Should you be held legally and morally accountable for someone's death if you had the opportunity to prevent it?
Scenario
Suppose you saw a complete stranger walking on a rocky terrain. He is too indulged with their phone as they continue to text without being aware of their surrounds. You notice they are starting to walk towards a cliff edge leading to a 200-foot drop, but you can take a simple action to prevent it at a low risk or little cost to yourself.
Is it immoral to do nothing in such circumstances? Should just standing idly rather than taking steps to save a life be a criminal offence as you have potentially just let another human die?
Legality and Morality
If an individual detects an act that seems, from their perspective to be an injustice such as watching an attack play out or something that may very soon lead to a perceived predictable injustice and that they could intervene to prevent or significantly mitigate the crime or the immediate consequences of such then I believe that anyone should take action or suffer the consequence of be held morally culpable only to themselves and only by themselves.
Regarding the legal accountability, I think as individuals, we are not legally responsible for the health and safety of all members of our society. Our laws reflect the consensus moral viewpoint of our society. However, some laws are disputed which people don't believe in or support. Although we may not be legally responsible, is letting a life perish as bad as someone who commits a murder?
A person who is wandering off a cliff due to their own distraction is being negligent to their own safety. So we now have a conflict - am I responsible for your own lack of responsibility? Am I to be held negligent for not stopping your own negligence?
Even if the risk to myself is minimal, must I be expected to risk myself at all to stop your own negligence from hurting you? If we are going to hold people to a standard high enough that they should be responsible for the safety of strangers - should we not at least hold them responsible for the safety of themselves first?
In the end, I would say that while helping a stranger in that situation is a moral virtue, it should probably not be a moral obligation but if a circumstance like this ever happened to me I, of course, would try, with the best of my abilities, to help and warm them.
However, this argument bears more weight in you being in the wrong if you do believe in 'God' as the inactive omniscient observer of injustice.
Conclusively I think that it is morally good to act. However, not acting, while a bad action, should not win moral blame.
Just caught sight of your post title and an instant thought popped into my head. However reluctant we might be to admit it, a high percentage of us reading your title question alone would answer, "It would depend who it was." In the main post you talk of a stranger, a person. You've left us to picture the scene fullyin our own minds. How many of us would hesitate to even begin to think of legalities if your stranger was a child? An elderly person leaning on a stick? Guys.. Would your answer be the same if the stranger was a beautiful young girl or a perfectly independant looking man? Would we be influenced by this strangets age, race , demeanour, state of health? Most of us have caught sight of an unsavoury character and muttered something like , "I wouldn't like to meet him in a dark alley". So would we watch such a person walk off a cliff or risk them misinterpreting our action or emptying our pockets?
I think you cannot be responsible moraly for something you didn't caused in the first place. Although it is desirable that in some situations you could save someone, I don't think it is punishable.
I agree with you there. People who could've helped but didn't shouldn't be punishable but I don't think it should ever come to that position since people should be morally obligated to help someone walking to their perish.
Thank you for reading
Here is where you argument came off the rails.
It is not low-risk. Nor is the cost little.
How can you stop the lady pictured above from walking off of a cliff? Every way that would be called "easy" can, and has, landed people in jail.
All she has to do is claim rape, or assault, or crazy psycho stalker.
All she has to do is claim that she wanted to see the beautiful view.
And once you are arrested (have your future job prospects destroyed) she can leap to her death in peace.
Next, is how can you tell if what you are doing will help someone. By trying to save someone from walking into a precarious position, you may put them in a worse position.
If we are indeed talking about suicide, then that is even a worse case. Where you will need to put in considerable time to talk the person into believing their is a future. And not once, but three times. It is incredibly difficult work. And will usually leave you feeling tattered, if not outright depressed (and that is if you do not fail)
Trying to save someone is often very difficult and fraught with much peril. (just ask a life guard) However, it is, to me far better than living with knowing you could have helped.
Мораль слишком искусственна для меня. Я не понимаю, что это. Я - биолог по образованию и по сути. Я ценю все формы жизни и понимаю, как работает биосистема. Люди для меня - это живые существа (не совсем разумные), которым нужна помощь. Люди убивают себя ежедневно. Я не вижу разницы между медленным и быстрым самоубийством. Я пытаюсь спасти всех, и я сделаю это снова. Однако, учитывая биосистему нашей планеты, я понимаю, что население Homo Sapiens значительно превышает его нормальное число. У меня есть предположение, что желание убить себя, продиктованное самой природой человека, является одним из бессознательных способов саморегуляции числа биоценозов. Но я вижу другой путь. Я знаю, что всех можно вылечить и научить жить новой жизнью. Современные технологии, порожденные человеческим интеллектом, позволят нам перейти к новому циклу человеческой эволюции. И тогда не будет никаких убийств, никаких самоубийств и смерти. Не нужно никого спасать!
I tend* to see most moral arguments as being relative to the surrounding culture. In that sense, I would like to live in a culture where if I was the phone-holding-cliff-walker, then somebody would warn me. So, I should expect to return the favour.
To the extent I think that there should be legal consequences for somebody not shouting the warning, I disagree. But, not all moral transgressions should have legal consequences.
*(I say "tend" because I lean towards something similar to Error Theory, but that's a different discussion and I'm trying to keep my comment simple)
No you should not be held accountable, but it is a pretty dick move.
Simple but true. haha
Thank you for checking out the post
Morality is another social construct, so like you said, do things that don't make you feel guilty. If you can go home and sleep in peace after seeing somebody jump off the cliff, why not? I don't see anything wrong with that.
Society won't forgive you, though. It is funny that we can be total assholes as individuals - and even create groups of such - but society as a whole has its own consciousness and moral standards that you'll be judged on. Even by the hypocritical jerks that would themselves walk away from a drowning person just like you. =)
Ah, life. What an ugly beauty.
On that note, you might be interested in joining us at @steemdeepthink if you haven't already. Thanks!
The current moralistic goodguy bullshit of this post is at a stunningly high level of 11 shoulds.
Ah, well: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@arckrai/we-are-all-selfish-why
Unfollowed.
'Moralistic goodguy bullshit'?
Have a great day I guess
We should be responsible for what we can control only! :D
The day it becomes punishable to fail to try is the day that onlookers will walk away without trying. Where is the line drawn? Are they also guilty if they try to save someone but fail? Should they, could they, have done more?