A discussion of the general principles underlying the assignment of blame.

Started by: Zed | Replies: 41 | Views: 6,408

Zed
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Dec 4, 2014 8:47 PM #1277895

Let's try a thread which I don't think has been done to death yet.

Bad things happen, and often we say that people are responsible for those bad things. When do we say that so-and-so was to blame for such-and-such bad thing?

The naïve answer would be that we blame the person whose actions caused the bad thing to happen. For example, if Cronos shoots Scarecrow we blame Cronos for Scarecrow's death because it was Cronos's action (i.e. shooting) that caused the bad thing (Scarecrow's death).

But the naïve answer doesn't work in all scenarios. For example, imagine I'm going on holiday and Jutsu has promised to water my prize orchid while I'm away. If he forgets and my orchid dies we would say that he is to blame for the plant's death. But arguably Jutsu hasn't actually done anything - he didn't water the plant, but I didn't water the plant either, and nor did Exilement. Why do we blame Jutsu but not me or Exilement?

Based on the above example we might want to say that we blame a person for a bad thing if they could reasonably be expected to take one course of action but they took another and that choice led to the bad thing.

Of course, lots of things have more than one cause. Let's continue with the above example, but say I know that Jutsu is forgetful and I ask Camila to remind him to water the orchid. Camila forgets to remind him. Does Camila share a portion of the blame with Jutsu?

Another issue to consider is one of free will. Jutsu obviously didn't choose to forget about the orchid - no one can choose to forget something. And it's not reasonable to expect someone to do something which they never even consider. We might want to blame Jutsu if he was watching my orchid and cackling as it dehydrated, but maybe not so much if the thought of it never occurs to him. And should we bring me back into the blame game for having made the request to someone who I knew was likely to forget?

If we do want to say that I am at least partly to blame for bringing about a situation in which there was a greater than necessary likelihood of the death of my plant, does it logically follow that if Arch-Angel walks home through a dark ally and gets raped he's partly to blame for the rape because he put himself in a situation where rape was more likely than it would have been if he'd gotten a taxi? Since most people presumably don't want to blame a rape victim, that would seem to be a reductio of the idea that I'm partly responsible for the death of my plant.

If more than one person is to blame for something, does the blame get divided between them so that each gets less than if he was solely responsible? During the recent leaks of nude celebrity photos I saw a few people saying that these celebrities were at least partly to blame because in this day and age it's a reasonable course of action not to store nude photos in the cloud. If that's true, does it lessen the immorality of the people who acquired the pictures?

There's a lot to talk about on this issue. If you'd like to boil it down to one specific question it would be "what are the necessary and sufficient conditions under which we say that an individual is morally to blame for something, and how much blame should we assign to them?"

If you'd like to relate this to a specific recent example, I guess you could ask yourself who is to blame for the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Is it Brown, who assaulted a police officer, or the police officer who shot him? Who would have been to blame if the circumstances had been slightly different?

Exile
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Dec 4, 2014 9:32 PM #1277906

Quote from Zed
And it's not reasonable to expect someone to do something which they never even consider. We might want to blame Jutsu if he was watching my orchid and cackling as it dehydrated, but maybe not so much if the thought of it never occurs to him.

Well the scenario is that he agreed to water your orchid, so if the thought never occurs to him he's at fault for not making it a priority and making sure it gets done, since that's precisely what he agreed to do. I don't think it's unreasonable to place blame on him under those circumstances.

Quote from Zed
And should we bring me back into the blame game for having made the request to someone who I knew was likely to forget?

If you knew he was likely to forget ahead of time, I suppose. If you're hiring a new employee for a job who needs to be able to lift 50 pounds and you hire someone with muscular dystrophy who clearly cannot do so, that's entirely your fault (although I suppose he shouldn't be applying for the job in the first place, but the actual act of hiring him is still your fault). If you hire someone who claims they're able to do so, but then it turns out they were lying, I'd say the blame rests on them and on you for not making sure they're the right candidate for the job. Kind of the same thing as your scenario, and knowledge ahead of time on your part makes a big difference on whether you're to blame in either one.

Quote from Zed
so what if Arch gets raped in an alley?

Same situation, if he knew ahead of time that there's a reasonable chance it'll happen, then it's hard to say he shouldn't be partly to blame for going there in the first place. But the likelihood of any given person being raped any time they walk down an alley is probably very low, far from a reasonable chance, so I wouldn't say he's to blame any more than he'd be to blame if the taxi driver got in a car accident.

