Moral Responsibility and Blame

Definition
The term moral responsibility we say” Ahmed
had moral responsibility not to lie”, we are
using the word ”Moral Responsibility ” to
mean “Moral Obligation ”. The kind of moral
responsibility we are discussing is when we
say a person is to blame for some thing.
Moral Responsibility
for Several Reasons
First and most importantly determining
who is moral responsible for a wrong allows
us to identify who should fix the wrong way.
If for example you are morally responsible
for harming your neighbor, then you are the
one who should compensate your neighbor
for his /her loses, at least to the extent that
those loses can be compensated.
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Second determine whether or not some
one is really morally responsible for say
breaking a law or rule, allow us to ensure that
we do not mistakenly punish, penalized or
blame an innocent person. Most businesses for
example, have rules against “conflicts of
interest” and employees sometimes breaks
these rules without realizing what they were
doing
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Third determing whether you are or are
not morally responsible for some one injury
helps to ensure that you don’t end up a
feeling shame guilt when you should not be
feeling these emotions for
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example, if you inflict a bad injury on a fellow
worker while operating a machine you will
probably pretty bad what happened. But
whether you should feel guilty or ashamed
depends on whether you are morally
responsible for what happened for if say, that
injury was an accident then you are not
morally responsible and so you are not guilty.
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Fourth Knowing exactly what moral
responsibility is may help keep us from
wrongly trying to rationalize our conduct.
When a person realizes that her actions
resulted in serious injuries to others, she may
not want to accept her responsibility for what
she did
Not Always Morally Responsible
IF….
A person for example who injures
someone by accident is “excused” from
any blames
 Three Elements of Moral
Responsibility
• Causality
• Knowledge
• Freedom
Requirements of Moral
Responsibility
 1st Requirement
The first requirement of moral responsibility “
the person must either cause the injury or
wrong or else must fall to prevent when he or
she could and should have done so. In many
case, it is easy to determine, whether a persons
action caused any injury or a wrong (such
actions are “commissions”. But this is not so easy
when a party doesn’t cause an injury but merely
falls to prevent it. Such failures are “Omissions ”
 2nd Requirement
The second requirement of moral
responsibility is this, the person must know
that he or she is doing. This means that if a
person is ignorant of the fact that he or she
actions will injure someone else that he or
she cannot be morally responsible that
injury
 3rd Requirement
The third requirement of the moral
responsibility is that the person must act of
his or her own free will. A person acts of his
or her own free will when the person acts
berately or purposefully and is not forced to
act by some uncontrollable mental rules or
external force.