En contra del análisis evidencial de liability

VENEZIA, LUCIANO; RIVERA LÓPEZ, EDUARDO

Buenos Aires

Otro; Coloquio SADAF 2021: Desarrollos actuales del análisis filosófico; 2021

Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico

Michael Zimmerman and Bas van der Vossen argue that the notion of liability to defensive harm should be understood in evidence-relative rather than in fact-relative terms. Zimmerman discusses a simple case involving an aggressor who is attempting to kill a victim and who is defensively killed by her. That the aggressor is liable to suffer the harm of death, he submits, can only be maintained if one adopts the evidence-relative view of liability. For his part, Van der Vossen analyzes a variation of Frank Jackson?s famous drug example that involves an aggressor who is seemingly attempting to kill a victim and who is killed by her in putative self-defense. He argues that the putative aggressor is liable to defensive killing by the putative victim, which is a verdict that supports the evidence-relative view only.We show that both Zimmerman?s and Van der Vossen?s attempts to ground the evidence-relative view of liability to defensive harm fail. We also argue that the notion of liability to defensive harm should be construed in fact-relative terms only. This, however, does not mean that the notion of permissibility should necessarily be understood in such a way. So, we briefly explore whether the evidence-relative view of this notion may be plausible in some defensive contexts.