Atomism, Collectivism, and Joint Moral Responsibility
Advocates of atomism with respect to collective moral responsibility include H. D. Lewis (Lewis 1948), R. S. Downie (Downie 1969), Stephen Sverdlik (Sverdlik 1987), Jan Narveson (Narveson 2002), and Andras Szigeti (Szigeti 2014).
(For criticisms see Copp (2006).) The strength of atomism is that it does not postulate supra-human collective entities as the mysterious bearers of moral responsibility and of the psychological states (e.g. beliefs and intentions) necessary for moral responsibility. Moreover, since it ascribes moral responsibility only to individual human beings, it has no tendency to let the members of collective entities, such as criminal organizations or negligent corporations, off the hook by relocating moral responsibility at the supra-human level. The weakness of atomism is that it does not seem to be able to accommodate the full range of cases in which we pre-theoretically ascribe collective moral responsibility. For example, in our above million-dollar bank heist example, robber A might be individually responsible for planning the heist, robber B for driving the getaway car, C for blowing the safe, D for taking one hundred thousand dollars, E for taking a second hundred thousand and so on. However, arguably none of the robbers was individually causally responsible — and, therefore, individually morally responsible — for stealing one million dollars. Again, we pre-theoretically hold BP morally responsible for the massively environmentally damaging oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2009. But here we seem to be doing something above and beyond simply ascribing individual moral responsibility to each of BP personnel who did something wrong, and aggregating these. BPs moral responsibility seems to be more than the aggregate of individual responsibilities.On collectivist accounts “collective responsibility” should be understood as attaching to the collective entity per se.
Paradoxically, therefore, collective moral responsibility turns out to be a species of individual responsibility, albeit the “individual” is a collective entity. At any rate, on this collectivist view whether the members of a collective — that is, the individual human persons who constitute the collective in question — are each individually responsible is a separate question and, in any case, not directly a question of collective responsibility. In David Copp’s terminology the collectivist claim is equivalent to the claim that a collective can be an independent moral agent (Copp 2006) (for criticisms of Copp see Miller (2007)). An important corollary of the collectivist view is that collectives are capable of bearing moral responsibility for outcomes, even when none of their members is in any degree individually morally responsible for those outcomes. Other prominent representatives of the collectivist approach include Peter French (French 1984) (for criticisms of French see Velasquez (1983)), Margaret Gilbert (Gilbert 2002) (for criticisms of Gilbert see Miller and Makela (2005)), and Christian List and Philip Pettit (List and Pettit 2011) (for criticisms of List and Pettit see Szigeti (2014)).Perhaps unsurprisingly, collectivism tends to be regarded as being able to accommodate many of the problems that beset atomism but, nevertheless, to lack the virtues of atomism (Makela 2007). Thus, to return to our examples, collectivism will ascribe moral responsibility to (respectively) the gang of robbers as a collective entity and to BP per se (and not merely to some individual BP personnel for their individual moral failings). However, in so doing it admits supra-human collective entities (the gang, BP), which (somewhat mysteriously) bear moral responsibility (and, therefore, the associated psychological states (but see List and Pettit (2011) and for the rejoinder Szigeti (2014)) and which have the potential to get (respectively) the individual gang members and BP personnel off the moral hook.
Potentially at least, BP is morally responsible but none of its managers, employees etc. have any moral responsibility; and the same goes for the individual gang members, at least as far as the theft of the million dollars is concerned (as opposed to, say, driving the getaway car or stealing one hundred thousand dollars). At any rate, on the collectivist account difficult questions arise concerning the relation between the moral responsibility of the collective entity per se and the moral responsibility of each of the members of the collective.Having situated JMR in relation to atomistic and collectivist accounts of collective moral responsibility, I turn in the next section to its elaboration. Before doing so, I should make it clear that one might hold either a monistic or a pluralist view of collectivist moral responsibility and that this has implications for the theoretical reach of JMR. On the monistic view, JMR provides an analysis of the one and only concept of collective moral responsibility; therefore, its theoretical reach is comprehensive. On the pluralist view, JMR provides an analysis of one of a number of central concepts of collective moral responsibility; therefore, its theoretical reach while still considerable, is not comprehensive. Moreover, on the monistic view, JMR, atomism and collectivism are competing theories of collective responsibility. However, on the pluralist view, JMR might be consistent with collectivism (and perhaps atomism, assuming atomism were to abandon its reductionist claim); they are simply different theories because they are theories of different species of collective moral responsibility. In this chapter I take a neutral stance on this issue. I provide an elaboration ofJMR as an analysis of one central concept of collective responsibility while leaving it open whether there are other concepts of collective responsibility. However, I note that JMR is well-positioned to avoid some of the main problems besetting atomism or besetting collectivism. Thus, JMR does not postulate supra-human collective entities as the mysterious bearers of moral responsibility, and has no tendency to let the members of collective entities off the moral hook by relocating moral responsibility at the supra-human level. Moreover JMR, being relational in character, seem better equipped than atomistic accounts to provide a plausible account of the ascription of moral responsibility to groups. For instance, in the heist example, while each is individually responsible for his contributory action (e.g. C for blowing the safe), each is also responsible, jointly with the others, for stealing the million dollars. Let us, then, consider JMR in more detail.
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