Subject:
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Re: personal responsibility (was:Re: Why is AIDS such a big deal?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 26 May 2000 16:55:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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986 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> > So if I stomp on an infant or kill a sleeping person, they're still somehow
> > responsible? Your assertion, after a fashion, amounts to "victims make
> > themselves victims."
>
> Also, just so that I'm sure, are you purposely being obtuse to tie up the
> loose ends in my argument, while actually agreeing with the main thrust? I'm
> OK with that, actually I appreciate it, but it is different from just
> disagreeing completely.
Heh. Not being *purposely* obtuse, though I was trying to extend your
argument to (one of) its extreme conclusions. As I mentioned in a response to
one of Frank's posts, I'm not comfortable with the latitude such words as
"victim" and "responsibility" afford themselves, and I was hoping to
illustrate this with my absurd example above (and with the choose-your-parents
example below). Also, the whole scenario gets messed up with inscrutable
minutiae almost from the get-go: If I take an elevator to the ground level,
step to the curb outside, and am struck by an out-of-control car (or falling
piano, or whatever), am I more at fault than if I'd taken a different elevator
and reached the curb a few seconds after the accident? Where is a line to be
drawn regarding one's "choices" in a situation?
>
> However, by your previous assertions there is no moral or logical difference
> between wild animals and humans
>
> I made that claim in one sense, but not in another. But that doesn't make it
> any more right to victimize them.
Got it. I wasn't seeing your distinction before, but now I understand.
Still, similar logic could be applied in order to condemn the consumption of
vegetable matter.
> > By your own assertion you are at least partially responsible for the parents
> > you wound up with, whether you chose them or not.
> > No, I am responsible for what I make of them.
> >
> > But that's not what you said. You asserted that victims are partially
> > responsible for being victims.
>
> And with the exception of the pretty young (I'll include age-adult
> brain-juveniles in this lump, for convenience), I think that's true. I don't
> see how that reflects on the issue of whether or not my parents were chosen,
> and what my responsibility for that situation is.
I see what you're saying now; previously, though, the assertion was that
people were responsible for their circumstances even when they had no way to
be in control of those circumstances. Extending this to children-and-parents
is just an extreme extension of that same reasoning.
> I'm not sure what we're arguing in this last bit. Could you clear it up in
> your next response?
I was trying to place the choice of parents somewhere on the responsibility
spectrum, and to do so I was playing on a potential interpretation of
"victim," that is, the subject of circumstances beyond one's control.
Dave!
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