Comments on: Responsibility, crime and terrorism

By: Eve Garrard

Eve Garrard — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 10:08:49 +0000

Chris, I’m happy to agree that substantive argument about responsibility attributions in particular cases is never redundant!

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:53:01 +0000

Eve: You write “The most the swimmers case could establish is that responsibility attributions needn’t be zero-sum; it couldn’t show that they can’t be.” Indeed. But I think that a lot of polemical writing on the subject proceeds on the assumption that responsibility attribution must be zero sum and that therefore any attention to circumstances, shadowy figures etc etc is of necessity exculpatory. That’s the assumption I was concerned to upset. I don’t at all mind substantive argument for or against zero summing in particular cases. I do mind the tacit assumption that such argument is redundant. So I think we agree with one another.

By: Eve Garrard

Eve Garrard — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:33:00 +0000

Chris, I understand your point, but I’m not sure it makes much difference to the argument. If the swimmers example is significantly different from the terrorism case, why should we suppose that conclusions from the former about whether responsibility is zero-sum will carry over to the latter? And passive failure to save is surely significantly different from active intentional killing. The most the swimmers case could establish is that responsiblity attributions needn’t be zero-sum; it couldn’t show that they can’t be. In fact it’s not hard to think of a terrorism case which looks as if they are. Suppose we have an innocent stranger and a search-and-destroy party of 10 soldiers, wondering whether to shoot him. And a figure in the shadows (bloated capitalist/political commissar/mullah from the madrassas – take your pick) keeps telling the soldiers that the stranger carries a deadly bacillus, he’s a poison in the body politic, he’ll kill us all, etc etc. The more evidence the shadowy figure offers, the more it’s not irrational for the soldiers to believe him, and hence to have a reason to kill. This is a case where it looks as if the greater the responsibility of the shadowy figure, the less is that of the soldiers – it’s zero-sum. As a matter of fact I think that many responsibility attributions aren’t zero-sum; but this can’t be easily established as a general point from selected cases. And isn’t it politically (even if not philosophically) interesting to see what examples we’re inclined to think are relevant to our understanding of terrorism?

By: Antoni Jaume

Antoni Jaume — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 20:46:56 +0000

Let’s see another way to put the situation: A child goes to the beach to play swimming. There are some adults who know to swim, and others who don’t. There is a “rich individual” who knows who can swim or not. He call the swimmers one by one to work for him at a private aquatic park as lifesavers, if any swimmers says anything about the child playin in the waves, the “rich individual” point to the rest of the people there saying that surely some of them will be able to take care of any problem. If the child drown, who is guilty? DSW

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 18:37:04 +0000

Eve, I’ll just speak to the swimmers, since the rich man is not in my original piece. The purpose of invoking them is not to say anything directly about terrorism, but rather to establish a general proposition about responsibility. Namely, that to attribute responsibility to one person does not necessarily diminish the responsibility to another. That proposition licenses the claim made earlier in the post that we can blame both a terrorist and a politician who intentionally generates the conditions in which terrorism is committed, without our blaming one having the effect of letting the other off the hook. Clearly there’s more to be said about the intentional generation of conditions, whether the merely knowing generation of them is similarly blameworthy etc etc.

By: Eve Garrard

Eve Garrard — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 18:12:27 +0000

It would be interesting to unpack some of the assumptions in this example, wouldn’t it? We’re using passive bystanding swimmers, who fail to save a life, to reveal something about the moral responsibility of terrorists; a rich man offering obnoxious inducements is representing the root-cause social conditions which foment terrorism. Aren’t there already a bunch of judgements about moral responsibility implicitly in play here? If we alter the metaphors, we might find our intuitions lining up rather differently.