Quote from Zed
nude celebs?

Again, same thing as above, I don't think there's a reasonable chance of nude photos being leaked if they're stored on the cloud, so taking efforts to avoid that situation entirely doesn't make a lot of sense. The people who leaked the photos are still violating a social contract by illegally acquiring those photos and distributing them without permission, the fact that they were created by people with the intent for them to remain private doesn't absolve them of any blame for their actions.

Quote from Zed
If you'd like to boil it down to one specific question it would be "what are the necessary and sufficient conditions under which we say that an individual is morally to blame for something, and how much blame should we assign to them?"

After all of this I think the only real answer is "it depends". Plus blame is far from objective, so trying to categorize it as such isn't going to work. No one really blames Hitler's mother for the holocaust despite the fact that she's clearly responsible for his existence. Should we? Why don't we? Apparently it's not as simple as cause and effect, and anything more complex than that doesn't have a simple answer.

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Dec 5, 2014 12:28 AM #1277963

Quote from Zed
if Cronos shoots Scarecrow we blame Cronos for Scarecrow's death because it was Cronos's action (i.e. shooting) that caused the bad thing (Scarecrow's death).

w-why would cronos do that :(

Zed
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Dec 5, 2014 1:09 AM #1277979

For some reason it slipped my mind that the two of you were Australian. I should have written "Cronos stabs Scarecrow".

@Exilement: Sure, it depends, but what sort of thing does it depend on? You don't really have to give a complete answer here, but the Hitler example brings up one point: foreseeability. We don't blame Hitler's mother for the hollocaust because there was no way for her to predict that her baby would become a monster. But we blame Jutsu partly because he could have foreseen that not watering the orchid would cause it to die.

As a tentative list of factors contributing to blame I suggest:
- Foreseeability
- Not-being-too-demandingness
- Some kind of causal relationship
- A negative result
- Whether or not other people could have acted

Are there any other factors, or does anyone think that something I've mentioned has no effect on how much someone should be blamed?

Raptor
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Dec 5, 2014 1:33 AM #1277988

Can you really make a tentative checklist though? I agree with Exilement that there are just way too many outside factors to take into consideration to really simplify blame as a whole. There are definitely circumstances where it could simply fall under the five points you listed, but I think that those, in many cases, are simplifications.

For example, "Whether or not other people could have acted" could be something you blame someone for. But could you really put blame on this person if someone dumped this obligation onto you at any moment? You then have to consider the balance on each side. Say there's a car speeding towards a man on a road, and it's within the realm of possibility that I could jump in and save this man from the collision. But how much am I willing to sacrifice myself? Could you blame someone for not jumping in the way to risk his life for someone they don't even know? Is it fair that out of nowhere, you expect one to be pushed with many unforeseeable obligations that aren't necessarily related to you besides your relative position to the man in front of the car? In this case, you would certainly have to consider that in order to save this man, I'd have to take my own death into consideration, and then it becomes a lot more complicated. Yes, I could be blamed for not saving him, but could this blame be negated knowing that the alternative shows a possibility where I die?

And then that becomes one example in a myriad of possibilities. Yes, you can boil some of them down where one person deservedly receives all the blame. But in my opinion, there are just simply too many objective or subjective options to take into consideration that could alter the concept of blaming, making it impossible to confidently declare how someone should be blamed in a given situation.

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Dec 5, 2014 1:41 AM #1277990

Exilement, I remember one time in a thread about that one girl who committed suicide after having nudes she sent to some dude leaked, I said that she was partially to blame for putting herself ina situation where something like that could have happened to her and you called me a narcissist or something along those lines, I don't think that was the word you used, I can't exactly recall but
What's with this change of heart

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Dec 5, 2014 2:14 AM #1277996

Quote from Raptor
Can you really make a tentative checklist though? I agree with Exilement that there are just way too many outside factors to take into consideration to really simplify blame as a whole. There are definitely circumstances where it could simply fall under the five points you listed, but I think that those, in many cases, are simplifications.

