Collective Moral Responsibility as Joint Moral Responsibility
JMR takes joint actions as its starting point (Miller 1992; Miller 2001b; Miller 2006; see also Mellema (1988) and May (1992)). According to JMR, at least one of the central senses of collective responsibility is responsibility arising from joint actions (and joint omissions).
Roughly speaking, a joint action can be understood thus: two or more individuals perform a joint action if each of them intentionally performs an individual action but does so with the (true) belief that in so doing each will do their part and they will jointly realise an end which each of them has and which each has interdependently with the others (a collective end, in my parlance (Miller 1992)). (For related theories ofjoint action see Tuomela and Miller (1988) and Bratman (2014).) On this view of collective responsibility as joint responsibility, collective responsibility is ascribed to individuals. Each member of the group is individually morally responsible for his or her own contributory action, and (at least in the case of most small-scale joint action — see below) each is also individually (fully or partially — see below) responsible for the aimed-at outcome, i.e. the realised collective end, of the joint action. (I note that an outcome of a joint action might not be aimed at and, if so, it is not a constitutive element of a successful joint action, i.e. it is not the realised collective end of the joint action.) However, each is individually responsible for the realised collective end, jointly with the others; hence the conception is relational in character. Thus, in our million-dollar bank heist example, each member of the gang is responsible jointly with the others for the theft of the million dollars because each performed his contributory action in the service of that collective end (the theft of the million dollars). I note that if the joint action has no moral significance then the participants have joint natural responsibility for their action but not joint, i.e. collective, moral responsibility for it. Since theft is a morally significant action, our bank robbers are jointly (collectively) morally responsible for stealing the million dollars.I note that on JMR it is possible that while each participant in a morally significant joint action makes a causal contribution to the aimed-at outcome of the joint action, none of these contributing actions considered on its own is either necessary or sufficient for this outcome (Miller 2006). Consider the following example of a murder. Six men simultaneously (deliberately and without moral justification) stab a seventh (innocent) man, and each does so having as an end to kill their victim. However, each knows that his one act of stabbing will only wound the victim, and that four stab wounds are necessary and sufficient to kill the victim. I further note that on JMR it is possible that in such scenarios — scenarios in which each participant makes a causal contribution which is neither necessary nor sufficient for the outcome — each participant is fully morally responsible (jointly with the others) for the outcome (Miller 2006). Consider, for instance, our stabbing scenario. First, each of the six men is individually fully morally responsible for the stab wound he inflicted. Second, the six men are jointly morally responsible for killing the man, i.e. they are jointly responsible for murder. Significantly, in relation to this joint responsibility, each of the six is fully morally responsible (jointly with the other five) for the murder (and, assuming there was sufficient evidence, each would in all likelihood be held criminally responsible for murder).
What of large-scale morally significant joint actions and omissions, such as the BP oil spill disaster mentioned above? These introduce a range of issues that are often not present in smallscale, morally significant joint actions and omissions. For one thing, large-scale cases often involve hierarchical organisations and hence the potential for those in subordinate positions having diminished moral responsibility.
For another thing, the extent of the contribution to the outcome of a joint action or omission can vary greatly from one participant to another. Indeed, some of those who make a causal contribution to a joint action — and especially to large-scale joint actions — might, nevertheless, not be genuine participants in that joint action because in performing their contributory action they were not aiming at the outcome constitutive of the joint action; they did not have its collective end as their end. On a relational view such as JMR, BP can be ascribed collective moral responsibility for the Gulf oil spill to the extent that BP personnel jointly acted — or, more likely, jointly (and culpably) failed to act (see section 3.4) — in ways that led to the disaster. Here the network of joint actions and omissions could be quite wide and complex without involving (either causally or in terms of their intentions, ends or responsibilities) all, or even most, BP personnel. Moreover, some joint actions or omissions are likely to be of greater moral significance than others, and some individual contributions, e.g. those of the BP managers, of greater importance than others, e.g. those of lower echelon employees (Zimmerman 1985).It is important to note here that not only is each agent individually (naturally) responsible for performing his contributory action, each is responsible by virtue of the fact that he intentionally performs this action (and his intention is under his control and connects to his action in the right way), and the action is not intentionally performed by anyone else. Of course, the other agents (or agent) believe that he is performing, or is going to perform, the contributory action in question. But mere possession of such a belief is not sufficient for the ascription of responsibility to the believer for performing the individual action in question. So, what are the agents collectively (naturally) responsible for? As already mentioned, the agents are collectively (naturally) responsible for the realisation of the (collective) end that results from their contributory actions.
