John
I've just come from a meeting in which I was called irresponsible. Presumably because some of my actions or the things I've advocated were thought to be lacking in responsibility - whatever that is. I wondered if you'd have a view on responsibility.
Sally
I'd probably come at it from the question of whether you can realistically be said to be responsible for any of your actions or statements.
John
Presumably, being responsible in the moral sense, which is what my critic was saying I wasn't, is owning up to or claiming as your own, your actions or statements.
S
Yes and we can simplify that if we see that statements are a kind of action.
J
So responsibility is 'owning' your actions.
S
I think a further implication in the moral version of responsibility is that of conformity to accepted norms.
J
Or acceptable, the moralist would say.
S
Yes. As if they were invariant.
J
And self-evident.
S
But let's not go round in moral circles today. We don't take that view do we?
J
No, man invents morals as he goes along; different men and groups of men - nations, classes etc., have different morals. What is held as being a responsible action by one group could therefore be held as irresponsible by another.
S
Good. But there's a more profound meaning of the word and notion responsibility.
J
And what's that?.
S
It's the idea of causality. If a man is 'responsible' for an action, he is taken to be the cause of the action, wouldn't you say?
J
Yes, as if without him, the action wouldn't have occurred. He was the cause of the action in some sense.
S
Or the agency - the necessary medium in some sense.
J
There's some truth there. But does responsibility kind of imply sole responsibility?
S
It seems so. But I have difficulties with that idea.
J
I think I see where you're going. I have too. There could be a group of necessary precursors to an event. Would they all be responsible? Would they share responsibility. Anyway, that's dealt with 'sole' responsibility as against 'shared' responsibility - pretty trivial - and verging once again on the socially-relative 'guilt' flavour of the word.
S
Yes we dealt with that. My question would be, if a man is said to be the cause of one of his actions, we might ask what caused him to act that way, to produce that action. If we could show that, given all preceding events, no other outcome than this action would have been possible, wouldn't we call the notion of his individual responsibility into question?
J
All preceding events?
S
We often talk about nature and nurture don't we?
J
Yes. We suggest in these discussions that these are the two categories that influence and indeed determine human actions. It's a determinist view, meaning that every effect has causes. Everything that happens has causes. Things or events that were necessary and sufficient to make that outcome inevitable and any other outcome impossible.
S
Same thing.
J
Of course.
S
Yes. These two categories, or 'things' I'd rather call them, are these days often taken to be the determiners of what a person does. They've replaced the rather mysterious concepts of 'will' and 'choice'. I say mysterious because one really needed to ask what caused the will or choice. If the answer was that nothing did, then we'd have a causeless effect. If one answered that they were caused, then the concepts collapsed.
J
Agreed.
S
So we're left with the view that a person's, or any other object's actions, are determined, i.e. completely explicable, by his (or its) physical properties - his makeup - and the forces or influences upon him.
J
So it would seem.
S
In the human context, his current physical state, including his thoughts and belief system, and the state of all his other physical components, including his genetic makeup, we'd call his 'nature'. And all the influences on him, up to that point, including his 'upbringing', we'd call 'nurture'.
J
What other determinants could there be?
S
Some would say gods and other occult forces. For the sake of argument, let's include them also - as far-fetched, ativistic and discredited hypothesis.
[Both laugh]
S
We are still left with the conclusion that, given this complete list of causes, whether we understand them or not, the action, the outcome, could have been nothing but what it turned out to be!
J
Agreed.
S
So what does it mean to hold a man responsible for his actions? What justification could we have for punishing him if he displeases us? Or indeed rewarding him if he pleases us? Given the circumstances, he could not have acted otherwise.
J
No. Given that, it seems wrong to say a man deserves punishement for wrong action.
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J
And add a point that my son Jean-Miles made on the radicaldebate.com website - you are not responsible for things you don't control.
S
True, but we covered that - a bit - in our decision to move from morality to causality in our analysis, didn't we? Responsibility as culpability.
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