Open AccessGuilty of not doing that!
Author(s) -
Marco Mazzocca
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
bratislava law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2644-6359
pISSN - 2585-7088
DOI - 10.46282/blr.2020.4.2.185
Subject(s) - blame , event (particle physics) , interpretation (philosophy) , epistemology , simple (philosophy) , psychology , point (geometry) , causation , social psychology , philosophy , mathematics , linguistics , physics , geometry , quantum mechanics
Since ancient times, many legal constructions regarding blame or responsibility require subjects to be deemed accountable for their actions as well as for their omissions. The primary purpose of this work is to account for some legal and philosophical issues regarding the so-called negative events (i.e., events that have not occurred) through the development of two simple ideas. The first idea is to consider that, in most cases, a negative event is simply a normal positive event described negatively. The other idea is to distinguish the causal explanations of an event from the causal reports of an event. In this sense, it is shown how these two ideas not only clarify some fundamental philosophical issues, but they are also an excellent starting point for the interpretation and the application of some legal rules concerning omission.