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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (68559)	11/26/2002 8:23:51 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"I would say DUH." Absolutely. In one case she just was what she was and had no responsibility for her condition. In the other case she had made conscious informed decisions to set up some conditions. "Knew or should have known. One cannot get away without accepting responsibility when one is irresponsibly naive. If you leave your car parked overnight on a street in Harlem unlocked with the keys in it, you are responsible if it is taken and used in a hit and run. If you're a bartender and keep pouring drinks down an obviously drunk guy's throat and then walk him out to his car and help him get in, you're responsible for the accident he gets into even though you had no intention that he get into an accident." Well you changed "naive" to "irresponsibly naive." Naive just is. Irresponsibly naive implys the person has not done something that we normally expect of a person with their sphere of influence and authority to become informed. In other words, they have been negligent. I agree you are responsible for negligence. It involves informed choices not to act in an appropriate manner. In the car owner situation, it is true that we hold car owners responsible for being informed about theft and locking the car and such. If you leave the keys in it you have behaved irresponsibly and that may impact your insurance payment some. But you did not have responibility for the choice the theives made to steal a car beyond your own contributory negligence. They are responsible for stealing. As far as the hit and run goes, I don't see how you have any responsibility for the harm cause to a third party by theives who are driving your car without your permission. The bar tender is a stronger case since he should definitely know that a drunk on the road has a high likelihood of causing damage. He was informed and by his actions encouraged the situation. It is his area of authority and a specific sphere of influence assigned to him to monitor the conditions of people taking drinks from him, for this precise reason. " People are responsible for being reasonably cautious about the things they do." Sure. I open doors for people, ride elevators, walk down busy streets and do not think to check against potential pick pocketing. It has never happened to me, or any one I know, nor have I heard about it happening around here. If it happened one time in my life while I was crossing a busy street I would not call my self irresponsible. Especially if I was looking both ways at the cars coming and going. That is the level of "should" responsibility that we have in the local culture. Any thing else would be extreme and not expected under the reasonably cautious human being guidelines. How many real life situations are there where people in a bank being normally polite and courtious end up being used unknowingly as a resource in a robbery? "People are responsible for being reasonably cautious about the things they do." Exactly. "And as I said, the teller would hardly have reacted normally. And it's not a normal situation to take a note to a teller and have her just hand over cash without double counting it and without ringing it up on her terminal. DUH. Well again that is not the point. The hypothetical example that I gave did not provide such clues. You want it to, so you are adding things that would have informed the dupe. The point was IF the dupe is NOT informed, then they do NOT have responsibility for the choices offered by an INFORMED deceiver. If you think it was a poor example, that is a separate issue. Changing the context of the example to make the dupe informed nullifies our discussion all together. Either you agree that responsibility involves informed choices or not. That is the only point of this portion of the discussion. We can move on from there if you agree to that. Or, are you arguing about how bank robberies "really" happen. If so, I'm out.