http://chernovog.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] chernovog.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] mellowtigger 2011-02-01 06:58 pm (UTC)

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.

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