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[Chapter 13.] The Nature of the Categories of Responsibility 266. The categories ofresponsibility and freedom belong to the third stage of the judgment. They express the quality or value of the completed judgment. They do not express the tension. The two are logically correlative. Any system may be considered from the side oforganism or oforgans. From the standpoint ofthe former it is freedom; from that offunctioning of organs in the organism, it is responsibility. In other terms, ifwe take the act which is the completed judgment considered as the unity of the self or organization of the situation, freedom comes into play; if we consider the factors which enter into that organization , the category of responsibility comes into play. 267. No fact has any claim to set itself up as an isolated fact; it is open to new discoveries. The new truth transforms or absorbs what has gone before. The conclusion of a syllogism is never drawn from the premises, except psychologically . The conclusion is the premises organized. Obviously, in inductive reasoning , the facts are tentative until the generalization is gotten. The more we develop the theory, e.g., evolution, the more the facts assume new aspects for us. The premises are restated and transformed in the new truth we call the conclusion . Therefore, they can never be isolated, but must always be held open to the transformation. 268. The category of responsibility simply expresses the fact that every activity is an organic part of a whole. Psychologically and morally, every act and impulse that has gone into the completed activity has surrendered its individuality to the organic completed whole. Every member is then responsible to the system. Every act is related organically to other acts. It is, psychologically, a coordination . From the fact that it is a system, it means freedom. 269. In what sense can it be said that a man is responsible? There is general confusion between responsibility for an act and responsibility in an act. Responsibility for an act means that a person must stand [up for] the consequences ofhis acts. There is then no doubt about his responsibility. A blind man is thus responsible for his blindness because he has got to recognize it as an organic element in his activities. One has to take the consequences because it is a part ofhimself. This is simply recognition that any particular act is a part ofthe whole self. The responsibility must be recognized either positively or negatively. The only sense in which it is true that a man is not responsible for his blindness is that he did not cause it. 270. Is this category of responsibility identical with the category ofcausation? 95 Lectures on the Logic ofEthics Either responsibility means being an element in an organic whole or it means causation. This causation category makes a separation in the self. Supposing the self did not cause the blindness. This implies that the self and the blindness are the same thing. The same is true ofthe selfand the tendency to steal. Is not such a trait a part ofthe self? Then the category ofcausation has no application here. 271. When people in society hold each other responsible for certain acts, what do they mean by it? What does liability mean? Compare O. W. Holmes, Jr., Common Law.36 The criterion is the man's actual or presumed ability to foresee the consequences ofhis act. The whole matter is thrown back on his ability to foresee , not on causation. If rubbish were thrown from a roof and injured a man in the back yard which he ought not to be in, the man on the roof would not be liable. If the same thing [i.e., one man injures another1happened on the street he would be held liable. If the insane man is excused, it is not because there was more causation in his act than in any other act, but because he was not able to relate his act to the consequences, to relate the impulses on which he acted to his other impulses. The same is true of children on account of immaturity that is true of others on account of abnormality. 272. It falls back on our ability to analyze for ourselves the state of mind in which the person was when he did the act. Psychological insight is not yet so far advanced but that we have to leave a certain margin for the individual. It is not necessary to prove that a...

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