[What follows is jointly authored by Eve Garrard and Norman Geras.]
On the basis of this post, and by his own account quibbling, Chris Bertram attributes to the two of us the view that no one other than the direct agent of a bad action can bear moral responsibility for it. So confident is he of this attribution that he reaffirms it repeatedly in the comments thread that follows. There is a flaw with his doing so: this is not in fact our view; the post which he takes as embodying it, doesn't.
First, in the discussion of hypothetical cases, that post gives a plain example of someone ('me') sharing responsibility for the wrong act of someone else ('David') - this, in the presence of a third party ('Sam'). Thus, about that example:
If, on the other hand, my remark was not about Bob Dylan's music, but was a deeply offensive comment about David's mother, then without troubling to weight the respective shares of blame here, I'd say it would have been reasonable for Sam to tell me that I must bear some of it.Second, that we don't hold the view that Bertram ascribes to us is clearly evident in the generalizing paragraph that follows the discussion of examples. Perhaps he missed the restrictive conditional clause which closes the first sentence of that paragraph:
The fact that something someone else does contributes causally to a crime or atrocity, doesn't show that they, as well as the direct agent(s), are morally responsible for that crime or atrocity, if what they have contributed causally is not itself wrong and doesn't serve to justify it.And perhaps, in the next sentence of the same paragraph, he also missed the 'necessarily' in 'this won't necessarily show they bear any of the blame for it'. But to transform a conditional claim into an unconditional one, and to move from 'not necessarily' to 'not' - these are elementary logical errors.
Third, the argument following that paragraph is not that to blame Tony Blair for the London bombings is inappropriate because only the direct agents of any misdeed (or worse) can bear moral responsibility for it; it is that this is inappropriate because those now blaming him don't have the knowledge they would need, to be able to do that in a well-grounded way. Thus:
What they [the 'We told you so' crowd] need to know is not just that Iraq was one of a number of influencing causes, but that it was the specific, and a necessary, motivating cause for the London bombings.And following that argument there is further matter concerning the way in which assumptions about the rightness or wrongness of the intervention in Afghanistan, as well as of the Iraq war, function in deciding whether others (Blair, Bush, etc.) than the bombers themselves are to blame for the London bombings.
Bertram's misattribution, consequently, is merely sloppy; he would have done better to be guided by the reluctance he professes 'to quibble overmuch'. As it is, he has ended up by producing, not merely a quibble, but a useless one.
We note, finally, that Bertram speaks of us as 'treating [people] to a lecture', as attempting 'a lesson' (on blame and moral responsibility). If he'd thought of the post with which he takes issue as, for example, putting forward an argument, or setting out a position, he might have been less likely to misidentify what it says.
(Eve Garrard and Norman Geras)
