Responsibility

What is responsibility and when does it apply?

A common understanding of what “responsibility” refers to, might be; the perceived obligation to perform a task. 1 technical definition is; “the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.” These definitions seem fairly similar and understandable, but under which situations that this should apply, is a more complicated question to answer. 

This concept seems similar to the concept of “deserving”, which I questioned in more detail, in a post from over a yr ago; Served, but not Deserved. It seems similar in the way that it seems that the concept should be applicable, if there has been an agreement between the individual appointed for “responsibility” or Deserving”, and someone else. These situations, involving an obvious agreement, could be considered contextual responsibilities. But in a situation without that agreement, it is more difficult to say, and questionable whether applicability is opinionated and subjective, or if there is any objective responsibilities, by default, for some life situations. 

If there were default responsibilities, it seems likely that these obligations would be fairly well known and agreed upon by almost everyone, otherwise the person being “responsible” would be unaware of it. If someone is unaware of something that they should do, it makes the concept irrational in effectivity. An idealism of an insinuation that someone should do something (based on the situation), which is well known and agreed upon, is basically the concept of ethics or morals. I explained what seems to make up the components of morals, in a post from about 8 months ago; Mutual Morality. This would be different from contextual responsibilities, since applicability of responsibility in this case, involves potential opinion and disagreement, so could be considered “moral responsibilities”. These are more vague in determining, and have a significant degree of variability, in a multitude of circumstances involving many potential differing factors in life. Moral responsibilities could possibly fit into the category of contextual, if someone has stated agreement to a certain aspect of morals, but likely in a lot of situations, agreement won't be so clear. 

For either type of responsibility, awareness should be relevant, to apply rationally fair accountability. Besides awareness of a particular responsibility itself, awareness of all the effects of the individual’s actions should be relevant. If someone was not aware that their actions caused certain effects of a situation, then it seems rational that accountability for responsibility would not be fair. Specific awareness of effects caused by actions, is a complex concept in itself, which makes it difficult to accurately determine potential accountability, as I further explained in a post from 1+ yr ago; Blame by Consciousness. But despite the difficulty of calculation, and assuming an approximate awareness of effects from actions, it seems someone could be responsible, if they were aware of effects, even if they were side-effects. If someone had an alternate main intention by their actions, yet knowingly caused effects regarding something else, it seems they would still be responsible. 

Whether it’s more technical, specifically agreed upon, and contextual, or more potentially subjective, idealistic, and moral, awareness of the effects (even if not the main intention) that your actions cause, seems to be key, for; Responsibility.