Group Responsibility
In this section we will discuss responsibility for group action. To recapitulate, we claim that the strongest case for group responsibility is the responsibility of a voluntary group for an internally and externally free group action, or the outcome of such action, performed in the we-mode, given that the action, or the outcome, is relevant with respect to some normative standard.
In our view group responsibility is to be understood in the sense of responsibility ascribed jointly to members of the group qua members of the group for an action performed by the group, that is by at least some of the members of the group intentionally acting qua members of the group in the we-mode.A we-mode group is a group that can act and does act as a group on the basis of its members’ group-based we-thinking and we-reasoning, or, briefly put, we-mode thinking (see Tuomela 2007 and Tuomela 2013: 27, for the notions). A we-mode group makes the members strongly interconnected — the group is supposed to function as a whole that consists of the individual members’ performing their parts of the group’s action.
A we-mode group is based on the group members’ we-mode we-thinking and we-reasoning with the result that all their we-mode attitudes and actions must (at least ideally) satisfy the three criterial elements of the we-mode viz. the group reason, collectivity, and collective commitment conditions (for these see Tuomela 2007: ch. 2 and Tuomela 2013: ch. 2). The group reason element concerns the reasons “given” by the group to the members for their participation in its activities. The collectivity condition here refers to a kind of “being in the same boat” condition concerning the members, and collective commitment ties them to the group, especially its ethos, and the mutual commitment to the fellow members concerning the promotion of the group’s ethos (involving its constitutive goals) and other goals.
A we-mode group, as treated in Tuomela (2007 and 2013), is generally viewed as an autonomous egalitarian group where the only normative structural group connections, if any, between the members are based on group-internally constructed operative-nonoperative member-level normative connections. (For non-autonomous we-mode groups involving external power, see Appendix 1 of chapter 2 ofTuomela 2013.)
When a paradigmatic we-mode group acts, there are operative members acting for the group as ethos-respecting group members (in some cases all the members might be operatives). The operatives are in standard cases identified and collectively accepted by the group members for specific tasks. To put the matter in terms ofjoint action, the basic idea is that the members share a (we-mode) we-intention expressible by “We will do Y together” and, when the intention is satisfied, the joint action expression “We did Y together” applies. The intentional agent of the intention is “we” (namely, the group members forming a non-distributive “we”), and its content is the members’ jointly intentionally performed joint action.
Group responsibility is often taken to rely on the members’ attitudes and actions as group members. In the case of a we-mode group the group members are extrinsically involved in the group’s responsibility through the actions they perform qua group members. Extrinsic versus intrinsic means here roughly the following. A mental state of a person is intrinsic if it is an ingrained property, e.g. genetically determined property, of that person. It is extrinsic if it is externally attributed to him by others (see Tuomela 2013). Yet it may be emphasized that if the members of a group act together or jointly in a strong sense so that we can speak of them acting as a group and as their being responsible as a group, it thus seems plausible to regard their group as being fit for responsibility.
A we-mode group that is not dominated by another group and that can itself determine its ethos is not literally an agent, but it can yet be regarded as a group agent on the basis of its capacity to act as a group (as a unit).
As it is not a full-blown agent with a biological constitution it is not an intrinsically intentional agent (i.e. does not have mental states and phenomenal features comparable to what their individual members on biological and psychological grounds have). As a group it can only have extrinsically intentional attitudes and mental states, viz. states that have been attributed to it, typically by its members, while its members qua private persons normally are capable of intrinsic intentionality. Analogously, we argue that a group qua group cannot, so to speak, be “intrinsically” responsible (in the sense individuals are when acting as private persons) for its activities. The group members are capable of having intrinsically intentional mental states, but when functioning as group members they, strictly speaking, only operate on the basis of their extrinsic mental states deriving from the group’s “mental” states that are comparable with role states in a theater play. However, the group’s mental states are efficacious only via the intrinsic intentionality of the individual members. Note that the extrinsic mental states are attributed to the group by the members — via those of their proposals that are collectively accepted by the members as the group’s states. The members can have intentional joint mental states (e.g. intentions) but those states often involve compromises and the like. The compromises concern a group attitude based on the (partly) inconsistent proposals by the members. Those proposals concern the group attitudes, typically extrinsically intentional ones, on which the members’ functioning in their roles in the group are to be based. These “role attitudes” are typically extrinsically intentional — and not intrinsically created by their bearers. This situation arises because we are here dealing with the members’ proposals for group attitudes. Note that putting together the members’ attitude proposals may create consistency problems in addition to those that compromises involve. The collective acceptance of such proposals for the purpose of creating unique group attitudes does not always go smoothly (cf. List and Pettit 2011: ch. 2).Assuming that the above is about right, suppose now that the group members have collectively accepted and thus created the group’s extrinsic “mental” states and have also themselves “internalized” them. Given this, we can see an analogy between the present kind of group and the case involving intrinsic attitudes and regard an autonomous we-mode group (and other similar groups appropriately organized for action) as morally responsible for its intentional actions in an approximately intrinsic sense. As is the case with a group’s mental states and actions, also the group’s actually taking responsibility for its actions is analyzed through its members’ mental states and activities, their acting jointly as a group.
