are not talking about immutable laws of the natural
world. We are talking instead about the way we decide to treat each
other. Your use of "consequences" means this: I say to you, "Don't
touch my ice cream, or I'll shoot you with my shotty." You go ahead
and eat my ice cream and I shoot you with my shotty. Too bad, that was
just the "consequence" of your action. After all, I had no choice but
to shoot you, right?
> Determining which is which is the hard part. It is one thing to play
> cricket in the front yard and break a window with an accidentally
> overplayed shot, it is another thing altogether to walk up to a
> window with a cricket bat and smash it.
And you can tell if a person is temporarily insane and can't help
their actions? As you said, it *is* the hard part, isn't it? Why can't
everything be so *easy*, like it is in theory?
>
>> > It doesn't matter what excuses get cooked up for them. When I
>> > crashed my bike into another rider, it was my fault for not paying
>> > attention. I had 3 good excuses, but it was my responsibilty. I
>> > was tired, I had a lapse of concentration and I was unlucky. So
>> > what?
>>
>> So, unless you are lying, or you have a machine-like perfect control
>> over concentration, you are not morally responsible for the
>> accident. This is the basic meaning of "accident", after all.
>
> It was an accident, but I was still the responsible party.
This is actually a self-contradiction. If it was an accident, you were
*not* morally responsible by definition (unless you deliberately or
negligently courted the accident in the first place). Notice I use the
word 'morally' right before 'responsible'. Your use of the word
'responsible' is vague, wishy-washy and, from a broader perspective,
wrong.
You are saying that because you did something, you are somehow
"responsible" for it, without having a clear understanding of what you
mean by the word. You are conflating different uses of the word.
"responsible for an action":
-- Morally accountable; the action was done deliberately or
negligently.
-- Legally accountable; your action infringed a law.
-- You did it; someone else didn't do it.
-- Someone else did it, but you are being blamed.
What you are saying is that because you did something, you should make
amends for it, whether or not you are actually guilty or to blame in
any moral sense. This is a Christian value, and I completely agree
with you. But I do not agree with you that you "must" do that because
you are "guilty" of being human and making mistakes. If you crash into
someone, it is your duty to help them no matter who is "guilty" or if
no one is "guilty". In fact, it is also your duty to provide such help
even if you are not involved in the accident at all. All this has
nothing to do with "responsibility", however you care to define it.
> As such, I paid for the damage. That's called "Accepting
> responsibility".
This again shows your confusion about the word 'responsibility'. It's
good that you paid for the damage. If you didn't, who else would?
Furthermore, from their point of view, you appeared to be negligent,
so failure to make good would look bad, so to speak. If it had been
visually obvious to them that the reason for the crash was beyond your
control (say, in some totally different scenario), then I would hazard
they would likely not have thought about accepting compensation from
you.
Once again, none of this has anything to do with "responsibility". It
has to do with doing the right thing by others.
> When I was a kid, I broke (by accident) a few windows. I paid to
> have them fixed. Sure, I didn't *mean* to put cricketballs through
> them, but it was my responsibility, as I caused the event to occur.
Here, the issue of moral responsibility *does* come into it, because
of negligence. Kids old enough to be playing cricket also know that
hitting cricket balls into things may break or damage them. Of course,
kids may not fully appreciate the danger or likelihood of such damage,
which lessens the moral responsibility.
Now what if you had turned someone into a "vegetable" for life instead
of merely breaking a window? Cricket balls are quite capable of doing
that, you know. Would it also have been your responsibility to live in
abject poverty for the rest of your life in order to pay for the life
support systems? Things are not so simple as the word 'responsibility'
may make it seem. We all have a duty of care to each other
individually and collectively, even when individuals do the wrong
thing deliberately or negligently.
>
>> So, don't let me get in the way of your being a martyr. If you really
>> want to blame yourself, then go ahead. After all, you're the only one
>> who really knows how guilty you really are. No judge, no jury can know
>> it, but *you* can.
>
> I'm not being a martyr, I'm accepting responsibility for the
> consequences of my actions.
