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In Defense of Intent


OldGimletEye

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6 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Your case would had been much stronger if you had said you got the information from reading the newspaper, had saw it on a television show, or it was general knowledge in your community. By your own statement, it would appear that you were unaware of the information until it was presented to you at diversity training.

I have some news for you. The average Jane that works as a mechanic at "Bud's Autoshop" probably didn't get that info at diversity training. The average Joe that works as a pizza delivery driver for "Ron's Pizza" probably didn't get it either. Not everyone works at a major corporation that can pay top dollar for diversity training.

In addition, evidently, Robin DiAngelo, whose supposed to be an expert in these matters, didn't know it either.

But, even if I were to grant you that it was common knowledge, that the average person should know, there is still the issue of whether there is ever a fact pattern where a person couldn't have reasonably known their actions were offensive. I think if your answer is never, that is rather untenable.

Not quite. The general thrust of my argument is that for moral culpability to attach, there must be some bad state of mind ie the Epistemic Condition must be fulfilled.

 

Most tort laws require some level of intent. There are some exceptions that impose strict liability, such as product liability cases. But, in the context of automobile accidents, I know of no jurisdiction that imposes strict liability. What you were evidently referring to was no fault liability states. But strict liability and no fault are not the same. In strict liability, liability to a third party attaches if an act is committed. In a no fault liability states, no liability is owed to a third party in the case of an accident. Its just you get paid by your own insurance if there is accident, at least for economic damages. In many of those states if you want more than economic damages, then you need to establish fault, ie negligence. The point is that generally no fault or blame attaches in no fault states, except if damages are sought beyond economic damages.

And if you were referring to no fault liability states in your prior post, with regard to pedestrian accidents, you are wrong. There are about 12 no fault liability states. They are seemingly not the majority. In so far, as who pays pedestrians in case of a car accident, I'm not sure how the majority of states handle it. I think in Michigan at least, the driver does not pay the pedestrian. The pedestrian looks to his own insurance policy first, then to his spouses, and then evidently if those aren't available, Michigan keeps a general fund for those situations.

Anyway, most tort and criminal laws do require some level of scienter. There are exceptions of course. But, strict liability laws are viewed somewhat suspiciously. Also, in the criminal law at least, the punishments are rather minor. More importantly, for purposes of discussion here, the offending conduct where strict liability attaches is usually well defined. Generally, you can understand the exact conduct that will get you into trouble. With the "impact matters, not intent" standard I have discussed here it is not always very clear what conduct will land you into hot water ie not wanting to fill out questionnaires.

Sounds like a bad spiel from 1990s "Tough On Crime" conservatism. Why do you care about the rights of the accused? You're not pro-crime are you? Why do you care about the accused being treated fairly? Or how about its early 2000s version. Why do you care if alleged terrorists receive a fair trial? You're. not pro terrorism are you?

If you want to get down in the dirt, I have no problem doing it. Will do it all day, doesn't bother me one iota. We can sit around all day speculating on each others evil motives. I can be a total slimemesiter if that is where you want to go with this.

What if the driver was driving the speed limit, was being prudent in his driving, and the pedestrian just runs out in front of his car, at the last minute? Why does the driver get the legal liability and moral blame? We can certainly sympathize with the pedestrian's plight, but that doesn't mean the driver automatically becomes blameworthy.

The problem with labeling people moral bad actors by causation alone, without finding they should have been aware of the possible bad consequences of their actions, is that we are labeling people as doing bad, making a moral judgements about them, and sometimes punishing them, simply because they were unlucky.

The hypotheticals might be entertaining but they aren't the point.  Are there people on the left clamoring to change laws and make negligent homicide, manslaughter, and murder, all the same thing? Nope!  

The focus on "but I didn't mean  to!" or "no person could have realistically known that" are just defensive responses to when harm is demonstrated.  Now you can argue that in the example of the questionnaire there was no real harm, just offense, but once it's been pointed out to you that it's offensive because it falls under an umbrella of practices that have historically harmed one group of people why is it so tough to just say "oh, that was fucked up, sorry"? 

Here's another very recent real world example.  Pulse oximeters don't give as accurate readings on people with dark skin as they do on people with white skin. 

https://www.statnews.com/category/health/

Turns out they weren't tested as thoroughly on people of color.  This has likely caused tons of harm to people during this pandemic alone.

Should some random nurse  or doctor who took a reading be held criminally, morally, or monetarily liable?  Of course not, and I doubt many would make that argument.  But should the device manufacturer?  That's more of a grey area, sounds like a pretty clear breach of ethics of in testing, whether it's illegal or not.  I'd argue that they should be, or at least lead some kind of charge to change testing protocols industry wide and rectify what they've done.

