Collective Responsibility: Agency Worries
Turn now from the issue of collective obligation to that of collective responsibility or blameworthiness. three’s blameworthiness—the idea that the three adults are to blame for not saving all the children in Helplessness—can seem problematic in much the same way as did three’s obligation.
On the one hand, we cannot plausibly understand three’s blameworthiness distribu- tively, as attributing individual blameworthiness for not saving all the children to each of the three adults. No individual in Helplessness can be individually blamed for not saving all the children, or for the fact that the trio did not save all the children: the individual had no say in that matter given that the other two individuals were unwilling to participate. (This is not to deny that they might be individually to blame for other things, such as lack of concern for the other children, or failure to think about how all might be saved.)
On the other hand, the group itself seems to lack the sort of properties that are required for individual responsibility and blameworthiness. If an entity cannot be blameworthy without violating an obligation, and if only moral agents can be subject to obligations, it follows immediately that non-agential groups cannot be blameworthy. Things would be a little less straightforward if one could be to blame even without strictly speaking violating any obligations. (An example might be not giving up one’s seat on the bus to someone more in need of it. For discussion, see Driver 1992.) Still, the underlying worries from section 9.2 would remain, as blameworthiness is standardly assumed to require both some degree of self-control and beliefs about morally relevant features of the situation. As already noted, the group seems to lack anything corresponding to the self that can exert relevant control over its actions as well as anything corresponding to beliefs. Furthermore, neither the group nor its members can plausibly be blamed for that lack of a self or lack of belief: prior to the unexpected offshore wind, there was no reason to form a collective agent.
9.7