Attributable to the Group, But Not to Any Individual
Consider:
Offshore Wind: Like on most summer days, a large group of children are enjoying the beach, playing on their air mattresses close to land. This particular day, there are fifteen of them: three came with a parent, the other twelve live nearby.
Without warning, the weak onshore wind quickly turns strongly offshore, and the children begin drifting out, beyond the range of their swimming capabilities. They need to be rescued. In response, each of the three adults can swim out and catch one child before the wind has carried it too far, provided that she starts swimming now. But there is also a lifeboat that could be dragged a few yards to the sea if at least two adults joined forces; with it, two of them could row out and pick up all the children. Each of the adults quickly realizes all this. (This case, like many discussed in the literature, is modeled on cases in Held 1970.)About this situation, it is very natural to think that:
three’s obligation: The three adults have an obligation to save all the children.
If the group lacks any weighty reasons not to save all the children, the obligation is naturally understood as an all-things-considered rather than a mere pro tanto obligation. (In what follows, when I talk about obligations, I will have the former kind in mind unless otherwise stated.)
Clearly, to attribute this obligation is not to attribute to each of the three adults an obligation to save all the children, as none of them can do this on her own: the relevant reading of three’s obligation is not straightforwardly distributive. Instead, one might be tempted to understand it as saying that each individual has an obligation to help save all the children: to participate or do her part in or contribute to a joint action resulting in the saving of all the children. But whereas three’s obligation is independent of the three adults’ willingness to help, their individual obligations to help save all are not.
Consider:Plenitude: Each of the three adults is willing and ready to help save all the children. Because of this, if one of them didn’t help, the other two would join forces and save all. (None has stronger normative reasons to help than the others.)
Helplessness: Each of the three adults is a closet racist. Because the other twelve children are of what she considers the wrong color, she is unwilling to help save all the children and would refuse if prompted.
Scarcity: One adult is ready to help save all the children and would do so together with whoever would be willing to help her. But the other two are closet racists, unwilling to help, and would refuse to help if prompted.
In Plenitude, no individual adult has an obligation to help save all, because the other two will gladly do what is required. In Helplessness, no individual has an obligation to help save all, because the reluctance of the others makes it impossible for her to do so. Here, the individual might have an obligation to quickly try to get the others to join her in saving all, say, before turning attention to her own child. But because she cannot help save all, she has no more of an individual obligation to do so than the adult in:
Solitary Helplessness: Like Helplessness, but there is only one adult on the beach when the wind turns, and she can save only one child.
In Scarcity, finally, the willing individual has no obligation to help save all the children, because the unwillingness of the two racists makes it impossible for her to do so. By contrast, each of the racists can help save all the children (thanks to the willing individual) and her help is needed (because of the unwillingness of the other racist). Each of the racists thus seems to have an individual obligation to contribute.
The plausibility of three’s obligation seems independent of these variations in the willingness of the members of the group and their resulting individual obligations. They have an obligation to save all, regardless of whether more or fewer individuals than needed are willing to help.
In light of this, one might be tempted to interpret three’s obligation as saying that each individual has a conditional obligation to help: an obligation to help if that would make a difference. Each adult in each of Plenitude, Helplessness, and Scarcity plausibly has such an obligation. But the same seems true about the lonely adult in Solitary Helplessness, and we don’t want to conclude that she has an obligation to save all the children. Moreover, even when individual conditional obligations coincide with a corresponding group obligation, the proposal gets things wrong. Consider Helplessness: since no individual adult could have made a difference as to whether all children were saved, none of the conditional obligations is violated when each proceeds to save only their own child. But the obligation of three’s obligation is most definitely violated.
Although three’s obligation is independent of the willingness of members to help, it clearly does depend on the group’s ability to save all children, which in turn requires that there are things that the individuals can do that, together, result in the saving of all the children. Because the group’s obligation is independent of directly corresponding individual obligations, but is dependent of what the individuals can do together, it is natural to say that it is their collective obligation. And the same reasoning seems applicable to the other cases of group obligations mentioned earlier: the obligation of the parents to uphold a reasonable relationship, the obligation of eligible voters not to elect corrupt leaders, and the obligation of people aware of the risk of climate catastrophe to significantly reduce it. They all seem to be collective obligations. (For related arguments, see, e.g., Aas 2015; Bjornsson 2014; Forthcoming; Dietz 2016; Schwenkenbecher 2014; Wringe 2016; cf. Copp 2007, though he focuses mainly on institutional groups.)
Offshore Wind can also illustrate the phenomenon of collective responsibility and collective blameworthiness.
(For simplicity, I will focus on blameworthiness rather than responsibility more generally.) Specifically, consider the Helplessness version, where each of the three adults swims out to save her own child. Here, it seems that the adults are responsible for not saving all the children, and deserve blame for not doing so. After all, they could easily have done so by joining forces in some constellation or other, and they didn’t because of their lack of regard for the lives of the twelve. Corresponding to three’s obligation, we thus have:three’s blameworthiness: The three adults deserve blame for not saving all the children.
But it is also clear that we cannot blame them individually for the failure to save all, or the failure to help save all. Given the racism of the other two, no one individual was the reason that not all the children were saved, and no individual could have helped save them all. The three seem to be to blame for the outcome collectively, not individually.
As with collective obligations, then, collective responsibility and blameworthiness seem independent of corresponding individual blameworthiness. The other cases mentioned above could illustrate the same phenomena. The failure of the two divorced parents to preserve a reasonable relationship could not be pinned individually on either of them if the recalcitrance of each would have foiled any attempt on the part of the other; the failure would still seem to be their fault, due to their recalcitrance. Likewise, but on grander scales, for the election of corrupt leaders and the failure to significantly reduce the risk of global climate catastrophe: No one who voted for the leadership can be individually blamed for the outcome. And no one—at least no ordinary citizen—who understood the risk for climate catastrophe but failed to take significant measures can be blamed for the current grave risk. But together they can be. (See e.g., Bjornsson 2011; Held 1970; Kutz 2000; May 1992; Miller 2006; Sadler 2006; Sartorio 2004; Sverdlik 1987.)
Or so it seems. In the remainder of the chapter, we look at how these natural attributions of collective obligations and collective blameworthiness give rise to philosophical puzzles, and at various attempts to solve these puzzles.
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