 

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11 hours ago, KalbearAnon said:

Why is this such a fucking hard thing?

 

No, it's not a hard thing to understand at all. I get what you're trying to say loudly and clearly; I just don't find it convincing.

I guess my fundamental disagreement is simply the different mindsets/lens through which we view this particular issue. If you're mindset is one of ever-present and ever-subtle racism which is happening everywhere, then you'll indeed see racism everywhere (no matter your race). You'll see someone's refusal to fill in questionnaire as a slight against your intelligence. You'll see ordinary business practice as a personal attack (btw, kudos to Microsoft for handling it well). You'll se someone wearing a blue shirt and think it resembles oppressive police uniform too much. You'll think that someone naming their dog Luther is a dig at MLK. You'll see waitress asking you whether you want sugar with your coffee as perpetuating the legacy of sugar slave plantations. Etc. (yes, I made the last three examples up, but they're not that different from the first two). Sooner or later, you'll connect every single thing under the sun with something that which, through some mental gymnastics, can be viewed as somewhat resembling something that an actual racist might once have done.

If you, or anyone else, wants to adopt this as your personal mindset, that's your prerogative. Personally I think it will lead to miserable life experiences and will hurt mostly yourself;  but hey - your life, your choice. It if works for you, go for it. However I don't think it a society's business to accommodate this and organize itself around this. Frankly, I consider it to be a disservice to everyone involved: it promotes a society of eternally fragile black people and their perpetually guilt-tripped white counterparts. I have no idea how to solve the issue of racism in US (or anywhere else, for that matter), but this surely isn't it.
 

10 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

"Arbitrarily deciding" -- as if black people or other marginalized people can't be trusted to judge things for themselves? So who gets to decide if something was harmful? You, who constantly seems to extend benefit of the doubt to transgressors but won't extend any kind of good faith to victims?

Oh, of course not me. After all, I'm just a troll paid by KKK 1.54$ per post (and free hamburger for every like) to promote their views and shit on victims. And certainly not you, the self-righteous defender of the oppressed who unfortunately lacks any critical thought on this subject. Nor any black person nor any white person nor any man nor woman nor vegan nor basketball player nor anyone else. Like much else, it's a matter of never-ending public debate where everyone participates. Neither group or individual - and yes, that includes "black people or other marginalized people" - has any exclusive right to dictate what's offensive all by themselves.  And while I trust them to judge things for themselves - I don't trust them (nor anyone else) to judge on behalf of all of society.

Last sentence I can't comment much. I came to expect certain amount of insults and mockery in your posts, but this one is pretty disappointing. No creativity, no grains of truth, no originality, just baseless (and pretty boring) ad hominem attack. Come, I know you can do much better than this.
 

4 hours ago, ants said:

The thing is, what complicates some of this is you can be (and should be) sorry, without having any culpability.

If I offend someone and become aware of it, I should feel sorry.  I should feel sorry that my actions caused them to feel hurt.  But whether or not I caused hurt doesn't mean I was necessarily culpable of doing an act that could be reasonably expected to cause hurt.  And if it wasn't reasonable to expect that act to cause hurt, then how can I be blamed for doing that act?  

This is where education and setting expectations come in.  @larrytheimp is completely correct that was is minor on one side, can be major on the other.  Through a number of means; that for the victim there is a material number of these actions against them, that many use those actions with deliberate harm intended, with the historical context.  Should those people have to suffer that? Hell no.  But that also doesn't mean that everyone who committed those hurts were equally to blame.  

We need systems to make sure that people do know what to avoid. We need to be aware of what are issues.  But at the same time people in particular areas (such as politicians, management, media) have a responsibility to educate themselves, and cannot use "I didn't know" as an excuse.  

We also need to be aware that there will be times when people feel hurt, and that feeling so isn't justified.  Because the reality is that there are people out there who enjoy being the martyr, or simply frequently feel slighted, and may have feelings that are not proportional to the action.  And if we cater to every extreme on the distribution, then we can almost stop talking and doing anything. 


Just wanted to upvote this post, which is maybe the best way to start looking at this problematics. Very broadly, this sets some basic good principles and acknowledges the complexity of the subject. Kudos to ants.
 

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6 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Most tort laws require some level of intent

Intent is the wrong word.  There are 4 elements to tort:

1 Duty of care

2 Breach of the duty of care

3 Causation that relates back to the breach of the duty of care

4 Damages resulting from the breach of the duty.

In normal tort cases if you cannot establish all of the interrelated elements you cannot establish, at law, that a tort has been committed.

In strict liability cases the arguments are usually over whether the damages relate back to the breach as opposed to causation.

[yes... legal scholars recognize that this is causation by a different name.]

FYI.

