Under those circumstances, I would suggest thatself-preservation and duty to obey safety=rules should transcendall deference to another, wilfully violating crewmember.
I agree yet understand that there is no way to
standardize this criteria because "self-preservation" in the heat of the moment is not a rational instinct. It's about one's "gut" or "intuition" or whatever one wants to call it. "Self-preservation" is not something that can be added to the MEL!
It is likely that the FO did not recognize the captain’s behaviour as that of subtle incapacitation.
I laughed when I first read that. That word--subtle--does not mean what one thinks it means. By definition if something is subtle that means its not easy to detect. How can one blame the PM for not detecting something that is by definition difficult to detect?
The underlying point is that while rules, procedures, CRM and the whole lot are important and have saved lives they are not a panacea. They can't substitute for what the poster above called the instinct for self-preservation. By definition that is not something that can be trained for.
Without policies and procedures clearly authorizing escalation of intervention to the point of taking aircraft control, some FOs may feel inhibited from doing so.
This is true but it is only 1/2 the story. The other half is the problems that can arise when the FO misjudges the situation in the other direction and takes control when the Captain is not incapacitated in any way. So these two competing concerns must be balanced and this balance shouldn't be influenced by the most recent accident.