View Single Post
  #130 (permalink)   Report Post  
Posted to alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian,talk.politics.animals,alt.food.vegan,alt.food.vegan.science
George Plimpton George Plimpton is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,258
Default The 'vegan' shuffle

On 3/7/2012 10:44 AM, Derek wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:19:03 -0800, George > wrote:
>
>> On 3/7/2012 6:03 AM, Derek wrote:
>>
>>> Vicarious responsibility.
>>>
>>> [Assigning vicarious responsibility
>>>
>>> How to Cite
>>>
>>> Shultz, T. R., Jaggi, C. and Schleifer, M. (1987), Assigning vicarious
>>> responsibility. European Journal of Social Psychology, 17: 377–380.
>>> doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420170314
>>>
>>> Abstract
>>>
>>> An experiment tested three hypotheses about the conditions under which
>>> someone can be held vicariously responsible for the actions of
>>> another. Two of the hypotheses received empirical support: that the
>>> vicariously responsible person is in a superior relationship to the
>>> person who caused the damage and is able to control that person's
>>> causing of the damage]
>>> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...70314/abstract
>>>
>>> Vicarious responsibility only has meaning iff the accused "person is
>>> in a superior relationship to the person who caused the damage and is
>>> able to control that person's causing of the damage."

>>
>> I just looked at that a little harder right now. You are inferring
>> something that the authors do not say. They are not saying that the
>> "superior relationship" and the ability to control the other's actions
>> are *necessary* elements of vicarious moral responsibility. That is,
>> *you* are the one inferring "if and only if" ["iff"]; the authors of
>> that article do not say that in the abstract, and I doubt they say it in
>> the article.

>
> The article stands on its own and identifies "the conditions
> under which someone can be held vicariously responsible
> for the actions of another. If you don't like my "iff" ignore
> it. It makes no difference to the author's proper account.


It most certainly *does* make a difference. You are saying that it is a
necessary condition for vicarious moral responsibility. That's wrong;
it is only sufficient, but not necessary. Having full control over your
degree of involvement with someone the morality of whose actions is
being examined is another way in which you could obtain vicarious moral
responsibility. I gave a perfectly good and workable definition of my
own, not cadged from some web site, years ago. I think at some point I
expanded the elements to six, but there are four crucial ones. There is
vicarious moral responsibility established if:

* the relationship is voluntary - no coercion applied to the principal

* the principal is an active participant, i.e., actively engages in
the relationship such as, for example, going to the grocery

* the principal is fully aware of the agent's actions

* the relationship is not instrumentally necessary for the principal to
achieve a legitimate goal, e.g. the acquisition of food

I'll keep looking to see if I can find one of the posts in which I
expanded it by a couple more, but I think those four are good. As I
said, that's all due to original theorizing, not mucking about on the web.