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2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

The hypotheticals might be entertaining but they aren't the point.  Are there people on the left clamoring to change laws and make negligent homicide, manslaughter, and murder, all the same thing? Nope!  

Why aren't people on the left asking for changes to the law, particularly criminal laws, if they literally believe their own rhetoric?

And frankly, people should test their ideas against hypotheticals before they decide to deploy them in the real world.

 

2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

The focus on "but I didn't mean  to!" or "no person could have realistically known that" are just defensive responses to when harm is demonstrated. 

And why shouldn't a person be able to defend themselves if they have a legitimate defense? It may not be on the same level as getting a jail sentence. But, in some cases, it can lead to people being shamed, ostracized, reprimanded, or losing their job.

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2 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Oh, of course not me. After all, I'm just a troll paid by KKK 1.54$ per post (and free hamburger for every like) to promote their views and shit on victims. And certainly not you, the self-righteous defender of the oppressed who unfortunately lacks any critical thought on this subject. Nor any black person nor any white person nor any man nor woman nor vegan nor basketball player nor anyone else. Like much else, it's a matter of never-ending public debate where everyone participates. Neither group or individual - and yes, that includes "black people or other marginalized people" - has any exclusive right to dictate what's offensive all by themselves.  And while I trust them to judge things for themselves - I don't trust them (nor anyone else) to judge on behalf of all of society.

Last sentence I can't comment much. I came to expect certain amount of insults and mockery in your posts, but this one is pretty disappointing. No creativity, no grains of truth, no originality, just baseless (and pretty boring) ad hominem attack. Come, I know you can do much better than this.
 

Well see here's the thing. I described a pattern of behavior to you, which is actually a pattern that can broadly be described to almost anyone -- putting a higher burden of proof on the victim of a perceived transgression against marginalized peoples. It is, in fact, an insidious form of racism that does affect everyday interactions. I have to fight that reaction within myself all the time. But automatically finding a transgressor more credible than the perceived victim is a real thing. So I didn't think what I said to you was anything but a hard, but fair, observation. You've certainly been willing to make such observations about other people here. I recall you insulting the intelligence of a broad swath of posters in a similar thread before about talking too much about Nazis. Maybe I shouldn't have said "constantly" -- but again, I am observing a pattern of behavior from your posts that I have read. I know nothing about you except your posts.

And now here you are strawmanning my observation into an accusation that you're a paid KKK troll. Of course I said no such thing but now you want to claim victimhood and enflame it rather than engage with my honest complaint.

I wasn't even planning to post in this thread much because I figured it would go the way it always goes when topics like microagressions and the "cancel culture" bogeyman come up. But I had to respond to your use of "arbitrarily" as if to denigrate the honesty of anyone making such a complaint. It's not a good-faith way to approach a topic. I had, honestly, expected better of you, but your choice to lead it off that way convinced me that what I thought a bit of denseness but eventual fair-mindedness about American race relations was just the same reflexive preference for the comfort of the power group.

In regards to the particular complaint about the person not filling out the survey, I still don't feel like I have enough information to say if I find the complaint reasonable. The details have remained fuzzy in this thread and I haven't read any firsthand accounts. I admit, I wouldn't have thought failing to take a survey would be an indicator of even the broadest institutional racism in action. But if someone wanted to tell me why they thought so I'd give it a thoughtful listen.

I acknowledge sometimes bad faith accusations of racism occur and they can be harmful. Just like I have acknowledged in the past that some people have been unfairly fired or ostracized for innocent mistakes that went viral. But I find the false positives to be an exception rather than a rule. It is useful to the right wing and their apologists like HoI to pretend that there is some liberal hive mind directing life-altering damage upon innocent ignorant people who made one mistake. Like that "cancelled people" site that purported to have dozens of stories of lives destroyed for a single incident, when even in the handful of cases I knew more about with minimal research, the circumstances turned out to be trumped-up (I use my words carefully) or the end results of long patterns of antagonistic behavior.

You have long advocated for people to have difficult conversations about race without flying off the handle. I wish the same. I too wish accusations of racism could be discussed frankly and honestly, without resorting to exaggeration or strawmanning. Well, try it out. Try not leading off with a bad faith accusation about an offended person just "arbitrarily" deciding they were offended. You acknowledged I was right about my observations on those cancelled people stories. Please consider the way you approached this topic and the way you reacted to a forceful, but observed, criticism.

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23 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Imagine person A decides he his going to assassinate person B. Person A points is rifle and aims at person B and then pulls the trigger. The bullet, however, doesn’t reach person B because a bird suddenly swoops in between them and absorbs the bullet. Now imagine Person C is driving his car one night. Person C is driving the speed limit, is driving appropriately for the current conditions, and exercising an amount of reasonable care that would be expected by a normal prudent person. Suddenly, person D drives out in front of person C’s car unexpectedly and person C slams into Person D’s car. Person D dies as a result of the car crash.

