We Did It

Our question is: What are the implications of collective moral responsibility for group members? In order for a group to be worthy of blame for what it did, it must indeed have done something.

There are, of course, many kinds of groups. Some are small and some large, some lack any particular organization and some are highly organized, and so on. That said, one way to start the process of inquiry into what it is for a group to do something is to ask what it is for two people to do something together, assuming that any two people constitute a group of sorts by virtue of their joint activity.⁵ What is it, for instance, for Jill and Jane to rob a bank together? In what way does this differ from the situation in which each of them is robbing the bank at the same time that, coincidentally, the other is pursuing the same aim?⁶

A central part of Gilbert’s account of acting together (Gilbert 1989, 1990, and elsewhere) is an account of a group or collective goal: a goal that the participants can properly refer to as “our” goal—where this is not seen as elliptical for “the goal that each one of us espouses.”⁷ In developing this account Gilbert’s primary aim has been to explain how people understand such everyday statements as “Our goal is to rob the bank” or “Our family wants only to live in peace with its neighbors.”

On Gilbert’s account, Jill and Jane can properly refer to the goal of robbing a bank as non- distributively “ours” if and only if they are jointly committed to espouse as a body that goal. Clearly, to understand this one needs first to know what Gilbert means by saying that two or more people are jointly committed in some way. She has written at length about this in several places.⁸ Our aim here is to offer a rough account of it that will suffice for present purposes.

Gilbertian joint commitment involves both a particular process and a particular product. The process is broadly speaking psychological; the product is normative.⁹

When we say the process of joint commitment is psychological, we mean that it involves psychological states of the people in question, states which must be sincerely expressed to one another in order to complete the process. When we say the product is normative, we mean that to be jointly committed is to be in a particular normative situation, now there is something that they, collectively, ought to do, all else being equal. In other terms, there is something that they, collectively, have reason to do.¹⁰

We now say more about both the process and the product of joint commitment, starting with the latter.

We said that when two or more parties are jointly committed, there is something that they, collectively, ought to do, all else being equal. Another way of putting this is to say that they are normatively committed as one or co-committed. Either all are normatively constrained in the rele­vant way, or none are. Accordingly, if the constraint is removed from one, it is removed from all.¹¹

What are the normative implications of this collective normative constraint for the indi­viduals involved? All else being equal, any one of the co-committed persons will act in error in failing to comply with the commitment, that is, in failing to act as it requires, given what the others are doing. One’s personal desires and inclinations do not change matters. In short, the normative constraint in this case is to that extent peremptory. Gilbert has argued that once the parties have co-committed them all, each of them has the standing to demand of any other that he comply with their joint commitment.¹² This standing is present even when, as in the case of the bank robbers, the content of the joint commitment is morally dubious. One can have the standing to demand an action, without being justified, all things considered, in exercising that standing.

Absent special background understandings of the parties, no one party can unilaterally do away with or rescind a joint commitment. Of course, any one party can fail to conform, at will, but, in and of itself, that does not mean that the joint commitment goes away. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that Gilbert takes the joint rescission condition on joint commitment to reflect the way those who act together understand their situation.¹³

With regard to the process of joint commitment, Gilbert distinguishes between basic and non-basic cases, both of which are of great practical importance.¹⁴ We shall explain this distinc­tion by reference to a joint commitment of Jane and Jill to espouse as a body the goal to rob the Philosophers’ Bank.

If this is a basic case, the parties will have jointly committed themselves to espouse as a body the goal in question by openly expressing to one another their readiness to do precisely that. More fully: Jane and Jill’s joint commitment will have been established by open expressions of readiness on the part of both Jane and Jill to espouse as a body the goal of robbing the Philosophers’ Bank. For instance, Jill may have said, “Let’s go rob that bank!” after which Jane said, “Indeed! Let’s do it!”

