poll: who's to blame?

[mellowtigger]

Don't google. All comments are screened until I post the results on Wednesday, so you can't be influenced by others' answers.

Scenario: Janet and a friend are kayaking in a part of ocean with many jellyfish. The friend asks Janet if she should go for a swim. Janet has just read that the jellyfish in the area are harmless, and tells her friend to go for a swim. The friend is stung by a jellyfish and dies.

Q: Is Janet morally responsible for her friend's death?

Comments

[mellowtigger]

Maybe comments are screened. The original post is marked that way, but this post is visible. *ignorant shrug*

Don't go reading others' answers until you've answered the question yourself.

[dodecadragon.livejournal.com]

Looks like my comment is screened, but maybe since it's your journal your own comments would not be screened?

[snousle.livejournal.com]

I really don't know what "morally responsible" means. If the question were more concrete I could answer it.

[mellowtigger]

(Unscreened to allow replies.)

I added the word "morally" because I figured most people would interpret the question to mean "legally", which isn't what was intended.

I think "morally responsible" means two things: 1) a person's action (or inaction) led to suffering, and 2) the person should be reprimanded/ punished in some way to emphasize the wrongness of the action (or inaction) and discourage its repetition in the future.

If there are other meanings of that phrase, though, I'm very interested in hearing them. I often get morality and ethics confused, although I know they are intended to have different meanings.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Well, simply reporting a fact without intent to harm is never a bad thing. Where she maybe went wrong was offering an opinion. But still, that is secondary to personal responsibility; there should be no censure unless she actually pressured her friend to swim, or was trying to manipulate her into a harmful situation.

[litch.livejournal.com]

how is offering an opinion a problem/going wrong?

[bbearseviltwin.livejournal.com]

It could also have a positive meaning as in "I am morally responsible to make sure that my pets are fed and cared for"

[dodecadragon.livejournal.com]

http://www.philosophyblog.com.au/ethics-vs-morality-the-distinction-between-ethics-and-morals/

I agree with this for the most part, I've always consider Ethics to be a branch of philosophy that studies the choices we make and the reasons behind them, or as a set of professional rules of conduct.

I generally avoid the use of the word "moral" because of the religious connotations and also because I don't believe any action is ultimately inherently good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral, but that these value judgments ultimately rest upon values of the beholder.

A person may hold that A is of the highest value, and anything that diminishes A would be bad/wrong/immoral. While another person may hold A as being of value, but holds B as being of more value than A, and may think it is moral to diminish A for the sake of B. Meanwhile a third person may argue that A and B are interdependent and diminishing one would diminish the other and places both up on the value shelf. Finally person 4 might be a nihilist and claim that neither is of any ultimate value and that all four of them, A and B are transient and will ultimately be recycled back into the universal muck.

Oooh! Good point.

[caestus.livejournal.com]

I was caught and didn't even think to challenge the unstated premises of that vague category of assumptions.

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

No, she isn't morally wrong, because she believed that they were harmless, however wrong. You go with the info you have, and you can never be 100% certain of anything.

If she'd ignored or known they were, then yes.

[drewan.livejournal.com]

Morality is relative.

Janet was not an expert on jellyfish. I assume that her friend had equal access to information as Janet. Janet's friend relied on Janet for information that she should have researched herself.

Is Janet morally responsible for her friend's death? No. Janet's friend is responsible for her own death.

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

Perhaps partially. Both she and her friend should have done their homework before going kayaking. Then they'd know that a) the area they're kayaking in is full of jellyfish, b) even if a jellyfish isn't necessarily deadly, it's rarely harmless, and c) perhaps they ought to kayak somewhere else.

It also depends on other factors. Where did Janet read that they're harmless? If it was on the back of a box of Captain Crunch (or anything published by Andrew Wakefield, though I'd trust the Captain more), then yeah, she bears more responsibility for trusting an unreliable source (though her friend perhaps ought to have asked as well). If it was in a local tourism guide or something, where the source is more trusted, it's hard to consider her responsible for it since she was clearly given poor information from an otherwise trustworthy source.

[litch.livejournal.com]

why does how good the source is matter?

maybe the chick was just allergic to otherwise harmless jellyfish

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

The source matters because people accept too many things at face value. If you're given bad information and act on it, when that source lacks credibility, you accept the consequences for believing it. If you take stock tips from some guy screaming them on a street corner, you've pretty much assumed all responsibility for taking advice from what's unlikely to be a reliable source. You can't turn around and say 'Hey, you gave me bad advice, it's your fault I'm ruined' (well, you can, but don't expect anyone to take you seriously).

And maybe she did have an allergic reaction. That's an unforeseeable consequence (unless she knew she was allergic, but then it puts it back on her). It has nothing to do with any of the points I made.

[litch.livejournal.com]

If you're given bad information and act on it, when that source lacks credibility, you accept the consequences for believing it.

And since the friend acted on janets advice she accepts the consequences and janet is blameless, regardless of how good janets sources were.

[foeclan.livejournal.com]

It's not a question of blame but one of responsibility.

