Topics Ethics

Question I'm sure such situations are familiar to many people, especially those who like to think they consider problems from several angles. Bob does something morally reprehensible (cheats on his spouse, kills someone, vandalizes a home, etc). Jane and Mary are discussing the situation, and Jane offers an explanation as to why Bob committed the act (he was sexually frustrated, he was paranoid and thought the victim was watching him, he learned it from his peers). Mary is then upset or angry that Jane would justify Bob's actions. This often happens even though Jane is not actually justifying anything, and agrees that Bob did something wrong - she's only trying to speculate on why he's done what he's done, for curiosity's sake or to help convince any victims that it's not their fault. Yet it would seem that Mary is assuming an explanation for a morally reprehensible action is the same as (or implies) a justification of that action. That, then, is my question: isn't it easy to disentangle explanations of actions from justifications of the selfsame actions, or is it actually harder than it looks? What is the relationship between explaining an act and justifying an act?

Accepted:
October 21, 2010

Comments

I think your question is too broad. There is no general answer here, because much depends on what explanation is being offered for the behavior. An explanation of an action may justify it, may excuse it, may be a reason to forgive it, or may be none of the above.

To justify an action is usually understood as claiming that the action was justified and therefore was not morally reprehensible after all. Using your example, perhaps Bob and his wife had agreed on a divorce and, while waiting for the divorce to become final, also agreed that it would be alright for them to date others. In this sort of situation, one could plausibly maintain that Bob does nothing wrong when he has an affair that he does not disclose to his wife. Or, to use another of your examples, perhaps the person Bob killed was in the midst of an attack upon an innocent person which Bob could stop only by shooting the attacker.

The "none of the above" case at the other end of the spectrum is illustrated by explanations that confirm the negative moral assessment. We learn that the person Bob killed was his childless aunt and that he killed her in order to inherit her money. Explanations of this sort do not detract from the initial negative moral assessment in any way -- in fact, they may aggravate this assessment by revealing premeditation and crudely selfish motives.

The middle cases of excusing and forgiving are really closer to what (I think) you are interested in. These include cases of two kinds. First, there are cases where the explanation reveals that someone was acting out of character. For example, through careless driving near a primary school Bob kills a child; but his carelessness is a unique occurrence explained by the fact that his doctor had just told him that he has cancer and only a few more months to live. Here the explanation is a reason to excuse and a reason to forgive. Second, there are cases where factors outside of someone's control are adduced to explain how he came to be the person he is. For example, being a heavy drinker, Bob often gets into fights and has finally wound up killing someone; but his drinking problem and his temper are explained by the fact that he grew up with only his father who also was a heavy drinker and regularly beat him severely.

Cases of this last kind are probably philosophically the most interesting. To stick with the example, we may find that 80 percent of people who grow up the way Bob did end up being heavy drinkers inclined to get into physical fights. Should we then say that Bob bears only a 20% share of responsibility for his conduct? (And what does this even mean?) Or should we say that, like the 20% of people who overcame his sort of upbringing, he could and should have avoided those vices? What if additional details about his upbringing or chromosomes emerge that show him to fall within a smaller group all of whose members are into drinking and fighting? Must we then excuse his conduct? This would seem perverse by discouraging groups to change their behavior: we would then seem to be committed to excusing the failure of rich people to make any contribution to charity, say, so long their failure is universal (none of the rich give anything). To avoid this perverse conclusion, we should say: it does not follow from the fact that something isn't done within a certain group that it is somehow too difficult for its members to do it and that they should therefore be excused for failing to do it.

But then, what freedom do persons have to choose or to create their own character, and how responsible are they for any lack in their understanding of their moral responsibilities and for any lack in their commitment to live up to these responsibilities? These questions, much discussed also in the theory and practice of the criminal law, are among the very hardest in philosophy.