Although no one will argue that you shouldn't try to make amends for
the consequences of your own actions, you can't accept something that
doesn't belong to you. That is not "accepting responsibility", it is
doing what you can to make your part of the world right, while
realising that things like lapses of concentration *can* be as much
out of your control as, say, getting a punctured tyre. You do not have
any *moral* duty to fix anything that you were not morally guilty of
breaking. An accident implies no guilt (although, in practical terms,
there usually is a degree of guilt, which is partly why the law has
such an obsession with finding the "guilty" party); therefore, a true
accident involves no guilty party, and therefore no one to "accept
responsibility". In the real world, though, it works a bit
differently, because we have to, for practical reasons, look at
*apparent* responsibility.
In your accident, you were apparently responsible for it in the moral
sense. You were riding along, and you just crashed into someone
minding their own business (presumably). From an observer's point of
view, you were negligent (since it is not possible to observe the
state of someone's mind). Therefore, from an objective observational
perspective, you would have to be treated just as if you were morally
guilty of at least negligence, whether or not that was the reality of
the situation. It was because you were *apparently* morally responsible
for the incident (not "accident" now) that both parties felt you
should pay for the damages.
It does not help (because it is not true) to claim that just because
you did something, you are morally bound to pay damages. If you were
hunting wascally wabbits in the countryside but, through no fault of
your own (because of having taken every precaution), that little bunny
you just shot turned out to be someone's head, would you be morally
bound to support the deceased's family for the rest of your life? It
would be good if you could do that, but you would not be *morally*
bound to do it. (We're assuming here, of course, the best possible set
of circumstances which would clear the shooter of any possible charge
of wrong-doing.)
Accidents are part and parcel of life as a community. Some accidents
are virtually or totally blameless on anyone's part. In others, there
may be partial blame on one or both sides. Sometimes, one party is
completely to blame, and in these cases, the incidents are not
properly called 'accidents', because they were caused by negligence or
even malice (like road rage). But living together as a community means
that we collectively and individually look after each other whenever
accidents occur, no matter who is to "blame" and why, and most
especially, when no one is to blame.
>
>> > It was still my fault and I fully expected to be judged accordingly.
>> > As such, I paid for all the damage and did my best to make sure my
>> > crashee was ok.
>>
>> As any decent person would. This is a different matter from moral
>> responsibility.
>
> Responsibility is not the same as punitive retribution.
Responsibility is not the same as marmalade, either, but the point is
elusive.
> that's where intent comes in (which is why we have a legal system,
> imperfect as it is ...).
>
You seem to be saying that the legal system can determine a person's
intent. It's an interesting theory, I'll admit...
David
--
David Trudgett
http://www.zeta.org.au/~wpower/
Of course, the naturalistic evolution assumption [...] proposes that
an extended series of step-wise coincidences gave rise to life and the
world as we know it. In other words, the first coincidence led to a
second coincidence, which led to a third coincidence, which eventually
led to coincidence 'i', which eventually led up to the present
situation, 'N'. Evolutionists have not even been able to posit a
mechanistic 'first' coincidence, only the assumption that each step
must have had a survival advantage and only by this means could
evolution from simple to complex have occurred. Each coincidence 'i'
is assumed to be dependent upon prior steps and to have an associated
dependent probability 'Pi'. The resultant probability estimate for the
occurrence of evolutionary naturalism is calculated as the product
series, given the following:
N, the number of step-wise coincidences in the evolutionary process.
i = the index for each coincidence: i = 1, 2, 3 ...
Pi, the evaluated probability for the i'th coincidence.
PE = the product probability that everything evolved by naturalism.
Innumerable steps are postulated to exist in the evolutionary
sequence, therefore N is very large (i.e. N...). All values of Pi are
less than or equal to one, with most of them much smaller than
one. The greater the proposed leap in step i, the smaller the
associated probability [...] and a property of [a] product series
where N is very large and most terms are significantly less than one
[is that it] quickly converges very close to zero.
The conclusion of this calculation is that the probability of
naturalistic evolution is essentially zero.
-- Jerry R. Bergman, B.S., M.S. Psychology, Ph.D. in
Evaluation and Research, M.A. Sociology, Ph.D. Human Biology.
