Moral and Legal Responsibility in Biomatrix

Summary of different senses of responsibility

Reactive Senses of Responsibility

• Causal– Physical motions produce

an event

• Role– individual stands

committed to carry out common goods around which a social or professional role is oriented

• Capacity– Determining the conditions

under which someone can be held responsible for their actions

• Blame– Praising or blaming

someone for what they have done

Criminal (Legal) Responsibility• Mens Rea

– Gulity state of mind or intention to do wrong

• Actus Reus– Wrongful action(s)

• Connection between Mens Rea and Actus Reus– Guilty action caused by guilty state of mind. (Not just wish fulfilment)

• Burden of Proof: beyond a reasonable doubt

• Interested Party: society has an interest in punishing and thereby deterring violation of criminal laws

• Target: Human beings who have “a body to kick and a soul to damn”

Civil (Legal) Responsibility

• Violations of Contract

• Torts or wrongful injury

• Standard of Evidence: To prove a tort one must prove…– Negligence– Recklessness

• Interested Party: A tort seeks to make the victim (=one who suffers wrongful injury) whole

• Burden of Proof: preponderance of evidence (the decision goes to whoever has the most support from the evidence)

O.J. Simpson

• Lost civil trial because the preponderance of evidence said he killed Nicole Brown Simpson– Paid $ to survivors of Nicole Brown Simpson

• Won the criminal trial because the prosecution could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed Nicole Brown Simpson– Society, the interested party in this lawsuit, failed to

make its case given the standard of evidence

Capacity Responsibility

Conditions of imputability for praising and blaming

Capacity Responsibility

• Conditions of Imputability are…– Conditions that connect an agent with an action

for moral evaluation

• One is capacity responsible when one is… –…capable of acting voluntarily and

knowingly in a given situation

Acting Voluntarily…• When we act voluntarily, we act without

compulsion• Compulsion is the “production of a state of

mind or body independently of the will” (F. H. Bradley)– Overwhelming fear compels me (Luca Brazi: either

your brains or your signature will be on that contract)

– Physical force: when somebody pushes me, they create a state of body—my falling toward the floor—which runs contrary to my actual will (to remain standing)

Acting knowingly…

• Acting knowingly means acting free from two kinds of ignorance:

– General (Moral) Ignorance (Not being able to appreciate the moral quality of my actions)

– Specific Ignorance (Not knowing important details in the situation in which I am acting)

General Ignorance

• A broad ability to appreciate the moral quality of my actions that includes…

– bringing moral concepts, rules, and principles to bear on the situation (social injustice of windmill public hearings)

– responding in an emotionally appropriate way to the situation (anger and indignation at attempt to exclude from process)

– shaping one’s actions in accordance with moral understanding and moral emotion (opposing injustice through social activism / whistleblowing)

Specific Ignorance

• One fails to act responsibly in a situation because one lacks crucially relevant situational details

– I betray my sister’s secret

– But I didn’t know that it was in fact a secret

– My ignorance of that crucial detail relieves me of responsibility in this situation (ignorance = excuse)

Not satisfying the knowledge and volitional conditions allows for excuses

• Condition—Performing the action knowingly

– Excuse—I didn’t know what I was doing or I couldn’t appreciate the moral quality of what I was doing

• Condition—Performing the action voluntarily

– Excuse—He (Luca Brasi) made me do it (I couldn’t have done otherwise)

Exception for Excuses

• What past conditions produced ignorance or compulsion?

• I am responsible for what I do under ignorance and under compulsion if I got myself into the excuse-generating situations in the first place

• Examples:– My ignorance was caused by past negligence (I didn’t

know but I should have known)– My being compelled was caused by past recklessness (I

didn’t drink responsibly)

The Dark Side of Responsibility

Bandura’s studies on how individuals attempt to evade responsibility for

their actions

Modes of Defusing ResponsibilityModes of Defusing ResponsibilityBanduraBandura

Displacement of Responsibility

Moral JustificationEuphemistic labeling

Advantageous Comparisons

Minimizing Bad Consequences

Ignoring Bad Consequences

Misconstruing Bad Consequences

Dehumanizing

Blaming

Reprehensible Conduct Detrimental Effects Victim

Biomatrix and Defusing Responsibility• From trial transcripts

– Q. But you have no proof that the company has ties to organized crime, correct?

– A. Correct– Q. And you’ve never had any proof to suggest that the company had ties to

organized crime, correct?– A. Correct.– Q. You’ve never taken any steps to substantiate whether or not the

company had ties to organized crime, correct?– A. Correct. I’m not a police officer. (moral justification and advantageous

comparisons)

– See Richard Dep. pp. 210: 17-211:2.

• “Richard testified that it is “irrelevant” to him how people interpret his posts because they are made in a Yahoo! Chat room (=euphemistic labelling).

• Can’t she take a joke (in reference to accusing Biomatrix VP of sexual harassment) (=blaming the victim)

– See Richard Dep., p. 193: 18-193: 22.

Mapping actions onto Bandura’s Framework

• Ways in which Biomatrix Police displaced or defused responsibility for their online actions:

• Minimizing, ignoring, or misconstruing bad consequences?

• Blaming the victim– They can’t take a joke

• Moral justification or euphemistic labeling– This is not wrong in the Internet– We were just joking or flaming