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]

(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.