Consider 10 men jointly pushing a car up a hill. Each is individually (naturally) responsible for his own pushing action, and the 10 men are collectively (naturally) responsible for intentionally bringing it about that the car is at the top of the hill, given that each performed an action which made a significant causal contribution. Perhaps the pushing action of each of the men is necessary if the car is to be pushed up the hill. However, if we assume that the pushing actions of nine of the men would have been sufficient, then although each pushing action made a causal contribution, no single pushing action was causally necessary (or, obviously, sufficient) to realise the collective end. Evidently, as already noted above, in joint actions (as opposed to joint omissions — see section 3.3), while each single constitutive individual action needs to make a causal contribution, none needs to be causally necessary to realise the relevant collective end.This theoretical point has an important implication for the ascription of collective (i.e. joint) moral responsibility to participants in morally significant, large-scale joint actions, in particular, since typically in large-scale joint actions no contribution of a single participant taken on its own is necessary in order to realise the collective end of the joint action. Specifically, it is now possible, at least in principle, to ascribe collective, i.e. joint, moral responsibility to participants in morally significant, large-scale joint actions. The fact that in a large-scale joint action the action of each participant taken on its own is not necessary to realise the collective end of the joint action is not, given this theoretical point, a barrier to the ascription of moral responsibility to each participant (jointly with the others) for the realisation of this collective end. Note that it does not follow from this that each participant in a large-scale joint action is fully morally responsible (jointly with the others) for the realisation of the collective end of the joint action.
Indeed, this is unlikely given that the causal contribution of each in large-scale joint actions is often very small and the commitment of each to the collective end correspondingly very weak. Rather in such cases each might only have partial moral responsibility (jointly with the others), or perhaps a share in the moral responsibility, for the realisation of the collective end (Miller 2011).Notice that by analogy with individual natural responsibility for a single action, in the case of collective natural responsibility for a joint action, the collective end is under the joint control of the participating agents and this end connects in the right way with its outcome. Thus, agents would not be naturally responsible for a joint action if the collective end was under the control of some third party or if the collective end caused its outcome by way of some deviant causal chain (Davidson 1963). In relation to the control condition, consider a slave-owner who coerces his slaves to perform a joint action of painting his house. The slave-owner’s coercive efforts are in part directed at ensuring that each has as an end that the house be painted — and has this end interdependently with the others having it. So the forming of the collective end is not something under the control of the slaves but rather of the slave-owner (as, of course, are the individual actions performed by each to realise that collective end). In relation to the condition outlawing deviant causal chains, consider the following example. The collective end of two car drivers going in opposite directions on a road in Australia is to avoid a collision and do so by each steering his car onto the left-hand side of the road (this being the convention in Australia). However, as it happens both drivers have recently arrived from the USA for a holiday in Australia and each is unused to driving on the left. Moreover, neither is wide-awake after their respective long flights and, as they approach one another around a bend but outside one another’s field of vision, each is simultaneously startled by the sudden realisation that he is intentionally driving on the left.
The act of being startled by this realisation of the unfamiliar intentional act of driving on the left automatically triggers the involuntary action of switching to driving on the right. The consequence of this is that each is now driving his car on the right-hand side of the road as he goes around the bend, thereby realising the collective end of averting a collision. So there is a collective end to avoid a collision and each has an initial intention to drive on the left in the correct belief that if each drives on the left a collision will be avoided (it being Australia). Moreover, the intentional action of driving on the left — which was itself caused by the prior intention to drive on the left — did cause the realisation of the collective end, i.e. the averting of the collision. However, it did so indirectly via the involuntary action of driving on the right and this was not the intended means to the collective end. Evidently, therefore, the agents were not (naturally or, for that matter, morally) responsible for averting the collision.In section 3.1 we distinguished between natural, moral and institutional responsibility, and in section 3.2 we have been discussing collective natural responsibility and collective moral responsibility. What of collective institutional responsibility? For our purposes here an institution can be understood as an organisation or system of organisations constituted at least in part by a structure of roles and by some collective end(s) served by that structure of roles (Miller 2010; Ludwig 2017). For instance, a business organisation in the construction industry might consist of managers, architects, engineers, carpenters, labourers, salespeople, and so on, and have as a collective end to construct high rise buildings. Notice that the joint actions performed by the occupants of such organisations often consist of layered structures of joint actions (Miller 1992; Miller 2010). For instance, the organisation’s team of architects, structural engineers etc. might design a given high rise building (joint action j1); its team of concrete-layers, crane-drivers etc. might construct the shell of the building according to the designers’ specifications (joint action j2); its team of carpenters, labourers etc. might construct and place the internal walls, windows, doors, etc. (j3). Let us refer to the large-scale, complex joint action that consists in building this high rise as J. J consists of the actions of all the above, i.e. architects, structural engineers, concrete-layers, carpenters etc. Moreover, J consists in the subsidiary joint actions, j1, j2 and j3, and the collective ends of each of these subsidiary joint actions, e.g. to construct the shell of the high rise, ultimately serves the collective end of J, i.e. to build the high rise. Other things being equal, we can now say that all or most of the members of the above teams have, at least in principle, collective responsibility, i.e. joint natural responsibility, for building the high rise by way of their participation in a layered structure ofjoint actions. Of course, things might not be equal if, for instance and as mentioned above, many of these persons did not perform their actions having as at least one of their ends the construction of the high rise building.