Although a joint commitment may be made using verbal expressions, a given party’s readi­ness for a particular joint commitment need not be expressed in words. Indeed, it may be expressed through a series of relatively subtle indications over time.¹⁵

As to what it is for the parties to “espouse a particular goal as a body,” Gilbert has in mind roughly this. By virtue of their several actions and utterances, coordinated appropriately, they are to act as would the representatives of a single possessor of the goal in question, in relevant contexts. Accordingly if a given party to the joint commitment wants to express a conflicting or, for that matter, corresponding personal goal, that party must make that clear.

Once a basic joint commitment has been created, someone who was not one of its original co-creators may be able, in effect, to “sign on” to it, given appropriate expressions of readiness from the other parties. So if Maria discovers that Jill and Jane are going to rob the Philosophers’ Bank that evening, says “May I join you?”, and receives an affirmative nod from the other two, the original joint commitment of the two is thereby replaced by or, perhaps better, transmuted into a joint commitment of the three. Now Maria, Jill, and Jane are jointly committed to endorse as a body the goal of robbing the Philosophers’ Bank. In some groups, particularly those that are large and long-standing, there may be agreed-upon entry and exit rules and procedures allowing people to enter and leave a group without involving all of the parties.

If Jane and Jill’s joint commitment to espouse as a body the goal of robbing the Philosophers’ Bank is a non-basic commitment, it will have been established in something like the following way. Jill and Jane are discussing what to do that afternoon. Jane says to Jill, “You decide!” and Jane responds, “Okay.” Jill and Jane have now established a basic joint commitment to accept as a body that Jane is in a position to determine what they will do that afternoon. If Jane now says, “This is what we’re going to do! We’re going to rob the Philosophers’ Bank!” that will be enough jointly to commit them to espouse as a body the goal of robbing the bank.

What if Jill thinks Jane’s decision is completely unreasonable? In some such cases it may be possible to argue that implicit conditions on the authorization have not been met, and that, therefore, the decision in question has created no new joint commitment for the parties.

Jane and Jill’s joint commitment to espouse as a body the goal of robbing the Philosophers’ Bank could have been formed in a single stage by open expressions of readiness to espouse as a body the goal of robbing that bank, making it a basic case of joint commitment. Alternatively it could have been formed in two stages, starting with an initial basic joint commitment author­izing one of them—or some other person or body of persons—to determine the content of one or more further joint commitments of theirs, and concluding with the person or body in question determining its content. Then it would be a non-basic joint commitment.

Of course it is somewhat risky for people to authorize others to determine the content of their joint commitments. On the other hand, non-basic commitments can be of immense practical value, allowing for the members of both small and large populations to be jointly committed in appropriate ways by well-informed and benevolent authorities.

For present purposes an important aspect of non-basic joint commitments as opposed to basic commitments is this. Someone who is subject to a non-basic joint commitment may not be aware of its content. The person or body of persons authorized to determine its content may not have informed all of those subject to it of that content. This could be so temporarily or indefinitely. Thus the authorities may jointly commit the members of a given population to endorse as a body the prosecution of a certain war, may prosecute the war with the aid of rela­tively few members of the population, and do all of this in such a way that most members of the population are unaware of what is happening.

There are several reasons for invoking joint commitment in an account of acting together as this is understood in everyday life.

The first concerns the standing or authority to make demands on other people, and begins with an observation of Gilbert’s. When people understand themselves to be doing something together, they take themselves to have the standing or authority to demand appropriate action of one another, along with the standing to rebuke one another for inappropriate action.¹⁶ So if Maria is robbing the bank with JiIl and Jane and suddenly sits down on a bench and starts reading a novel, one of the others may well demand that she stop doing so, and all will take her to have the standing to do so.

According to Gilbert, as discussed above, a constitutive joint commitment will explain this observation. She has argued, further, that, most likely, only Gilbertian joint commitment or something very like it suffices to give one person the standing to demand an action of another.¹⁷

If these points about the standing to demand acts of others are correct, it is reasonable to suppose that those who act together understand at some level that they are jointly committed to espouse as a body the relevant goal.

