I think the point is while one may be factual in mentioning parts of the toxicology report, the real concern is what motivates such a focus on such facts if they are indeed insignificant in the cause of Floyd's death. Basically one can be speaking about true things while it is used to reinforce false beliefs which give a particular significance to those facts.
To help illustrate, here's Zizek on the reaction after the natural disaster in New Oreleans.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-subject-supposed-to-loot-and-rapeAnd exactly the same goes for the looting in New Orleans: Even if all the reports on violence and rapes had proven to be factually true, the stories circulating about them would still be “pathological” and racist, since what motivated these stories were not facts, but racist prejudices, the satisfaction felt by those who would be able to say: “You see, Blacks really are like that, violent barbarians under the thin layer of civilization!” In other words, we would be dealing with what could be called lying in the guise of truth: Even if what I am saying is factually true, the motives that make me say it are false.
Or the same structural relaton of a pathology when it comes to Lacans example of the jealous husband.
[URL]https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/activities/the-jealous-husband-or-why-conspiracy-theorists-are-always-wrong-even-when-they-are-right(9e9c6a90-3ec6-11dc-bee9-02004c4f4f50).html[/url
Jacques Lacan said that a husband who is pathologically jealous from suspecting that his wife is sleeping with other men is still to be considered as a pathological case, even though his wife is in fact cheating on him. Regardless of possible factual evidence of the suspicion, it is the fanaticism in looking for it everywhere, which is of interest to psychoanalysis: Why does the guy invest everything into this one question? What are the fears that he avoids confronting through the obsession with every detail of her behaviour?
This doesn't produce a conclusive result but marks one with suspicion.
As such, an appeal merely to objectivity isn't much of a shield in this case as there isn't a purely objective standpoint even while referencing objective data and facts. Facts are always in position to t a theoretical framework which gives them significance.
And the factoring of something as significant in causing a death is a point of how we conceptualize causality.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s06.htmlImmediate causes should be distinguished from mediate causes, that is to say, those that evoke and determine an effect through a number of intervening stages. For example, a person gets badly hurt psychologically, but the damage does not take effect at once. Several years may elapse and then in certain circumstances, among which the person's condition at the time has a certain significance, the effect begins to make itself felt in the symptoms of illness. When analysing causality we sometimes speak of a "minor" cause giving rise to major effects. This so-called "minor cause of a major effect" is the cause not of the whole long and ramified chain of phenomena that produces the final result, but only the cause of the first link in the chain. Sometimes the "minor cause" is merely a factor that starts up quite different causal factors. These are "triggering" factors, factors relating to the initial stage of avalanche processes and to a whole system's loss of labile equilibrium.
Any phenomenon depends on a definite diversity of conditions to bring it into existence. While it is only one of the circumstances conducive to a certain effect, the cause is the most active and effective element in this process, it is an interaction that converts necessary and sufficient conditions into a result. We sometimes treat the absence of something as a cause. For example, some illnesses are attributed to lack of resistance in an organism or a lack of vitamins. However, absence should not be regarded as a cause but merely as a condition for disease. For a cause to actually take effect there must be certain conditions, that is to say, phenomena essential for the occurrence of the given event but not in themselves causing it. Conditions cannot in themselves give rise to the effect, but the cause is also powerless without them. No cause can give rise to illness if the organism is not susceptible to it. We know that when a person's organism is infected with certain microbes he may fall ill or he may not. The way a cause takes effect and the nature of the consequence depend on the character of the conditions. Sometimes there is only one direct and immediate cause of death or injury—a bullet. But more often the causes and conditions are intricately combined, some of them being only secondary circumstances.
However, the context of the discussion is interested in the responsibility of Chauvin for Floyd's death, not every little causal factor such as Floyd being in public that day.
[URL]https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/determinism.htm[/url
Words like causality and freedom are meaningful not simply as descriptive of the world, but particularly as tools for our own action: how do we understand the world and how do we change it? How do I understand my own actions? I can understand the rash on my skin as the effect of psoriasis, but if I claim that my opinions or my actions are effects of external or prior causes rather than free acts of my own volition, then I commit a performative contradiction. To take another persons’ consciousness to be the effect of causes, is to regard them as an object to be controlled and manipulated, and not as a rational being. My doctor or psychologist may with good reason regard my actions in this way, as the effect of external causes, but if I am brought before a judge for a crime, I can be committed to prison or a psychiatric ward according to whether I am regarded as a rational human being morally responsible for my action or not. Even when, as a result of reflection, I want to change my own behavior, I do not regard my behavior as caused by external forces – I take moral responsibility for it. If I become aware of how my opinions, actions or habits have been formed by external factors, then I can decide to change them or not. Analysis of consciousness by causality leads, at best, to an infinite regress.
There are legal concepts to denote culpability but in simple terms we are responsible for what is a foreseeable consequence of our actions.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/hegel-on-action.htmThe ‘right to (not) know’ is a formal right which turns out to have a limited scope, because when Guy decides to set fire to the grass he has the responsibility to know that the fire could get out of control and could spread to his neighbour’s property. If he meant that the fire should spread or if he did not take the trouble to see if it might or take action to prevent its spread, he is responsible, because the spreading of the fire was implicit in his purpose.
But what if Mrs. Fawkes had secretly hidden her savings in a box in the grass and the money was destroyed by the fire? If Guy had no reason to believe that something of value could be hidden there, he is not responsible for the destruction of what his wife hid in the grass – it was not part of his purpose. Hegel contrasts this with the ancients for whom the agent’s knowledge was not to be taken into account in assigning responsibility – Oedipus was condemned for killing his father, even though he could not have known at the time that King Laius was his father.
Formally, the agent is not responsible for unintended consequences of their action which were not implicit in his purpose
...
The agent’s purpose is realised in the action and the consequences of the action belong to the action, so the subject is responsible for all the consequences of their immediate action. What frees Guy from responsibility for the destruction of the money his wife hid in the grass is that the actions of another subject with another purpose intervened and their action combined with Guy’s action so as to bring about the unfortunate consequence.
Of course there is the specifics of intention also, was Chauvin reckless i.e manslaughter, or did it go so far as to be a degree of murder? while there is some effort to assert a relationship between them, i wonder what motive could arise.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
- By FiveofSwords
- By wat0n