Praise and blame, and moral responsibility
Praise and blame are essential parts of everyday morality and philosophy, but is not equal to true moral responsibility in the strictest sense, but is rather much more complicated and depends on what is in that person’s direct power, what they have done, and how that affects society. In this essay I will seek to explain praise and blame, the different views on it, how doling out praise and blame is a complicated task with many mitigating factors, and how this is important.
While at a water cooler the average Joe and Jane may not discuss the finer points of Kantian metaphysics, but hey may very well talk about their co worker, who had been fired for missing too much work from being sick, or their mutual …show more content…
There are two elderly men who should not be driving. They have been told they shouldn’t drive, and both have had their license revoked but both wanted to attend bingo night and it was the easiest way to go. Old driver A leaves 5 minutes before old driver B. Driving home in the dark old driver A gets home just fine, however 5 minutes behind him is old driver B. Old driver B is driving home when a child darts out in front of him, being too old to drive he does not see the child in tome, and does not have the reflexes to dodge the child. Both men did the exact same thing, Morally they should not of done what they had. Now while we can say what they did was wrong we put far more blame upon the latter because he killed a child, while old driver A simply drove when he wasn’t supposed to, most people would put very little blame upon him. This way of placing blame is contradictory with ought implies can. Ought implies can is a widely accepted philosophical idea which states if you ought or should do something morally you must first be able to do it. Old driver B could not of avoided the child, so why do we blame him for it? If ought implies can is true then you cant be held morally responsible for things that were not possible for you to avoid, Now while they did the same thing and are equally responsible for that wrongdoing, there are many external factors that affect this situation, and therefore the praise and blame that gets doled out. This seems to show that praise and blame are somehow disconnected from moral responsibility in the vacuum. Thomas Nagel described these mitigating factors, or really anything not within the moral actors control, as different kinds of luck that affected our moral outcome. First was constitutive luck, or the luck that ha to do without constitution or personality, using this in our example, the old men could not help being raised or born to simply do things
Praise and blame are essential parts of everyday morality and philosophy, but is not equal to true moral responsibility in the strictest sense, but is rather much more complicated and depends on what is in that person’s direct power, what they have done, and how that affects society. In this essay I will seek to explain praise and blame, the different views on it, how doling out praise and blame is a complicated task with many mitigating factors, and how this is important.
While at a water cooler the average Joe and Jane may not discuss the finer points of Kantian metaphysics, but hey may very well talk about their co worker, who had been fired for missing too much work from being sick, or their mutual …show more content…
There are two elderly men who should not be driving. They have been told they shouldn’t drive, and both have had their license revoked but both wanted to attend bingo night and it was the easiest way to go. Old driver A leaves 5 minutes before old driver B. Driving home in the dark old driver A gets home just fine, however 5 minutes behind him is old driver B. Old driver B is driving home when a child darts out in front of him, being too old to drive he does not see the child in tome, and does not have the reflexes to dodge the child. Both men did the exact same thing, Morally they should not of done what they had. Now while we can say what they did was wrong we put far more blame upon the latter because he killed a child, while old driver A simply drove when he wasn’t supposed to, most people would put very little blame upon him. This way of placing blame is contradictory with ought implies can. Ought implies can is a widely accepted philosophical idea which states if you ought or should do something morally you must first be able to do it. Old driver B could not of avoided the child, so why do we blame him for it? If ought implies can is true then you cant be held morally responsible for things that were not possible for you to avoid, Now while they did the same thing and are equally responsible for that wrongdoing, there are many external factors that affect this situation, and therefore the praise and blame that gets doled out. This seems to show that praise and blame are somehow disconnected from moral responsibility in the vacuum. Thomas Nagel described these mitigating factors, or really anything not within the moral actors control, as different kinds of luck that affected our moral outcome. First was constitutive luck, or the luck that ha to do without constitution or personality, using this in our example, the old men could not help being raised or born to simply do things