Eubulides wrote:
>
> Take this rhetorical strategy to it's limits and no one was responsible for the
> Holocaust or the conquest of North America, the Rape[s] of Nanking or Abu Ghraib
> or [insert horrible human tragedy here]......Of course, if we're just
> neurochemical automata, why give a fuck about politics and the like at all?
Admitted, the rhetoric is somewhat sloppily composed -- but I would argue that we can oppose all the listed horrors above without invoking any doctrine of responsibility; perhaps without even invoking the word in any of its neutral senses (which it does have), since English is richly supplied with synonyms & paraphrases. (The reference to "just neurochemicals" is beside the point.) I want torture to stop -- but it's incidental to me whether someone is made morally responsible for its occurrence. Swift writes somplace that he was glad the hawk that had been raiding his chickens had been shot, though that was nothing against the hawk.
And as a matter of fact, concepts of responsibility have probably interfered with the struggle against atrocities (including Abu Ghraib) in Iraq. The responsibility of a few enlisted personnel replaced the the question of state policy.
And most of those "horrible human tragedies" pale into insignificnce when compared against the ongoing daily horror of prison systems, sexual oppression, social exclusion of reprobates, etc.
Carrol