For example, "Whether or not other people could have acted" could be something you blame someone for. But could you really put blame on this person if someone dumped this obligation onto you at any moment? You then have to consider the balance on each side. Say there's a car speeding towards a man on a road, and it's within the realm of possibility that I could jump in and save this man from the collision. But how much am I willing to sacrifice myself? Could you blame someone for not jumping in the way to risk his life for someone they don't even know? Is it fair that out of nowhere, you expect one to be pushed with many unforeseeable obligations that aren't necessarily related to you besides your relative position to the man in front of the car? In this case, you would certainly have to consider that in order to save this man, I'd have to take my own death into consideration, and then it becomes a lot more complicated. Yes, I could be blamed for not saving him, but could this blame be negated knowing that the alternative shows a possibility where I die?

And then that becomes one example in a myriad of possibilities. Yes, you can boil some of them down where one person deservedly receives all the blame. But in my opinion, there are just simply too many objective or subjective options to take into consideration that could alter the concept of blaming, making it impossible to confidently declare how someone should be blamed in a given situation.

Your example is accounted for by the factor "not-being-too-demandingness". Jumping in front of the car is probably too demanding. Is there an example which is not accounted for? Or is "not-being-too-demandingness" so general that it amounts to "blame x if and only if x is blameworthy"?

Exile
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Dec 5, 2014 2:21 PM #1278153

Quote from Drone
Exilement, I remember one time in a thread about that one girl who committed suicide after having nudes she sent to some dude leaked, I said that she was partially to blame for putting herself ina situation where something like that could have happened to her and you called me a narcissist or something along those lines, I don't think that was the word you used, I can't exactly recall but
What's with this change of heart

I remember that. victim-blamer was probably the word I used.

anyway I think you misread my post, which is understandable since the way I worded it was a little confusing. I'm saying the people who illegally acquired and distributed those photos are entirely to blame, there's not a reasonable chance of that happening to the point where taking nude photos put those celebrities at a realistic risk of the photos being widely distributed (or at least there wasn't prior to the instance we're talking about), so there's no good reason to blame them for it. Like zed said, forseeability plays a big part and I don't know why you'd expect them to forsee that situation and make an effort to prevent it from happening.

@zed, I didn't know you were trying to narrow down a list, but that seems like a pretty good one. I'll try to think of an example that doesn't apply.

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Dec 5, 2014 3:22 PM #1278190

I always wondered who it is to blame when a student fails. Is it the teacher or the student? The teacher has the responsibility to help the student succeed (rather then simply supplying content). The student has the responsibility to take what the teacher gives and listen to his/her advice. Given that both are fully committed to their job, but still the student ends up doing poorly, does one share more blame then the other?

Also the idea of Jutsu watering orchids. If Jutsu was on his way to water the plants but accidentally fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. Is this a situation where the blame can be eliminated?

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Dec 6, 2014 3:08 AM #1278420

Quote from Envoy
I always wondered who it is to blame when a student fails. Is it the teacher or the student? The teacher has the responsibility to help the student succeed (rather then simply supplying content). The student has the responsibility to take what the teacher gives and listen to his/her advice. Given that both are fully committed to their job, but still the student ends up doing poorly, does one share more blame then the other?

Also the idea of Jutsu watering orchids. If Jutsu was on his way to water the plants but accidentally fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. Is this a situation where the blame can be eliminated?

jutsu for not watching where the fuck he is walking

but that might offend his friends/relatives so we call it an accident

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Dec 6, 2014 3:23 AM #1278426

I was actually toying with this same idea earlier, and I came up with an idea I called the "burden of blame".

You can proportionally place the blame on people based on how much information they had at their disposal.

If I gave my buddy cocaine, and he snorted it, it's entirely his fault for doing so. With the information I had, there was nothing I did wrong. However, he actually committed the action, so it's his fault.

However, If I knew he had an addiction, it'd be equal, if not more my fault.

My Faults:
Being aware he has an addiction
Giving him the cocaine

His Faults:
Snorting the cocaine

that makes it 66% my fault, and 33% his.

However, now, if I TOLD him SPECIFICALLY NOT to snort it, it evens out.

My Faults:
Knowing he has an addictoin
Giving it to him anyways

His Faults:
Knowing he was told not to
Doing it anyways

It's 50-50%.

I mean, some conditions definitely have more weight than others, but it was an interesting concept to play with. Maybe you can quantify morality?

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Dec 6, 2014 3:38 AM #1278429

What you do in a situation where you are leaving something/someone in another care you should know the person well enough to know that it's in good hands there for there shouldn't be any blaming

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Dec 7, 2014 2:19 AM #1278774

I feel like the only answer to this question is 'it depends'.