A second reason for invoking joint commitment in an account of acting together relates to the thought that those who act together are in some way unified. There are at least two ways in which this thought may be spelled out.

First, theorists often characterize social groups of a certain central kind as unified or as con­stituting a unity.¹⁸ Further, it is natural to think of those acting together as constituting a social group of the relevant kind.¹⁹ If such social groups—including those constituted by people acting together—are constituted by one or more joint commitments, this would help to explain the thought that they are indeed unified or are unities.²⁰

Second, it has been held that any agent, as such, is necessarily unified, or is a unity. This is necessary in order that the act in question can be seen as an act of that agent.²¹ Assuming that this is correct, one might think it means that only individual people, such as Jane, on the one hand, or Jill, on the other, can be agents. It is not clear, however, that this must be the case. If, for instance, Jill and Jane rob a bank while acting in light of their joint commitment to espouse as a body the goal of robbing that bank, it does seem to be appropriate for either one to say “ We did it,” referring to the two of them as one, unified by their joint commitment. Of course, this is compatible with each one’s personally having participated in the robbery and being morally responsible for her participation. Whether she is so responsible depends on the case.

Given the evident appropriateness of using the collective “we” in order to refer to situations ofjoint commitment, Gilbert has used the phrase “plural subject” to refer to any set ofjointly committed persons. Her use of the phrase “plural subject” is not intended to imply that plural subjects have their own subjective states in the sense of conscious experiences, or that they have minds of their own, where to have a mind is understood to involve at least in part having con­scious experiences.

For Gilbert, to say that Jane and Jill constitute the plural subject of a goal is to say that they are jointly committed to espouse as a body the goal in question, and to imply that it is appro­priate for them to use the collective “we” in referring to “our goal.” To say that Jane and Jill constitute a plural subject, period, is to say that they are jointly committed in some way.

Gilbertian joint commitments can take a variety of contents. To generalize, a given joint commitment can always be described as a joint commitment to phi as a body, where substitutions for “phi” are broadly speaking psychological predicates, as is “espouse goal G as a body.”

Those who are jointly committed in one way may, and most likely will, at the same time be jointly committed in other ways. Jane and Jill may, for instance, be jointly committed to espouse as a body the goal of robbing the bank, and also jointly committed to believe as a body that this will not take long, where the latter joint commitment is understood along the lines we have sketched for the former.

In this section we have explained Gilbert’s account of what it is for two or more people to do something together, or collectively. Central to that account is a joint commitment of the parties, a joint commitment to espouse as a body a particular goal. The action will be complete when the goal is achieved by virtue of appropriate, conforming actions of relevant parties.

In discussing non-basic cases, we noted that after jointly committing the members of a given population to endorse as a body the prosecution of a certain war, the authorities may prosecute the war with the aid of relatively few members of the population and in such a way that most members of the population are unaware of what is happening. On Gilbert’s account, then, it can be appropriate to say that we, collectively, did something, even though some of us—perhaps many of us—did not directly contribute to the action.

Many wars are of this kind. They are fought by a country’s army, navy, and air-force, at the direction of its rulers, while millions stay home, going to work as usual, tending their gardens, and so on, possibly ignorant of what is going on. Nonetheless, a joint commitment of the people authorizing the rulers to decide whether and when to instigate a war would make intelligible such thoughts as “We are at war” on the part of each one. In principle there can be such a joint commitment even in very large populations.²²

We just proposed that it “can be appropriate” to say that we, collectively, did something, even though many of us did not directly contribute to the action. There are many related questions to be discussed.

For instance—taking up again the war example, and mentioning just a few cases—what about those who actively protested the war? Or those who did not vote for the politician who—now in power—authorized it? The short answer is this. A given protestor, or one who did not vote for X as ruler, may yet be jointly committed with the other members of the popu­lation to support and uphold as a body the rules according to which X was elected ruler, with the power to start a war “in our name.” This would be enough to make appropriate saying “We are at war,” as opposed to “They are at war.” ²³

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