----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>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.
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Quite, and of course state policy simply emerges behind the backs of the agents of the state...Who on this list hasn't questioned state policy and the people who've made it what it is?
>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
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And of course the behaviors that generate and sustain those daily horrors once again simply emerge behind the backs of citizens. You know, like every firm and agent is a price taker in the old neoclassical economics........