"There are several kinds of case in which an action can be described as being wrong but not culpably wrong. Sometimes people accidentally perform actions that harm others, as when an unlucky driver skids off the road and hits a pedestrian. In cases in which the person who accidentally performs the harmful action does so with culpable negligence, we hold that person morally responsible for inflicting the harm. In cases in which the agent was not being reckless or unduly careless, we do not hold the agent morally responsible for the harm that has been inflicted. Even though we might say that what that unlucky driver did was wrong, in the broader sense that there are decisive moral reasons against hitting pedestrians with your car, we excuse the unlucky driver who accidentally but non-negligently inflicted this harm. Similarly, sometimes people deliberately perform actions that unforeseeably tum out to have bad consequences. For instance, a doctor might vaccinate a child who subsequently is debilitated by the vaccine. In such cases there is sense in which the doctor has chosen incorrectly and has done the wrong thing, although she was not to know this at the time of choosing. Yet we should not hold people morally responsible for unforeseeably tragic mistakes. Nor should we hold people morally responsible for harming others when they inflict those harms only because they are subject to extreme threats or coercion. In such cases we might even say that the agents did not freely choose to do what they did. While their actions were morally wrong in the broader sense that there are decisive moral reasons against harming innocent people, the coerced wrongdoers have a non-justifying excuse for having acted as they did, and hence they are not morally culpable for having performed those actions.
I think the judgement that an action is evil includes the judgement that the action is culpably wrong. If an action is evil then there are decisive moral reasons against performing that action, and the agent can properly be held morally responsible for having performed that action. An action is evil only if it is a moral discredit to the agent, and the agent is blameworthy for having performed that action. If a terribly harmful action is performed by non-negligent accident, then we would say that it was a tragic event, but not that it is an evil action. If someone performed a terribly harmful action but has a good excuse for having done so, then it would be unfair and misleading to say that her action was evil (cf. Calder 2013, 187). This condition is built into many of the recent philosophical accounts of the concept of evil. For instance, Morton believes that harmful actions that result from mere “incompetence or miscalculation” do not count as evil (Morton 2004, 16, 61). Singer claims that through “accident or misadventure one can do something wrong or had, even terrible, but not something evil” (Singer 2004, 190). Kekes agrees, maintaining that, if an action is evil, it must lack an excuse (Kekes 2005, 1; but cf. Kekes 2005, 207)."
--- Evil: A Philosophical Investigation / Luke Russell
The Definition of Lying and Deception (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
"The most widely accepted definition of lying is the following: “A lie is a statement made by one who does not believe it with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it” (Isenberg 1973, 248) (cf. “[lying is] making a statement believed to be false, with the intention of getting another to accept it as true” (Primoratz 1984, 54n2)). This definition does not specify the addressee, however. It may be restated as follows:
(L1) To lie =df to make a believed-false statement to another person with the intention that the other person believe that statement to be true.
L1 is the traditional definition of lying. According to L1, there are at least four necessary conditions for lying. First, lying requires that a person make a statement (statement condition). Second, lying requires that the person believe the statement to be false; that is, lying requires that the statement be untruthful (untruthfulness condition). Third, lying requires that the untruthful statement be made to another person (addressee condition). Fourth, lying requires that the person intend that that other person believe the untruthful statement to be true (intention to deceive the addressee condition)."
A diehard Workers Party supporter claimed that Vivian Balakrishnan being inaccurate about TraceTogether was just as wrong as the Workers Party repeatedly and deliberately lying (from other diehard supporters' copes, this is not an isolated sentiment).
Presumably this means that manslaughter is just as bad as murder.
