Responsibility

Green: You are right. To blow up our fat friend, even to save our own lives, would be murder. It would be the direct killing of an innocent man. The immediate effect of setting off the dynamite would be his deaht. We would be responsible for his death.

White: We could be responsible for causing his death without being morally responsible for doing something wrong.

Green: But surely if we knowingly and willingly do the action that causes his death we are morally responsible for the death?

White: Well, we need not have chosen to do it. We would then neither cause his death nor bear any moral responsibility for it. But if we do the action that causes his death we are morally responsible for his death insofar as we need not have done the action, but we are not necessarily responsible for doing wrong.

Green: I can see that if death rarely, if ever, resulted from such an action a person would not necessarily be guilty of doing wrong. But we know that the dynamite will certainly kill him.

White: Even in that case, a person need not necessarily be morally responsible for doing wrong, that is, be guilty of doing wrong.

Green: I can agree that if, for example, I choose to learn the computer, I know that I will inevitably make mistakes, which I will not make if I do not learn the computer. Certainly one does not do moral evil by unintentionally making mistakes on the computer. But we must be serious. We are talking about killing our fat friend.