Chapter 3: responsibility

Most people know the basic definition of responsibility but since interpretation can be different should
there be a guideline that determines the responsibility. The responsibility can be analyzed from two
different perspectives, which are forward-looking and backward-looking. Forward-looking is
determining the responsibility before an action while backward-looking (accountability) is determining
the responsibility afterwards.

Three sub definitions will provide a guideline to determine who is responsible, named: “freedom to”,
“freedom from” and “impact”. These definitions will be used to determine the responsibly between
different parties and will be expressed in a “matter of degree”.

The freedom to is used to determine if the involved party can be responsible for a specific event based
on “ability to choose” and “knowledge”. Some people may not be able to make rational decisions and
thus should be determined if they can be responsible. Knowledge is both awareness and
competence/ability. If someone is not aware of a situation, is it harder for that person to do something
about it. If you’re aware of a problem but you are not competent enough the do something about it,
it might not be your responsibility to do something. Freedom to can be used in both forward- and
backward-looking responsibility.

Freedom from defines how free an individual is to make a specific choice. In most situations are there
external influences that affect someone’s decision making ability. These influences can have a large
effect such as a threat, but there are also other factors that have different effects. Nevertheless, can
be said that the responsibly is less overall, when the amount of external pressure increases. This is
both true for forward- and backward-looking responsibility.

Impact is backward-looking and there should be determined if someone can be blamed based on the
direct and indirect impact. Direct impact are actions that follow based on the current situation. Where
indirect impact could be, what can be done to prevent this from happening the next time.

One other difference is the legal and moral responsibility. Something might be legally (by law) correct
but morally (by the general public) unethical. Overall, can be said that there are many factors that
determine the responsibility. Using guidelines can a matter of degree be determined that spreads the
responsibility over the individuals involved.