Collective moral responsibility is a species of moral responsibility and contrasts, in particular, with individual moral responsibility.

However, the notion of moral responsibility, whether indi­vidual or collective, contrasts with a number of other notions.

First, we need to distinguish moral responsibility (including collective moral responsibility) from causal responsibility.

Second, we can distinguish moral responsibility from what can be referred to as natural responsibility. Moral responsibility typically requires not only causal responsibility but also an intention to cause good or evil (or at least the knowledge that one’s action will or may well cause good or evil) and an intention that is itself under one’s control (and connects in the right way with one’s action (Davidson 1963)). On the other hand, one is not necessarily morally responsible for one’s actions under one’s control since such action might not have any moral significance. If I get myself a cup of coffee then I am normally responsible for this since the action is entirely under my control; however, arguably, I am not morally responsible for doing so, given the action has no moral significance. At any rate, I assume in this chapter that there is a distinction along these lines to be made between moral responsibility and natural responsibility. I also note that natural responsibility is not the same thing as causal responsibility, since I can unknowingly cause some outcome without intending to do so, or even knowing that I have done so, e.g. when I accidentally spill my coffee.

Third, we need to distinguish moral responsibility from institutional responsibility, e.g.

Fourth, I distinguish between moral responsibility and blameworthiness and praiseworthi­ness (albeit, this is controversial — see Strawson (1962)). If I keep my promise to meet my friend for lunch and doing so is easily done then, although I am morally responsible for keeping my promise, I am neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy. I am not blameworthy since I kept my promise, but nor am I praiseworthy since I was under an obligation to keep it and doing so entailed minimal, if any, cost to myself.

Finally, we need to distinguish prospective or forward-looking from retrospective or backward-looking responsibility. Suppose a thief is morally responsible for his past crimes; this is retrospective responsibility. Now suppose a police officer is morally (and, for that matter, institu­tionally) responsible for arresting the thief if and when he comes across him; this is prospective responsibility.

As is the case with individual responsibility we can distinguish between collective moral responsibility, on the one hand, and collective causal, collective natural and collective institu­tional responsibility, on the other hand. (Here I assume that there is some, at least notional, dis­tinction to be made between aggregate causal responsibility and collective causal responsibility, e.g. by virtue of the causal power of the collective per se being greater than the sum of the causal power of each of the contributing agents.) Moreover, we can distinguish between collective retrospective and collective prospective moral responsibility.

Collective moral responsibility is the moral responsibility that attaches to structured and unstructured groups of human persons for their morally significant actions and omissions. Thus, an organised gang of thieves who carry out a million-dollar bank heist are collectively morally — and, for that matter, collectively causally and legally — (retrospectively) responsible for the theft.

There are three prominent kinds of theories of collective moral responsibility. The first of these conceives of collective moral responsibility as a convenient way of referring to what is in fact simply an aggregate of individual responsibilities. I refer to it as the atomistic account. The second holds that it is the group or collective itself which is the bearer of moral responsibility. I refer to this view as the collectivist account (albeit there are different versions of this account). The third theory is a relational account; collective moral responsibility as joint moral respon­sibility (JMR) (Miller 2001b; Miller 2006). JMR contrasts with collectivist accounts since the only bearers of moral responsibility are individual human persons (or like creatures) and not collective entities per se. However, JMR also contrasts with atomistic accounts since on this third view collective moral responsibility is to be understood in relational terms; joint responsi­bility is not analyzable into a mere aggregate of individual responsibilities.

In this chapter, I first situate JMR in relation to atomism and collectivism (section 3.1). In section 3.2 I elaborate JMR. I then go on to show how JMR might accommodate at least some of the central categories of collective omissions (section 3.3) and morally significant diachronic institutional action — what I refer to as chains of moral responsibility (section 3.4).

3.1