For an instance the catostrophic incidents:
Catastrophic incidents usually occur as a result of a sequence of small events that accumulate to create a more serious situation.1 The resilience of healthcare delivery is such that most problems are of little or no consequence to the patient, and it is only in unfortunate situations that these otherwise insignificant problems combine in a discrete time and space to create a catastrophe. In such situations, it is easiest to blame the person making the last mistake than to indentify a sequence of events that came about through deficiencies in the systems of work that predisposed a fatal error.

I think that even in the slightest every participent in a given incident; event; problem etc are to blame. Even a little, everyone has contributed to the bad outcome.

However, if the question is 'Whom do we blame the most in such a situation' , that I belive doesn't have a fairly/lawful answer in general. Most people tend to blame the first or last person to contribute for the bad outcome, but I think every single situation;event;disaster (or whatever you want to call it) needs to be examined separately for a fair conclusion to be reached and the blame to be devided among the perpetrators; victim; observers and so on.

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Dec 7, 2014 4:04 AM #1278798

Quote from Captain Cook

I mean, some conditions definitely have more weight than others, but it was an interesting concept to play with. Maybe you can quantify morality?

That's pretty much what utilitarianism does, but it doesn't have anything to do with blame (maybe it doesn't have nothing to do with it, but it's not the focus of the system).

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Dec 7, 2014 6:52 PM #1279122

Blame is a funny thing. Before we look at blame, we have to look at choices, and who's responsible for what choice before we blame them for making that choice.

Going with the rape example, the person who goes down a dark alleyway where the person suspects may harbor shady figures such as muggers or rapists, they are only responsible for choosing to go down a dark alleyway where they (may or may not) suspect that they will run into someone shady. The rapist however is guilty of physically raping those who pass through that particular alleyway, regardless of if the person suggests the possibility of being raped or mugged.

But to say that the person walking down that alleyway should be blamed for walking down that alleyway, wearing that dress, looking 'available', etc- that's where things get tricky. By distributing blame, you are insinuating that a behavior is somehow wrong. Following the (faulty) logic of a concerned parent or city official, this would be considered positive (additive) punishment, where a behavior is punished in order to decrease the likeliness of the behavior occurring. And when it comes to rape, lying about your age, wearing a low-cut dress, or finding yourself in a dark, secluded place where you are vulnerable to attack will, to some degree, increase the likelihood that you will be raped. From the viewpoint of a concerned parent, blaming the victim of a crime will keep the victim of a rape from exhibiting behaviors that make them vulnerable to sexual assault. The rapist too of course would be punished in this scenario, but you're also suggesting that the victim close themselves off from people who remind them of the traumatic experience, walk the long way home from school or work, and be self conscious of their body to the point where- if left unchecked, they will never be able to engage in a fully intimate relationship. I've heard the term 'chainmail cuirass' used to describe this- the victim puts up defenses that reduce the likeliness of a rape, but ultimately, cannot stop someone with planning and intent- just as a chainmail cuirass may stop someone coming at you with a sword, but an arrow or bullet wound will still do you in. And just as the chainmail weighs at your body, closing yourself off from society weighs at your heart.

But again- the reason for this is that by blaming someone for doing, you're insinuating that what they're doing is wrong. But it isn't wrong to wear a revealing dress- to take pride in your body, to leave yourself open. It isn't wrong to take the short way to work. It isn't wrong to make yourself available- what is wrong is to knowingly take advantage of someone's desire for love- or to blatantly, indiscriminately force yourself on someone, whether they're wearing a chainmail cuirass or black lingerie.

So I say take responsibility for your actions. If you chose to do something that makes you vulnerable to assault, yeah- maybe you didn't put on the cuirass, maybe you didn't take the long way home- you could have done more to defend yourself, and that was a risk that you might be hesitant to take again, but the blame shouldn't fall on you, because the only choice you may have made was to put yourself at risk of assault. You didn't choose to be assaulted- you didn't consent to be raped, but someone chose to assault you. And that choice, ultimately, was the one that brought the most pain- that choice, ultimately, was the one that you shouldn't have to live your life in fear of. And maybe there are people out there who truly cannot control their desires, but better that they're forced off the streets than you- that's how I feel about it anyway.