However, institutional role occupants have more than simply natural responsibility (individual or joint) for their actions and omissions. Institutional role occupants are governed by sanction-backed regulations and laws that both constrain and enable the actions that they (institutionally, e.g. legally) ought, and ought not, to perform qua institutional role occupants. If the occupants of institutional roles have institutional responsibilities with respect to their performance of joint actions (or joint omissions) then these responsibilities are collective institutional responsibilities. Note that in some cases these collective institutional responsibilities will be prospective, such as in cases where there is a joint institutional duty to realise the collective end of some joint action. Here the individual duty of each to perform his or her contributory action is interdependent with the individual duty of each of the others to perform theirs. On the other hand, as was mentioned above, collective institutional responsibility can also be retrospective, such as in cases where the institutional actors have failed to do their joint duty. Note also that while institutional responsibilities are often congruent with moral responsibilities, this is not necessarily the case. In apartheid South Africa police were legally, i.e. institutionally, required to enforce morally repugnant laws, such as those banning sex across the colour bar.
There is an important sense of institutional responsibility attaching to those in authority. Suppose the members of the relevant government committee collectively decide to exercise their institutionally determined right to introduce an anti-corruption measure, e.g. mandatory reporting of corrupt and criminally negligent actions. The committee members are then collectively responsible for this policy, and potentially for the untoward consequences of its implementation, e.g. vexatious reporting.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First, the notion of responsibility in question is, at least in the first instance, institutional — as opposed to moral — responsibility. Second, the “decisions” of committees, as opposed to the individual decisions of the members of committees, need to be analysed in terms of the notion of a joint institutional mechanism (introduced and analysed in detail elsewhere (Miller 1992; Miller 2006; Miller 2018)). So, the “decision” of the committee, can be analysed as follows: At one level each member of the committee voted for or against the policy of mandatory reporting. Let us assume some voted in the affirmative and others in the negative. But at another level, each member of the committee agreed, let us assume, to abide by the outcome of the vote; each voted having as a collective end that the outcome with a majority of the votes in its favour would be realised. Accordingly, the members of the government committee were jointly institutionally responsible for the policy change; that is, the committee were collectively institutionally responsible for the change.
What, then, of collective moral responsibility? According to JMR, collective moral responsibility is a species of joint responsibility (Miller 2001b; Miller 2006; Miller 2007). Accordingly, other things being equal (see section 3.3 for more complex cases), each agent is individually morally responsible, but this is conditional, based on the others being likewise individually morally responsible. There is interdependence in respect of moral responsibility. This account of collective moral responsibility arises naturally out of the account of joint actions. Roughly speaking, according to JMR, if agents are jointly naturally, and/or jointly institutionally, responsible for a joint action (or the realisation of a foreseen or reasonably foreseeable outcome of that action), and if the joint action or the outcome is morally significant, then — other things being equal — the agents are collectively morally responsible for that action or outcome. Moreover, other things being equal, the agents ought to attract moral praise or blame, and (possibly) punishment or reward for realising the collective end of the joint action or for bringing about the outcome.
I note that an action might be morally significant in a number of ways. For instance, the action might be inherently morally right or wrong, or the intention in performing it or its outcome morally good or bad. Note also that the “other things being equal” clauses provide for the possibilities that the agents in question either lack the requisite moral capacities — and so cannot be held morally responsible — or are possessed of moral capacities, but in the circumstances in question have an excuse or justification for their joint actions or for their outcomes. Finally, I note that this account provides a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for collective moral responsibility. Accordingly, it leaves the way open for other notions of collective moral responsibility.
3.3