I came across a situation discussing moral responsibility that I thought would be interesting to talk about. Here is the situation:
A man is sitting in his living room reading a book and enjoying his evening. It is at that point that he hears something across the street, he looks up from hi book and notices a man being beaten and mugged.
His first thoguht is whether he should help, he knows that it would not be a good idea to try to intervene on his own, the attaker is big and could have a weapon, he would be doing nothing but getting hurt if he stepped in.
He then considers calling the police. He looks at the time and realizes that it is late, if he calls the police he'll be up all night and considering he has an early appointment he decides that it wouldn't be worth it to call the police for him. At that point he decides to disregard what is happening and returns to reading his book.
One thing that he did not realize though, was that moments before he heard the sound there was a problem at the phone company; all of the phones in the city were not working. Had he decided to call the police he would not have been able to get ahold of them since the phones were all dead.
Now here is the question:
Is this man responsible for not calling the police? if you can, say why you think he is or is not responsible; and if you think he is not, is he responsible for something else?
I will put in my view after a few people have posted so as not to sway anyone's decision
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