Thoughts on Captain Cook's 'Burden of Blame' (Click to Show)

Quote from Captain Cook
I was actually toying with this same idea earlier, and I came up with an idea I called the "burden of blame".
You can proportionally place the blame on people based on how much information they had at their disposal.

To some degree, maybe- but it's not something that's as simple to quantify as I fear you're about to.

Quote from Captain Cook
If I gave my buddy cocaine, and he snorted it, it's entirely his fault for doing so. With the information I had, there was nothing I did wrong. However, he actually committed the action, so it's his fault.

It was his decision yes, but you still have to claim some responsibility for enabling him to do so. Again, it gets tricky when we're talking blame, but you did give the guy access to an addictive substance here. That's a stupid and unnecessary risk.

Quote from Captain Cook
However, If I knew he had an addiction, it'd be equal, if not more my fault.

You gave the guy access to an addictive substance, but didn't account for the possibility that he might already be addicted. You are still responsible for taking a stupid and unnecessary risk. Your friend is responsible for destroying their life with the help of the cocaine supplied to them by yourself and others. With the rape example, taking a shortcut down an alley is a risk, but sometimes it's a necessary one because it gets you places quicker- that's the point of the alley being there in the first place. But just giving your friend cocaine accomplishes nothing, as it doesn't do anything (other than land your ass in jail if you're caught with it) unless you actually snort the stuff. You made a bad decision. So did your friend. The blame falls on both of you, because you each made a bad choice here.

Quote from Captain Cook
My Faults:
Being aware he has an addiction
Giving him the cocaine

His Faults:
Snorting the cocaine

that makes it 66% my fault, and 33% his.

Oh goody, percentages. The problem here is that you're referring to 'the blame' as a single entity, rather than two separate entities. There's the blame you get for dealing, and the blame he gets for using. Assuming blame is just a level of punishment from a good spanking to a "you're dead to me" from mom, then I suppose you could start by considering what it would take for hypothetical you to learn from your hypothetical mistake, and what it would take to get your addict friend into hypothetical rehab, and if you're still into percentages, make a pie chart or something.

Quote from Captain Cook
However, now, if I TOLD him SPECIFICALLY NOT to snort it, it evens out.

My Faults:
Knowing he has an addictoin
Giving it to him anyways

His Faults:
Knowing he was told not to
Doing it anyways

It's 50-50%.

But you see, now you're both misunderstanding the concept of addiction and assuming that your offense and his offense demand an equivalent level of blame. Once the guy is addicted, that addiction starts to affect his life choices- he'd do anything for the stuff at this point. So you have to go back to the first time he tried coke, plus all of the other people he may have gotten drugs from in the past. Knowing that his ability to choose is impaired by the fact that he knows how good it must feel to snort cocaine, plus the fact that once he's addicted, his brain's pleasure system is already kind of fucked- those forces combine to the point where while you may not share as much of the blame as the person who first got him hooked on the stuff, but percentage wise, his ability to deny his addiction is so low that when it comes down to percentages for each individual drug experience, the amount of blame you can physically put on a person is diminished to the point where comparatively, the total blame distribution (because that's a thing) would be primarily on you, even if the actual total value of blame demanded (because that's a thing) is lower compared to the person who first got your friend addicted. This is based on the idea that it's more morally acceptable to give a single unit of a drug to someone who is already addicted to a drug than to give a single unit of a drug to someone who someone who has yet to be addicted. Though if we're talking someone who supplied multiple units of drugs to an addicted person vs the person who supplied the first single unit of the drug and started an addiction that could have been counteracted through the support of loved ones and trained professionals, it gets complicated. And this is all discounting the judgment and pity that often accompany drug transactions and can in many cases contribute to an addiction, which deserve their own chunk of blame.

Quote from Captain Cook
I mean, some conditions definitely have more weight than others, but it was an interesting concept to play with. Maybe you can quantify morality?

It is an interesting concept. But I wouldn't advise you play with it. Though when it comes to quantifying something like this, it's important to acknowledge not just the level of blame you think you're dishing out, but the response you're eliciting. I know I said something about a scale from a spanking to a "you're dead to me", but sometimes people want to be cut off from a certain relationship, and sometimes people find a spanking more humorous than painful. Plus there's the fact that sometimes people don't need blame- they need help. Account for those things, have the memory and patience of a quantum computer, and then maybe the whole quantifying morality thing will work out for you.