Who here is more morally culpable? Person A or C? Most people  would say person A. But a certain segment of the left, perhaps the majority, seemingly thinks person C is more morally culpable. Their mantra  is that “intentions don’t matter, only impact does” (which is often left vague, unspecified, and very subjective). They apparently have decided to just overturn centuries of ethical thought, with regard to moral blame, and declare intent doesn’t matter and act like no one should make the slightest objection.

The idea that intentions matter in moral philosophy goes at least back to Aristotle’s . Nicomachean Ethics In philosophy, the notion is usually called the Epistemic Condition to Moral Blame. Without getting too technical, the Epistemic Condition generally asserts that one must have some awareness of their wrongful conduct, or should have at least been reasonably aware that their conduct was wrongful before they can rightly receive moral blame.

In American-Anglo legal tradition, the notion of intent as an element of a civil or criminal offence goes back at least to the 12th Century, as the ancient Anglo-Saxons did not recognize intent as element of an offence, though it is not clear whether it was considered a mitigating factor in punishment.

It appears that many on the left don’t understand that neither ethics or the law don’t have a simple binary of “did an act with purpose” or “did not do an act with purpose”, but allow for cases where an actor “should have known”.The epistemic condition can be fulfilled if an actor should have known certain facts before taking an action.

Robin DiAngelo heavily promotes the idea that intentions don’t matter, but only impact does. In her book, she gives two examples of actions that she took that upset Angela her web developer. She then goes on to explain how her intentions didn’t matter and that the only relevant issue was that Angela was “impacted”.

DiAngelo evidently made an off the cuff comment about the hairstyle of one of her assistants , a women of color, to Angela, another woman of color. The second action that DiAngelo did that upset Angela was that DiAngelo didn’t want to fill out a questionnaire that Angela had provided her. Angela used the questionnaire as part of her process in building websites. Angela felt that DiAngelo’s resistance to filling out the questionnaire was a slight against her intelligence. Angela explained that, as a women of color, she often had to justify her intelligence to white people.

In both cases, DiAngelo accepts moral blame for offending Angela. I can accept DiAngelo accepting blame in one case, but really not the other. In the case of the comment about the hair style, it seems to be that an ordinary prudent person would know better about making a comment about an African American women’s hairstyle. A reasonable person, I think, would know that such a comment could be interpreted as being disrespectful towards African American women. I can therefore agree that an apology to Angela was warranted. In short, DiAngelo deserves moral blame (at least some) for her comment. It is on the question of the questionnaire, however, where I dissent. I don’t think any reasonable person would have thought not wanting to fill out a questionnaire would be interpreted by Angela as a slight against her intelligence. And frankly, Angela should have considered there were other explanations for not wanting to fill out the questionnaire. Most people (me included) don’t like filling out paper work as its tedious. Evidently, DiAngelo doesn’t like to fill out paperwork either and tries to avoid it if she can.

DiAngelo justifies dismissing intent mainly because as she says you can’t prove intent. Yet, courts of law have to decide the issue of intent all the time. And I’d submit, in most cases, most people could reasonably divine whether a bad act was done intentionally or not. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.”

The American legal system incorporates the idea of intent into the law, a notion that it inherited from the British legal system, which in turn was likely influenced by western moral philosophy (probably through the Catholic Church) at least from Aristotle. It’s true that in American law there are both criminal and civil offenses where intent doesn’t matter, only impact. They are called strict liability laws. But, under strict liability laws (and they have generated some controversy as to their fairness), the conduct to be avoided is usually reasonably well specified, so an actor knows what to avoid. Speeding is a typical strict liability crime. Any given driver knows he must not speed. The crime of speeding is well specified. But, under DiAngelo’s, and much of the left’s, conception of “strict liability” the “moral crimes” to avoid aren’t usually well specified. This leaves actors uncertain about how conduct they must avoid and seemingly leads to games of “gotcha”. How on earth, could DiAngelo or anyone else, reasonably know that not wanting to fill out a questionnaire would “trigger” somebody. I’d submit, nobody could know. If DiAngelo, and certain quarters of the left want “strict liability moral crimes”, then I’d submit they ought to, at the very least, clearly specify the actions to be avoided and not just leave it to some vague and very subjective “impact” standard. 

If people are going to receive moral blame for doing certain acts, then I think, in fairness, those acts should be fairly well specified. People deserve a reasonable amount of certainty about what they can and cannot do. If I were more cynical (and maybe I should be), I would think the vagueness of the impact standard isn’t a bug, but a feature. It would seem to allow certain sorts of bad actors to invent “crimes” retroactively and change acceptable rules of conduct in a rather arbitrary manner. 

