The Sevenoaks School Journal of Philosophy - Volume Two APORIAii_digitalversion - Volume 2 | Page 12

9
C IRCUMSTANCES AND C ONSEQUENCES
their penalties, based on outcomes, should be different. An explanation of this
dichotomy will be had before arguing for the case of future deterrence and pre-
vention of harm.
I
The first issue to analyse is the context of these two drivers before coming to a
conclusion of the level of culpability assigned to each driver. Moreover, I will
look into the relationship between moral culpability and legal culpability to
draw a distinction between the two drivers’ actions. There are a few things to
consider: alcohol tolerance and mental awareness (factors of constitution), loca-
tion (factors of circumstance) along with intention and effect (factors of conse-
quence). 1 This will be an analysis of what we call the Control Principle. 2
The first issue: tolerance and the drivers’ abilities to act under influence
i.e. their mental awareness. We can recognise that both drivers are over the le-
gal limit of Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) which rests at 0.08. 3 This raises
the question: should the comparison of tolerance matter at this point? One
could argue that a lower concentration of alcohol (0.09) does not hinder the
ability to drive as much as the higher concentration (0.29). So if we were to
compare the two drivers, driving in the same circumstance, the driver with a
higher BAC would cause more trouble, possibly by swerving onto the walking
paths and killing even more pedestrians. The fact that the woman is largely over
has an impact on our current tiered system, the higher the BAC the harsher the
fine. Yet, it should not matter in this case as both drivers’ judgements for driving
are already heavily reduced. We cannot compare, a posteriori, their abilities to
drive but we can compare, more empirically so, their levels above a certain limit.
Principally, in Kantian manner, it would be categorically incorrect to state that
one is more culpable than another as the act that has been committed is wrong
in itself. Thus we state that they should be of equal culpability.
The other contentious issue is if they are equally morally culpable 4 or if
we are to assign more blame to one than the other. This is based upon an analy-
sis of the circumstance of location and intention of the two drivers and is dis-
tinct from the outcomes of their actions. 5 To understand how we equate this idea
of culpability, I will draw a distinction between wrongdoing and harm. Often