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Different meanings of Responsibility

15 January, 2016 - 09:10
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Reactive Senses

  1. Causal Responsibility refers to prior events (called causes) which produce or prevent subsequent events (called effects). Cheap, inaccurate sensors (cause) required that Manual be present on the scene (effect) to monitor the high temperatures and pressures required to correctly prepare Phaust's paint stripper.
  2. Role Responsibility delineates the obligations individuals create when they commit to a social or professional role. When Fred became an engineer he committed to holding paramount the health, safety and welfare of the public. (See NSPE code of ethics)
  3. Capacity Responsibility sets forth those conditions under which someone can be praised or blamed for their actions. Praise and blame associate an agent with an action. Excuses are based on means for separating or disassociating an agent from their actions. Capacity responsibility helps us determine whether there are any legitimate excuses available for those who would disassociate themselves from untoward, harm-causing actions.
  4. Blame Responsibility determines when we can legitimately praise or blame individuals for their actions.

Proactive Senses

  1. Sharing Responsibility extends the sphere of responsibility to include those to whom one stands in internal relations or relations of solidarity. Shared responsibility includes answering for the actions of others within one's group. It also includes coming to the moral aid of those within one's group who have gone morally astray; this involves bringing to their attention morally risky actions and standing with them when they are pressured for trying to uphold group values. While sharing responsibility entails answering for what members of one's group have done, it does not extend to taking the blame for the untoward actions of colleagues. Sharing responsibility does not commit what H.D. Lewis calls the "barbarism of collective responsibility" which consists of blaming and punishing innocent persons for the guilty actions of those with whom they are associated.
  2. Preventive Responsibility: By using knowledge of the past, one can avoid errors or repeat successes in the future. Peter French calls this the "Principle of Responsive Adjustment." (One adjusts future actions in response to what one has learned from the past.) According to French, responsive adjustment is a moral imperative. If one fails to responsively adjust to avoid the repetition of past untoward results, this loops back into the past and causes a revaluation of the initial unintentional action. The benefit of the doubt is withdrawn and the individual who fails to responsively adjust is now held responsible for the original past action. This is because the failure to adjust inserts the initial action into a larger context of negligence, bad intentions, recklessness, and carelessness. Failure to responsively adjust triggers a retroactive attribution of blame.
  3. Responsibility as a Virtue: Here one develops skills, acquires professional knowledge, cultivitates sensitivies and emotions, and develops habits of execution that consistently bring about value realization and excellence. One way of getting at responsibility as an excellence it to reinterpret the conditions of imputability of blame responsibility. An agent escapes blame by restricting the scope of role responsibility, claiming ignorance, and citing lack of power and control. In responsibility as a virtue, one goes beyond blame by extending the range of role responsibilities, seeking situation-relevant knowledge, and working to skillfully extending power and control.