Rather than just outright rejecting intent for assigning moral blame (and one hopes they don’t mean to extend this paradigm to the criminal law generally. They never explain this point, it seems), maybe DiAngelo and her fellow travelers should use a richer analytical framework to judge bad acts. Intent as defined in the Model Penal Code probably would be a good start. Under the MPC, there are four levels of intent. Under the MPC one does not have to purposely intend to cause a bad act to have the necessary scienter or the necessary epistemic condition to be held liable for an offense. In some cases, it is enough that one “should have known” in order to be liable for an offense. Under such an understanding of intent, the “impact only” crowd would have richer system to evaluate certain moral offenses, and wouldn’t be left making the dubious assertion that “intent doesn’t matter”.  Such a system would make DiAngelo, and similarly situated persons, culpable for clumsy remarks about people’s hairstyles, even if their purpose wasn’t to offend. But, it would also protect them from being blindsided by a charge of moral wrongdoing when all the facts and circumstances surrounding their actions couldn’t possibly have been known to them.

In your original example, A is guilty of an attempt to commit murder.  C is guilty of accidental killing.  Any civilised legal system will treat the former far more harshly than the latter. And that kind of civilised legal system will generally do a better job of protecting the interests of the poor and minority groups (who generally come into contact with the criminal justice system far more than the wealthy do) than one that treats intent as being less important than impact.

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53 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Why aren't people on the left asking for changes to the law, particularly criminal laws, if they literally believe their own rhetoric?

And frankly, people should test their ideas against hypotheticals before they decide to deploy them in the real world.

 

And why shouldn't a person be able to defend themselves if they have a legitimate defense? It may not be on the same level as getting a jail sentence. But, in some cases, it can lead to people being shamed, ostracized, reprimanded, or losing their job.

Because no one actually wants to have murder and manslaughter be the same thing.  No one wants you to go to jail for refusing to fill out a survey.  The people who are asking for recognition of these offenses/harm AREN'T asking for draconian consequences.  

99% of the time this issue of "intent doesn't matter" is being brought up from people on the left it is asking for recognition of the smallest actions on an individual level that contribute to greater injustices.  It's not saying that refusing to fill out a survey should be punished just like a lynching should be.  I think the defensiveness comes from making a jump from "lack of intent still causes harm" to "the left is saying these things are the same regardless of intent.". There is a difference.  

I guess I'm just trying to say that a criticism of intent like in the OP isn't at all the same as asking for torts and criminal law to throw intent out the window (and as @Ser Scot A Ellison broke it down, legally 'intent' is more a summation of several different criteria).  I feel like there's a tacit slippery slope argument being made here.

 

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3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Talk to David Shor or Emmanuel Cafferty about that.

Was anyone actually calling for Schor's head, or just saying it was shitty to bring that study up at the time?  Is SDG&E "the left"?  Both of these were overreactions from their respective employers.

I can't remember anyone in the cancel culture threads defending the firing of either of them.  I seriously doubt that DiAngelo would be arguing for Schor or Cafferty to lose their jobs.  

 

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10 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Was anyone actually calling for Schor's head, or just saying it was shitty to bring that study up at the time?  Is SDG&E "the left"?  Both of these were overreactions from their respective employers.

I can't remember anyone in the cancel culture threads defending the firing of either of them.  I seriously doubt that DiAngelo would be arguing for Schor or Cafferty to lose their jobs.  

 

As soon as Schor or Cafferty get accused of making racist remarks or actions, what does the likes of DiAngelo expect from their employers? But even if Schor or Cafferty didn't get fired they still have to deal with moral blame. In the case of Cafferty in particular, that is pretty appalling. The Cafferty case in particular highlights the mindlessness of the "impact only" standard. Evidently, it doesn't matter that Cafferty was just some guy that had his hand out the window after a long day of work. So long as somebody says they were impacted, Cafferty is guilty.

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10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Your case would had been much stronger if you had said you got the information from reading the newspaper, had saw it on a television show, or it was general knowledge in your community. By your own statement, it would appear that you were unaware of the information until it was presented to you at diversity training.

It was diversity training I looked up personally and did. I went out and sought it out. I don't see why that shouldn't be the norm. 

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I have some news for you. The average Jane that works as a mechanic at "Bud's Autoshop" probably didn't get that info at diversity training. The average Joe that works as a pizza delivery driver for "Ron's Pizza" probably didn't get it either. Not everyone works at a major corporation that can pay top dollar for diversity training.

It was on a website, for free. There are a lot of them. 

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

In addition, evidently, Robin DiAngelo, whose supposed to be an expert in these matters, didn't know it either.

But, even if I were to grant you that it was common knowledge, that the average person should know, there is still the issue of whether there is ever a fact pattern where a person couldn't have reasonably known their actions were offensive. I think if your answer is never, that is rather untenable.

