Collective Blameworthiness as Shared Blameworthiness
Our discussion of collective obligations suggested that these are grounded in demands on individuals. Likewise, collective blameworthiness seems to depend on criticizable input from group members.
As in the case of obligations, we can contrast Helplessness with Uncertain Success. In the former case, where the group of adults seems to deserve blame for not saving all the children, the failure to save all the children was due to the adults’ callous, racist attitudes. In the latter, where the group does not seem to blame for the failure to save all, the outcome was not due to any criticizable attitude on their part, as evidence suggested to each of them that the prospects for saving all children were bleak. Here, even a morally conscientious individual could be expected to save their own child instead.If group blameworthiness is grounded in the moral shortcomings of members, that could straightforwardly explain why the group does not have to satisfy standard requirements on blameworthiness for individual agents, again in line with what we said about collective obligations. It can also explain why individuals that are part of blameworthy non-agential groups are individually implicated in the collective blameworthiness. When the group is blamed for their failure to save all the children in Helplessness, an individual racist cannot plausibly reply, “Sure, many of the kids died because we didn’t want to save them, but what does that have to do with me?” And at least partly because group blame seems to implicate members and relate intimately to individual moral shortcomings of this sort, it is natural to think, as many have, that there is such a thing as shared or joint responsibility for group actions and outcomes (e.g., Bjornsson 2011; Kutz 2000; May 1992; Miller 2006; Sadler 2006; Sartorio 2004; Sverdlik 1987).
In virtue of what, though, do individuals in a group share responsibility for some action or omission of the group, or something that it has brought about or let happen? On some influential suggestions, one can share responsibility for a harm (a) in virtue of intentional or knowing participation in group activity that stands in some relevant causal relation to that harm even if one does not stand in that relation oneself (Kutz 2000; Miller 2006; Sadler 2006; Sverdlik 1987), (b) in virtue of participation in a culture or way of life giving rise to the harm (Kutz 2000; Silver 2002), or (c) in virtue of endorsing the sorts of actions or omission that directly explained the outcome (May 1992).
Suggestions like these seem to make sense of some central cases of collective responsibility, explaining how participation in or endorsement of the machinery of an unjust war might make one partly responsible for its resulting atrocities, even though one could have done nothing to prevent them. But as illustrated by Helplessness, it seems that a group of individuals can be to blame, together, without intentional or knowing participation in anything meaningfully called a group activity, and without the harm being the upshot of a culture or way of life. Moreover, since no action or omission by any one agent directly explained or caused the outcome, other agents cannot be responsible for that outcome in virtue of endorsing or engaging in actions or omissions of the type as that which explained it. It is clear, then, that even if these suggestions identify relations in virtue of which one might share blameworthiness, they fail to provide completely general accounts of collective responsibility (Bjornsson 2011).To capture the cases that are left unaccounted for, it is natural to generalize: perhaps one can share blameworthiness for something by being to blame for part of a cause of it, regardless of relations to other agents. In Helplessness, for example, it might seem that each adult is to blame for part of the fact that not enough able adults were willing to save all children and looking to see if the others were too. Similarly, each person voting for the corrupt leadership might be to blame for part of the voting result that brought them to power, and each of the divorced parents might be to blame for part of the lack of cooperativeness that caused the deterioration of their relationship (cf. Sartorio 2004).
But mere blameworthiness for part of a cause does not seem sufficient. Consider:
Partly Excused Helplessness: Like Helplessness, but only one of the adults is racist; the other two are unwilling to help because each thinks, based on very convincing but misleading evidence, that the boat is leaky and difficult to handle and that an attempt to rescue all would risk the life of their own child, who is among those farthest from the beach.
Here, like in Helplessness, the group fails to save all children because not enough adults are willing to attempt the rescue. Moreover, the racist seems as much to blame for her part in this fact as she was in Helplessness. However, we cannot here blame the trio for the failure to save all: two of them have perfectly good excuses for being unwilling to try. And although we can criticize the racist for not caring enough about some of the children and blame her for not trying to get the others to help, we cannot blame her for the failure to help save all, as she would have been unable to get the others to join. Judging from the contrast between this case and Helplessness, then, the way in which she is implicated in the outcome in Helplessness is Irreducibly collective, as part of a blameworthy group, not just as responsible for part of a cause of the failure to save all (Bjornsson 2011: 185-6).
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