By: Iain J Coleman

Iain J Coleman — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 16:20:39 +0000

Following up Norman’s example, there is of course a context in which a public discourse which concentrates on the rich guy’s culpability is appropriate. That’s when the rich guy is an elected politician, offering taxpayer’s money to the swimmers. There are two reasons for this: 1) Having democratically authorised him to act on our behalf, we share some of the culpability for his actions. We share no culpability for the swimmers’ actions 2) In practice, substantial public outcry from the electorate may be effective in convincing the rich guy to stop behaving in that way – after all, he doesn’t want to be voted out. Public outcry will be less effective against the swimmers.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:46:37 +0000

How about the following case: Alice brings her baby to a swimming pool and then doesn’t supervise it. Bob puts the baby’s favourite toy right at the end of the diving board. Carol is the lifeguard and doesn’t see the little tyke crawling out to reach it. Dave pushes Emma so she trips over … … and knocks the board, so it shakes the baby into the pool. Fred distracts Carol by talking to her about moral equivalence, so she doesn’t notice what’s going on. Gertrude, Harry and Irina are playing about in the pool and don’t rescue the drowning baby. Finally, Jack declaims from the rooftops that the Guardian are “sickening” and “odious” when they publish an editorial saying that “although it was entirely appropriate for Carol to go to jail, we should consider that the whole situation would never have arisen if Alice had looked after the baby properly”. What should Crooked Timber’s editorial line be in this case?

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:01:33 +0000

“Of course, the action is either “Right” or “Wrong”, independent of whether it “causes” terrorism. An action doesn’t become wrong (or even more wrong) just because it increases global terrorism.” I can’t agree. Any actor should consider the consequences of his actions. I think that immediate unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan* would be wrong because of its consequences for the Afghanis, and more wrong because it would increase global terrorism. Also, there are some actions that are more or less morally neutral—if one of those actions will have the effect of increasing terrorism, then it is wrong to do it knowingly. I’ll emphasize this again—none of this excuses terrorists from one jot or tittle of moral responsibility, but nor does it excuse policymakers from considering the likely consequence of their actions. *which no one is proposing.

By: pathos

pathos — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:29:23 +0000

“pathos, if we conclude that we are Right, then we shouldn’t allow terrorism to deter us from the right course of action. Still, this may not be true of every course of action that tends to increase terrorism, and those actions may be evaluated in part by their impact on terrorism.” Of course, the action is either “Right” or “Wrong”, independent of whether it “causes” terrorism. An action doesn’t become wrong (or even more wrong) just because it increases global terrorism. That’s why I think it is appropriate to dissociate the two discussions (Right Action and Dealing With Terrorism). By linking the discussions, the implication is that somehow terrorism makes Wrong American actions worse, but that is simply not the case.

By: markus

markus — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 21:55:34 +0000

unrelated (IMO) to the original post, I’d like to add two effects found in research on altruism (relevant to the swimmer example) – collective ignorance, that is everybody assumes that there is not really a problem because the others are not acting – diffusion of responsibility, that is everybody feels the others are more competent, or in more favourable circumstances than they themselves. Which is why you should both cry for specific help (help me to do X) and address a specific person (you there with the green jacket) to increase the likelihood of being helped when in need.

By: Sniffy McNickes

Sniffy McNickes — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 21:05:17 +0000

I don’t get why people are obsessing about “terrorism”. Sure, if someone, say, crashed an aircraft into a building, that can be called terrorism. If someone fails to save someone who can’t swim, they’re defined as “a bad person”, and there are already legal mechanisms for being “bad”. Sure, perhaps being bad in the context of promoting a train of thought might be dangerous. One might give some thought to those evil terrorists that built a framework that became the US.

By: terri

terri — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 21:01:41 +0000

If I wouldn’t have committed a crime had you not egged me, then why shouldn’t moral responsibility be a zero-sum game?

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 20:54:08 +0000

I’m not trying to draw any specific conclusions about who’s responsible for any terrorist attacks, and I don’t think Chris is either. The point is to say that it is possible to agree that terrorists are fully responsible for their actions without short-circuiting discussion of how our actions may lead to increases or decreases in incidences of terror. pathos, if we conclude that we are Right, then we shouldn’t allow terrorism to deter us from the right course of action. Still, this may not be true of every course of action that tends to increase terrorism, and those actions may be evaluated in part by their impact on terrorism.

By: terri

terri — Mon, 13 Oct 2003 19:50:15 +0000

If one of the ten swimmers saves the child but I don’t does that mean I didn’t have a prior moral duty? If the child dies and I didn’t do anything because I thought with good reason that someone else would come to their rescue does that make me morally responsible? Or them? Not claiming that this accurately describes the terrorism case but plausibly, where there is a collective action problem in which the one party believes the other should act first, and vice versa and the terrible event happens, how is moral responsibility distributed?