I am saying that it does not matter in the least. Whether or not someone intended to cause harm does not matter when you're talking about saying sorry and learning as the guide. Now, if a person keeps doing it, keeps offending another person or group of people, can't learn - THEN you might talk about intent mattering and escalating further, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about having a growth mindset, learning from your mistake, being sincere in your apology and moving on. 

And we're talking about a place where someone can actually say that they were hurt by your actions and it not be a career ending thing for them, which is the norm. 

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Not quite. The general thrust of my argument is that for moral culpability to attach, there must be some bad state of mind ie the Epistemic Condition must be fulfilled.

If I accidentally hit a person with my fist, I say sorry. Even if I didn't mean to. And I try to figure out why it happened and take precautions not to do it again. And if I keep doing it? Yeah, it's probably a problem for me, not them. It's really not that hard.

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Most tort laws require some level of intent.

Scot already covered this. 

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Sounds like a bad spiel from 1990s "Tough On Crime" conservatism. Why do you care about the rights of the accused? You're not pro-crime are you? Why do you care about the accused being treated fairly? Or how about its early 2000s version. Why do you care if alleged terrorists receive a fair trial? You're. not pro terrorism are you?

I'm saying framing it as accused and accuser is bullshit and I reject that framing entirely. The biggest problem here is that you're equating the potential harm caused by the person doing things that suck with the person receiving it. I say fuck that noise, and that it's a lot easier to simply de-escalate earlier, understand that you will make mistakes and it is on you to learn from them, and encourage you to do so - and also own that you caused harm. This is fucking kindergarten level. 

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

If you want to get down in the dirt, I have no problem doing it. Will do it all day, doesn't bother me one iota. We can sit around all day speculating on each others evil motives. I can be a total slimemesiter if that is where you want to go with this.

K, be less slimy I guess

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

What if the driver was driving the speed limit, was being prudent in his driving, and the pedestrian just runs out in front of his car, at the last minute? Why does the driver get the legal liability and moral blame? We can certainly sympathize with the pedestrian's plight, but that doesn't mean the driver automatically becomes blameworthy. 

It is a fact that they hit the person with their car in that case. They have a duty as a reasonable human being to ensure that the person is okay and taken care of, because it is the right thing to do. If they do it once? That sucks. If they do it a few times? I think we can label them as a bad driver and probably revoke their license until they learn why they keep hitting pedestrians. 

10 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

The problem with labeling people moral bad actors by causation alone, without finding they should have been aware of the possible bad consequences of their actions, is that we are labeling people as doing bad, making a moral judgements about them, and sometimes punishing them, simply because they were unlucky.

I think this is the real problem - that you think that once you are labelled a moral bad actor (whatever the fuck that is) it is something that never, ever goes away and you are cast out into the wilderness to fight dogs for scraps of civilization. That there is some idea that once you make a mistake you are forever tarnished. Don't look at it that way, look at it as a growth opportunity and actually grow from it. Own that you caused harm and that you are sorry, and then try and make it better. If they still are not satisfied, that might be  something else to work on too. 

Until you do that, you're basically saying that being harmed is significantly less, well, harmful than being accused of harming someone, and that is flat out bullshit oppressive garbage. 

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9 hours ago, ants said:

Um, in the example the black woman is asking the white person to fill out the survey, and getting offended when they didn't.  The complete opposite of the example you keep bringing up that nobody has argued against.  

So to repeat what's been asked already; why is it reasonable to expect that turning down filling out a survey will make the person asking for the survey to be filled out feel that their intelligence has been slighted? 

Ah, sorry, I misread it. It's still coming from the same principles, and it's still a problem that can be solved by simply saying sorry and doing better.

9 hours ago, ants said:

Also, on the pedestrian case, be careful when applying fault rules about motor insurance.  It is often used as a tool to provide compensation to people hurt as a result of the system, rather than necessarily due to specific fault.  

And that's kind of the point - we can and often do separate out 'fault' from 'restitution', and the two are not wedded. @OldGimletEye seems to believe that the only way one should be provided any kind of restitution is if you can prove fault with mens rea, whereas I especially don't see it that way when it comes to work relationships and intercultural values intersecting. And of the two, it's FAR more important to deal with the harm than it is to deal with the fault - and that lies very much on the person who caused the harm. 

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5 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

As soon as Schor or Cafferty get accused of making racist remarks or actions, what does the likes of DiAngelo expect from their employers? But even if Schor or Cafferty didn't get fired they still have to deal with moral blame. In the case of Cafferty in particular, that is pretty appalling. The Cafferty case in particular highlights the mindlessness of the "impact only" standard. Evidently, it doesn't matter that Cafferty was just some guy that had his hand out the window after a long day of work. So long as somebody says they were impacted, Cafferty is guilty.

