| | Sam, back on May 23rd, you wrote, I've always maintained that there two kinds of responsibility: legal and metaphysical. No one will argue that a drunk driver who jumps the curb and mows down a pedestrian on the sidewalk isn't legally responsible for killing the pedestrian. However, the pedestrian chose to be where he was when he was and in that respect is responsible for his fate. In other words, shit happens — and good things happen, also. (I never understood the concept of "luck".) "Luck" refers to an event that is not the result of one's design or intention, or for which one cannot be held morally responsible. The pedestrian's death was "bad luck," insofar as it was not due to any negligence on his part; in other words, it was not his fault. If he had been wandering aimlessly in the middle of the street in a drunken stupor and got hit by a car, then we could not attribute the accident to bad luck, for it would be due to the victim's own irresponsibility.
You could say that pedestrian on the sidewalk was "responsible" for his fate only in an amoral, existential sense of the term - as simply one of the causal factors contributing to the accident. But normally when we use the term responsibility in connection with someone's choices, we're referring to moral responsibility - to choices that the person "ought" or "ought not" to have made under the circumstances. Clearly, the pedestrian who got hit by the car that jumped the curb was not "responsible" for what happened to him in the relevant sense of being morally responsible - of having made an inappropriate choice. He was perfectly justified in being where he was at the time of the accident. It was only the driver who was at fault; it was only he whose choices were irresponsible.
- Bill
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You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.
