Moral Responsibility for Natural Disasters

• Authors: Vilius Dranseika
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

My aim in this paper is to explore the idea of human moral responsibility for (the outcomes) of natural disasters. First, I discuss the claim that there is often a human causal contribution to negative outcomes of even such paradigmatic natural disasters as earthquakes, typhoons, and volcano eruptions. Second, I attempt to move away from discussions attributing human causal responsibility to discussions attributing human moral responsibility for such outcomes (and to the obstacles to such attributions). I suggest that in most (perhaps even all) cases of moral responsibility for the outcomes of natural disasters moral responsibility is grounded in culpable negligence, including culpable failure to prevent the side-effects of our actions or omissions.

Keywords

EN

natural disasters; moral responsibility; causality; disaster bioethics

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 73-79

Dates

published

2016-01-01

online

2015-12-30

Contributors

author

Vilius Dranseika

• Department of Logic and History of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius University, Universiteto Str. 9, Vilnius 01513, Lithuania

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/humaff-2016-0009