Reply #160: There is a huge difference between blame and responsibility [View All]

[nichomachus]

One reason this type of discussion gets into the flaming area very quickly is that people can't differentiate between responsibility and blame. To say someone has some responsibility for something that happened (lack of caution) isn't to say they should be blamed. They are two completely different concepts. Blame has a moral component and responsibility does not necessarily.

For the record -- in your case I don't even see a lack of normal caution because you were doing something that was a normal behavior and you trusted someone -- with good reason - and that trust was violated.

Suppose I am in a bar and I leave my wallet on the bar while I go to the bathroom. When I come back, my money is gone and so is the stranger who was sitting next to me.

I bear some of the responsibility because I was incautious. Had I not left my wallet on the bar, the perpetrator would not have had the opportunity, but I did nothing morally wrong. The perpetrator also had responsibility, because without his actions, nothing would have happened, but he also gets the blame, because he acted wrongly in taking something that didn't belong to him.

Now, suppose the person next to me was a friend who I had been drinking with many times. That really reduces my responsibility because I was operating under the assumption that he wouldn't steal from me. If he does, then he bears more responsibility for what happened -- and his level of blame is higher because he violated a trust as well as took something that didn't belong to him.

So, to say that I should have been more careful with my wallet (in the first case) is not to "blame" me for what happened, but only to say that I acted foolishly and bear some of the responsibility in the chain of events that led to the outcome. The other person is still the person with all the blame.

This is why urging women to be cautious about putting themselves in situations where they could be assaulted is in no way "blaming" them for the outcome -- merely saying that we all have some obligation not to foolishly put ourselves in danger. And, it in no way excuses the perpetrator of the crime (as some people seem to think it does).