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

[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.