I agree that neither of them should have been fired.  

You've managed to find a couple examples of the efforts to combat decades of oppression, discrimination, and racism goin a little too far.  You're going to break a couple eggs to  make a cake.  I'll consider those two examples to be minor casualties of friendly fire in a broader struggle.

re: moral culpability.... who gives a shit?  pretty much anything you do, someone can view as morally wrong or right.  I guess it would suck to be thought to have done something racist if you really hadn't.  But if you know you haven't, what's the problem?  Neither Cafferty nor Schor have been ostracized by their communities.  Schor was quickly hired elsewhere.  Is there anyone out there labelling them racists?

  If anything people have rallied around Cafferty's go fund me, the accuser recanted after hearing the explanations, and SDG&E explained that he was terminated for reasons beyond (though likely unearthed by) the substance of the complaint.  

I just don't understand the framing of the entire argument, I guess.  Even DiAngelo doesn't seem to be arguing that intent never matters, but that in the context of people being inadvertantly harmed, it very truly does not prevent the harm from happening.

If you want to talk hypotheticals Kal's example of accidentally hitting someone is a perfect one.  You hit someone by accident you apologize.  

A couple years ago I left my truck idling at a diesel pump and it popped out of park into reverse, rolled across the street and crashed through the entry way of the local Catholic church.  I didn't mean to do it but I sure as hell paid for it, and I'm certainly not going to argue that the doors didn't actually break and no damage was caused just because I didn't want to break them.

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Just now, larrytheimp said:

If you want to talk hypotheticals Karl's example of accidentally hitting someone is a perfect one.  You hit someone by accident you apologize.  

 

Karl's a great guy, love him

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8 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Here's another very recent real world example.  Pulse oximeters don't give as accurate readings on people with dark skin as they do on people with white skin. 

https://www.statnews.com/category/health/

Turns out they weren't tested as thoroughly on people of color.  This has likely caused tons of harm to people during this pandemic alone.

Should some random nurse  or doctor who took a reading be held criminally, morally, or monetarily liable?  Of course not, and I doubt many would make that argument.  But should the device manufacturer?  That's more of a grey area, sounds like a pretty clear breach of ethics of in testing, whether it's illegal or not.  I'd argue that they should be, or at least lead some kind of charge to change testing protocols industry wide and rectify what they've done.

 

Welcome to the club? Do you know that many drugs were never tested on women because "hormonal fluctuations" are too confusing for the drug companies, or would make test results "too uneven"? That's more than 50% of the population. Ooops, hey look, that heart medication isn't helping women...

Should doctors be held liable for prescribing a medication for a woman that wasn't widely tested on women?

That's an interesting looking website, but the link only brings me to a home page with no visible link to the story you refer to. However, here's a quote from the NYT story:

Quote

The analysis, which was based on 1,333 white patients and 276 Black patients hospitalized at the University of Michigan earlier this year, used a hospital-based pulse oximeter and compared it to the gold-standard test for measuring oxygen saturation, called an arterial blood gas test. The study found that pulse oximetry overestimated oxygen levels 3.6 percent of the time in white patients, but got it wrong nearly 12 percent of the time in Black patients. Usually the pulse oximetry reading was overstated by a few percentage points.

Researchers suspect that the inaccurate readings may be occurring because of the way the light is absorbed by darker skin pigments.

A normal reading on a pulse oximeter typically ranges from 96 to 100. Because patients with Covid-19 can quietly develop low oxygen levels without realizing it, patients are advised to monitor their oxygen levels at home. If the oxygen reading dips to 93 or 92, patients are advised to check in with their doctor. But if, as the Michigan study suggested, a pulse oximeter sometimes overstates the oxygen saturation level, the worry is that a patient with dark skin who is self-monitoring at home might delay getting care if the monitor incorrectly reads 94 or 95, when the patient’s actual oxygen level might be 92 or 93.

The solution, Dr. Sjoding said, is for patients to know their baseline reading on the home device and to pay attention to downward trends. If you’re sick at home with Covid-19 and your normal reading drops by four points or more, that’s a good reason to call your doctor.

An oximeter is a helpful tool, but no one expects it to be 100% accurate. It's a little clip-on-you-finger thing, not an elaborate, expensive piece of medical equipment that's highly accurate, so no, I don't think it is unethical to use it. The alternative is to be in hospital hooked up to a machine.

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Welcome to the club? Do you know that many drugs were never tested on women because "hormonal fluctuations" are too confusing for the drug companies, or would make test results "too uneven"? That's more than 50% of the population. Ooops, hey look, that heart medication isn't helping women...

Should doctors be held liable for prescribing a medication for a woman that wasn't widely tested on women?

