Thought Experiment 34: Don't Blame Me

11/16/2015

Where exactly do our ideas come from?

I didn't come up with this week's thought experiment, so don't blame me if you don't like it.

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"Mary, Mungo, and Midge. You stand accused of a grievous crime. What do you have to say for yourselves?
   "Yes, I did it," said Mary. "But it wasn't my fault. I consulted an expert and she told me that was what I ought to do. So don't blame me, blame her."
   "I too did it," said Mungo. "But it wasn't my fault. I consulted my therapist and she told me that was what I ought to do. So don't blame me, blame her."
   "I won't deny I did it," said Midge. "But it wasn't my fault. I consulted an astrologer and she told me that since Neptune was in Aries, that's what I should have done. So don't blame me, blame him."
The judge sighed and issued his verdict. "Since this case is without precedent, I have had to discuss it with my senior colleagues. And I'm afraid to say that your arguments did not persuade them. I sentence you all to the maximum term. But, please remember that I consulted my peers and they told me to deliver this sentence. So don't blame me, blame them."

Source: Existentialism and Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1948.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 100.
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What do you think? Just how much blame or responsibility can we take for our own actions and influences? I'll be back on Friday to give my own answer. At least, that is, as long as I'm able to.

2 Comments

atthatmatt link

11/16/2015 09:20:13 pm

The fun thing is that deciding how much blame to assign to each party depends on what the system experts say.

Reminds me of Head Office where an executive says "I didn't make that decision I just approved that decision."

Obviously, we live in a society, and long term success comes from mastering increasingly interrelated and subtle relationships. As a group we perform better when individuals specialize. We have to assume blame will be distributed.

But it's not that simple. We use blame as a deterrent to bad behavior; augmenting what it would have been if purely accurate. Also our false positive/negative rate is often embarrassing. Then there's the psychological need for a perception of justice that sometimes trumps the reality of the facts.

Since there's no objective compromise we end up setting the balance based on relative power. A driver can't claim ignorance of the law, but a senator can. A poor person can't fight for child custody, but a rich person can. A home owner can't get out of a bad bet, but an investment banker can. A private gun owner can't claim their judgement to shoot was beyond reproach, but a law enforcement officer can.

I think it's the constant arguing that's valuable. A public court system allows us to hammer out new compromises if things swing too far one way.

@EdGibney link

11/17/2015 09:35:23 am

Yeah, it's easy to show that this kind of passing the buck just leads to an infinite regress. Someone somewhere must have made a decision. Your use of power dynamics in this discussion is very Marxian (in the social science meaning, not the communist political meaning), which is useful for pragmatically examining what *is* taking place, although I'm generally more interested in trying to figure out what *ought* to objectively take place. I'll have to give that some more thought on this one.

Thought Experiment 34: Don't Blame Me

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