Shifting Moral Responsibility
by Joseph Rowlands

When discussing moral judgment, there is some confusion over the nature of causality and moral responsibility. If someone points a gun at you and demands that you steal from someone else, are you to blame if you comply? Did the gunman cause you to do it? Who is responsible?

When the gun is pointing at you, you technically still have a choice about whether to comply or not. The choice is lopsided in terms of potential downsides, but the mere presence of coercion does not actually change the causal nature of the choice. You are still making the choice. The gunman is not causing you to act that way, unless we speak loosely. Your choices are still your own. He can motivate you to comply, and the motivation may be so strong that noncompliance is not a good choice, but you still have the choice. He can threaten, but you have to be the one to choose and act.

Even though you have a choice, this kind of situation is often described as the gunman causing you to act that way. The reason for this is a recognition that the gunman is responsible for your actions. It is the gunman that is blamed. While you may have complied, the fact that you were threatened with violence excuses your actions. The gunman created the situation, and is the one who should be blamed.

Since you are simply reacting to what the gunman set in motion, it is simple to describe this by saying the gunman caused it. This treats you like an inanimate object, which reacts automatically to external forces. It's not technically true, but it is a powerful analogy that works very well to communicate the idea that the gunman is the responsible party and your actions should be seen as morally neutral. His actions simply ripple through the medium that is you.

The downsides to this analogy is that is isn't really true, and it obscures the actual reasons for the shifting of responsibility. It creates the impression that the moral responsibility is shifted simply because the victim is reacting to the situation created by another person. Presumably then whoever initiated the first action is responsible for the whole situation. But this isn't right at all.

The moral responsibility shifts because the gunman initiated force through a threat of violence. It isn't just any interaction that shifts moral responsibility. It is the initiation of force. When one person initiates force against another, he invalidates or overrides the victim's judgment. Force and mind are opposites. An act of force substitutes the gunman's judgment for the victim's. Since the victim can't act on his own judgment, and is forced to act on the judgment of the gunman, it is the gunman who has moral responsibility. He is the one who chose. He's the one who acted on his own judgment. And the victim did not get to act on his own judgment. That is why moral responsibility is shifted.

Understanding why responsibility shifts, we can see the problem with the vague idea that responsibility shifts when someone "causes" another person to act. The problem in essence is that almost anything can be viewed as a cause if the second person "reacts" to the first in some way. So if I tell you to sit down, and you do, it would seem that I have caused you to because you reacted to or complied with my command. But my judgment didn't override yours. I didn't coerce you. Your compliance is your own, voluntary choice.

Consider one of the classic examples of blame shifting. A woman dresses provocatively and gets raped. The rapist was said to be reacting to the woman's actions, and so moral responsibility was shifted to the woman. She was blamed for the situation while the rapists was seen as less than fully culpable.

This is an example of blaming the victim, which is still a widespread problem even though this particular example is recognized as improper. Ultimately, it stems from the bad analogy that confuses the reasons for moral responsibility to be shifted. The fact that the rapists "reacted" to the woman's actions is seen as fitting the criteria for shifting moral responsibility.

The truth is that the rapist chose to perform the rape. His judgment was not overridden by hers. She did not coerce him. The fact that his actions occurred within a context that she helped create is meaningless. Note even here that people would balk at suggesting that she helped create the context, because that would seem to imply she was partially responsible for the rape. But this is completely wrong and based on the false explanation of blame shifting. Her involvement, no matter how important in creating the situation, does not affect moral responsibility. It was the rapists choice, and he is entirely to blame for it.

While this particular case of blaming the victim is recognized, the misdirection of the false explanation continues to influence it. Victims of sex crimes continue to have their characters impugned and their actions questioned in order to try to shift responsibility from the criminal to the victim. And unfortunately, it still works to some degree.

Another case of blaming the victim is less well-recognized. This is the case of Islamic terrorism. The Danish cartoon situation was an excellent example of this. People drew some cartoons depicting Mohammed, often in unflattering ways. The Islamic world became furious and started rampaging and killing. The blame was frequently assigned to the Danish cartoonists for "provoking the Islamic world".

This is another case where the false explanation gets in the way. The idea is that the Danish cartoonists acted first, creating the situation, and the Islamic hoodlums merely reacted. Blame was shifted according to the false theory. But we can see again that this is false. The Islamic thugs were not coerced. Their judgment was not overridden. They are fully responsible for their own choices and actions. The fact that the Danish cartoonists helped created the initial context is meaningless. That has nothing to do with moral responsibility. The only reason it sounds even vaguely plausible is the confusion of discussing moral responsibility in terms of an initial "cause" and a "reaction". It is the initiation of force that shift moral responsibility, and that's because force invalidates the judgment of the victim and substitutes the aggressors judgment for the victims.

The Danish cartoon example is excellent because there is no use of force at all on the side of the cartoonists, and yet responsibility is shifted anyway. Other examples of terrorism, such as 9/11, may be less clear because the attack could be defended as a form of retaliatory force. There are plenty of reasons to disagree with this assessment, but that's not the issue here. The question is whether the defense of these attacks is based on the false explanation of shifting moral responsibility. Since the argument is that it is a form or retaliatory force, it doesn't appear to utilize the false explanation.

This raises the question of how we should view retaliatory force. Where does moral responsibility for it lie? It isn't exactly the same as the product of coercion. When you are coerced by the gunman, your judgment is overridden and his judgments takes over. It is a clear case where moral responsibility is shifted. But is retaliatory force the same? Clearly if the gunman's judgment is overriding yours, the you wouldn't be retaliating. So it appears to be different. This is deceptive, though.

When the gunman initiates force, he forces an interaction on you against your will. By the nature of the interaction and the demands on your life, the response you take is no longer voluntary. You didn't choose the situation, and your choice should have been needed. His act of violence, or the threat of it, forces you to act in order to preserve your life. In the short-term, that may mean compliance with his demands. It would also justify an attempt at overpowering him. But the short-term requirements to preserve your life is not all there is. The longer-term requirements include the need to use retaliatory force.

This isn't using the false explanation of moral blame. It isn't saying that simply because you react in some way to his earlier actions, it is his fault. If that were the case, any response would be justified, including killing not only him but his family or anyone else he cared about. But retaliatory force is limited and dependent on the initial force. It is a correction of the initial use of force, and responsibility ultimately shifts to the initial use of force. His initial crime was the source of the retaliation, and so the blame for it rests on him.

One scenario that highlights this is the idea of a defensive war where innocents are killed in an attempt to stop the aggressor. One of the key questions is who is responsible for the death of the innocent people. Is it the defender or the aggressor? If the aggressor uses human shields, does this prevent the defender from protecting himself out of fear of hurting someone else?

If the moral blame for the retaliatory force is assigned to the initiator of force, then all of the consequences of that retaliatory force are shifted as well. The defender is not the one guilty of killing the innocent people. It is the aggressor that is to blame. This is an example where moral responsibility is sometimes not shifted correctly.

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