Janet is still partly responsible because she told her friend 'Sure, it's fine to play in the ocean-of-deadly-jellyfish because Captain Crunch told me so.'. The Captain himself also needs to take some of the responsibility for his part in this, given that he told her it was safe, but she's not completely without responsibility because anyone with two brain cells to rub together wouldn't consider Captain Crunch to be an authoritative source of information on water safety.

[litch.livejournal.com]

I don't see the difference in the distinction you make between blame and responsibility. Blame is just a function of responsibility when outcomes are unwanted. If one is responsible and shit goes wrong you are to blame, if one is not responsible then you are not to blame, your blame is in response to the amount of responsability you have for determining the outcome.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

no, but she's going to feel guilty forever.

[chernovog.livejournal.com]

This really depends on the weight people give to intentions.

On the one hand, acting in good faith, she used the knowledge she had and told her friend to go ahead and swim. Her friend took this information as truth without further investigation and died. If her intentions outweigh the consequence, then no, she's not morally responsible.

If consequence is given more weight, then she assumed the random tidbit she heard about the jellyfish was true without further research or effort to determine the facts. She allowed herself to be viewed as an expert on this subject by her friend, gave her friend faulty information, and her friend died because of it. So yes, she is morally responsible.

One step further, though, and we have to ask where in this process either one of them could have done anything different, or in any way been *other* than themselves in that moment and had a different outcome. Moral responsibility assumes a burden of responsibility for the friend's death, and everything from the pair's blithe assumptions to the evolution of poisonous jellyfish is actually responsible for the death.

[litch.livejournal.com]

She allowed herself to be viewed as an expert on this subject by her friend, gave her friend faulty information, and her friend died because of it. So yes, she is morally responsible.

Janet was the local expert, she knew more than anyone else they could contact. And its possible the information was not faulty, maybe the friend was just a llergic or the sting was in an unlikely place that had unexpected consequences.

[dodecadragon.livejournal.com]

No.

Janet was relying on information provided to her. If Janet can provide the source she was relying on, then that source may be responsible, especially if they are commonly relied on for accuracy in the subject matter. But most publications usually have legal disclaimers saying they are not responsible if their data is inaccurate. Even though they may not be legally responsible, I would hold them morally responsible.

Even if Janet was lying about the jellyfish (which would make her morally responsible), friend is responsible for their own choices and they are responsible for knowing the risks by consulting reliable sources directly, when she consulted Janet she was relying on a second hand source, and since the scenario does not name the source we do not know if that was reliable. Obviously friend trusted Janet's second hand knowledge, but that trust does not mean they abdicate their own personal responsibility.

Now, if Janet had pushed friend into the jellyfish infested waters, then she would be responsible.

Will Janet feel guilty? Probably, at least initially, her friend died trusting her knowledge. After some therapy maybe she will learn to transfer that blame to the source she relied on. Will Janet ever trust the source of her information again? Hopefully not. People should not believe everything they read, but cross-reference it with other data before making life or death choices.

That's my opinion. :o)

No, but I am sure she feels bad about it.

[caestus.livejournal.com]

Maybe she even feels badly for her ignorance.

There is no way that Janet is culpable, because the death of her friend could verily been brought about by an allergic reaction. In that case the jellyfish in question could indeed be harmless to everyone who is not Janet's friend or share a certain aspect of her physiology that makes them toxic to her.

I would look to the source of the article that Janet read. Did they write something dangerous and demonstrably false? Were they aware that people might read and take their words as they stand?

In such a scenario, I am left with more questions for the details.

Regardless, I am sure that Janet will suffer for loss of her friend, likely blaming herself.

Simple answer: No. Complex answer: Still, no, but should culpability need addressing, I'd look to the source of Janet's information.

Moral question

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

No, Janet is not morally responsible (imo) because (presumably) she gave the best information she had at the time (the erroneous report that the jellyfish are harmless). Further the friend is responsible for deciding whether to swim or not in a part of the ocean with many jellyfish (which doesn't sound appealing to me) - as in why would the friend want to do this? There's no mention of what life-saving efforts Janet may or may not have taken after her friend was stung.

[pi3832.livejournal.com]

Not enough information. Is Janet a marine biologist? Did she cite her source? Why is the friend even asking Janet in the first place? Everyone hands out advice and opinions all the time. But some things we say with a shrug, and others we assert with confidence. If I tell you that, "The salmon pâté is fine, as far as I know, but I never touch the stuff, have you seen the cups?" it's really not my fault when Death shows up for you.

[joshuwain.livejournal.com]

My answer: no. But I'd feel guilty about it anyway.

Morally, to me, means that some degree of purposeful forethought went into it. Since this was an accident, the moral responsibility would be nil. But there is still a causal relationship between my words (and ignorance) and the death. This would imply -to me, at least- an ethical responsibility to some degree.

[litch.livejournal.com]

No, but she probably feels like she is. Friend's choice was her responsibility even though she asked for advice she was not forced to by janet.

[litch.livejournal.com]

he's a more complicated version, what if janet was jealous of the friend and wanted her to die, but still gave her the best information she had available.