That's an interesting looking website, but the link only brings me to a home page with no visible link to the story you refer to. However, here's a quote from the NYT story:

An oximeter is a helpful tool, but no one expects it to be 100% accurate. It's a little clip-on-you-finger thing, not an elaborate, expensive piece of medical equipment that's highly accurate, so no, I don't think it is unethical to use it. The alternative is to be in hospital hooked up to a machine.

If your take-away is that because medicine has a long history of treating women terribly so who cares, I don't know what to tell you.  I gave that example because I just read about it.  

Where did I say doctors should be held liable?

Pharma companies and device manufacturers absolutely have an obligation to test their products for adverse effects on whomever they can.  If they aren't testing them on women that's fucked up, and doesn't justify treating black people poorly.

We could also look at how black patients and especially black women are prescribed pain medications at lower rates than everyone else and are less likely to be believed about the pain they are in.  These things can all be bad 

 

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On 2/11/2021 at 5:52 AM, OldGimletEye said:

Who here is more morally culpable? Person A or C? Most people  would say person A. But a certain segment of the left, perhaps the majority, seemingly thinks person C is more morally culpable. Their mantra  is that “intentions don’t matter, only impact does” (which is often left vague, unspecified, and very subjective). They apparently have decided to just overturn centuries of ethical thought, with regard to moral blame, and declare intent doesn’t matter and act like no one should make the slightest objection.

I dunno who in the left you are hanging with, irl or online, but there is no way anyone I know, left or right, thinks C is in any way morally at fault for the death of D. And I know irl actual white guilt privileged communists, so you know, can't get much more left or woke than that. And A is 100% guilty of attempted murder of B and morally culpable. Though if there is a crime related to the shooting of the bird I'm not sure if A is guilty of that crime unless you have a statute which stipulates the incidental commission of something that is unlawful while in the act of intentionally carrying out a different crime is still a crime subject to the full penalties of that incidental act. Like if you are committing an armed robbery of a bank, and you shoot into the ceiling to get people's attention but in doing so dislodge a heavy light fixture, like a chandelier and it falls one someone and kills them, then you should be convicted of manslaughter as well as armed robbery. 

 

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3 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I just don't understand the framing of the entire argument, I guess.  Even DiAngelo doesn't seem to be arguing that intent never matters, but that in the context of people being inadvertantly harmed, it very truly does not prevent the harm from happening.

Yeah this is what I don't get about the whole thread/OP.  While I haven't read her work extensively, my understanding of the main thrust of her point on these matters is that it is uncomfortable for most white people to confront the effects of implicit racial bias (that's pretty much the subtitle of White Fragility).  Accordingly, they get defensive and rely on the crutch that "they didn't mean it" - which curbs any discussion that lead to progress in understanding and awareness.  Which is the whole problem.

Seems to me this thread's thesis is one big depiction of white fragility's response to White Fragility.  I don't know why we're at once talking about legal ethics, moral philosophy (two things barely anybody here is an authority on), and the case of David Shor.  From my understanding, DiAngelo is not talking about legal ramifications AT ALL, and the moral "culpability" is simply to recognize how implicit bias can materialize and hurt others - in an effort to avoid in the future.  I don't see why anyone has a big problem with that.

As for Shor and Cafferty, yes, what happened to them was wrong.  But David Shor will be just fine - if anything the whole thing helped his career.  And plenty of people on the "left" came to his defense as well.  It's not like he's blackballed or his research is discounted now.  In fact, within the professional community, it's probably the opposite.  As for Cafferty, I don't know much about it, but if what larry said is true, he'll be alright as well. 

This seems a whole lot of outrage on one aspect of DiAngelo's work while ignoring her central thesis about how systemic and institutional racism is perpetuated.  More importantly, it seems a misguided interpretation of her work to conflate her arguments with legal ethics/ramifications instead of doing what her research is all about - discussing and confronting racism.

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To cut through a lot of this, isn’t this discussion really someone saying:

1.  I do not intend to do wrong, and I do not want to do wrong.

2.  I want clear rules as to what constitutes “right and wrong” so that I can then act accordingly.

3.  I want the rules to be of general application.

And someone else saying back:

1.  Despite your best intentions you are doing wrong to me, and you should do better.

2.  Your rule making does not take into account my lived experience and so you should talk to me first when making your rules.

3.  We very much agree, but see point 2?

So isn’t the real answer that a dialogue should be occurring between the two someones where maybe the first someone might do a lot of listening, the second someone might do a little listening, and the first someone should apply some empathy and the second someone should, maybe if justified, extend some grace?  I mean, I guess I’m not really seeing the ultimate issue.  If the real discussion is whether forgiveness and grace should be granted, then the answer is yes, in response to gratitude.

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