If a we-mode group with external and internal autonomy is normatively responsible for an action or outcome X, then in general no one of its members is solely normatively responsible for X as a group member. This claim is about moral responsibility as a group member but bypasses the question of his purely personal (or “private”) moral responsibility. To take an example of an internally non-autonomous hierarchical group with a dictator, for example, an army unit closely simulates this case. The members cannot voluntarily leave the group (or can only do it on pain of heavy sanctions). The dictator’s power can be enforced by means of strong punishment, in special cases even death, if the order is disobeyed. In such a group, to speak of an idealized case, the dictator will normally alone be fully responsible for X as a group member, as the other members do not act freely and as they obey the dictator’s orders being coerced to do what they do as group members.
In a we-mode group the holistic idea of the members being to an extent morally responsible for the others’ undertakings qua group members holds true.
Ah the group members acting appropriately as group members are, or at least ought to be, collectively committed to the group’s action, and they accordingly collectively bear moral responsibility for what the group did, and this includes mistaken actions and dissidents’ actions. In all, in a we-mode group (with or without an internally agreed operative-nonoperative division) the members are responsible for the group’s action both as group members and to an extent as private persons — the first because of the holistic, interconnected nature of the we-mode group and the second centrally because intentional group action requires the participation of group members as group members — when they function as sentient and morally sensitive human beings.Note, however, that a member of an autonomous we-mode group (one capable of forming its ethos and, in principle, of acting freely) can at least partly escape attribution of responsibility to her qua group member in a case where the group is responsible for a blameworthy action X if she was not involved directly in the actual causal production of X and if in addition she publicly disassociates herself from the production of X (e.g., by explicitly publicly speaking against the production of X before its occurrence and perhaps even by disclaiming her membership in the group).
Consider now the responsibility of groups for their actions. “Actus reus” and “mens rea” are classical principles and requirements for intentional responsibility as well as blame and punishment. Actus reus is the requirement of the presence of the responsible agent’s own action, and mens rea is the requirement that the action was performed intentionally by the agent in question. These two principles have been discussed in the case of the responsibility of individual agents, for which case they seem largely appropriate. Manuel Velasquez puts together the classical actus reus and mens rea principles as follows (Velasquez 1983: 114):
Moral responsibility is the kind of responsibility that is attributed to an agent only for those actions that originate in the agent, in so far as the action [is] derived from the agent’s intentions (the mens rea requirement) and from the same agent’s bodily movements (the actus reus requirement).
The requirement of the presence of bodily movements is clearly too strict in general, but otherwise the account is acceptable as an ideal.
Yet, we argue that it goes against the common view that groups are often responsible for what they do and cause.In the strict classical account under discussion, moral responsibility for an act or outcome can be attributed only to the agent who originated the act in his own body, in cases of bodily action in the relevant activities of his brain and body parts over which he has direct control. This requirement cannot be literally satisfied in the case of a group or a corporation (a corporate agent), for it does not have a body that it could move. Collectivities like corporations act only through their members’ actions, but those actions strictly speaking are not the corporation’s actions. A corporation’s actions are constituted or brought about by the members’ (bodily) actions that are not in its direct control but at best under its indirect control. (But the members have direct control of their participatory actions.) Thus a corporation is not fit for responsibility in the strict classical sense (that relies on actus reus and mens rea).
Corporations and “tightly connected” groups such as we-mode groups can yet be responsible for their actions in a slightly different sense through their members’ participatory actions: Assume that the members on the basis of their joint intention realize their intention and act jointly as a group (rather than in a weaker sense of sharedness or of interaction). This can normally be taken to entail that the group acts intentionally as “one agent” and is thus (extrinsically) responsible for its action.
Of course, the members’ joint action does not quite amount to the group’s action in full analogy with an individual agent’s intentional action, as the biological and psychological unity between the intention and ensuing action in the individual agent’s case is clearly different, as seen. But if we can realistically assume that a group’s action here is what the members do as a unit or as one agent, we seem to get close to the case of an individual agent’s case and other cases satisfying the actus reus — mens rea unity requirement. Yet full unity cannot be obtained on conceptual and metaphysical grounds: the group members’ mental states and actions in general cannot be aggregated or otherwise combined to become, respectively, the mental states and actions of a group agent (cf.Tuomela 2013: ch. 5). Accordingly, the actus reus — mens rea requirement does not in general apply to the group case.
Even if groups (such as we-mode groups and corporations) cannot be responsible in the sense individual agents can be, the present view holding groups fit for responsibility in suitable cases still is intuitive. In contrast, the strict classical idea (that assumes actus reus and mens rea in unison) fits individual responsibility in the case of standard individual action, but it does not apply to the group agent case. It was not originally created to apply either and, it goes counter to common intuitions concerning group responsibility.
In the present account, then, there are the aforementioned two conceptually involved elements — group members and the group — as central elements of group responsibility, and we can speak of the group level (the group viewed as a group agent), the collective or jointness level (viz. the members viewed collectively or jointly), and the purely individual level (individuals viewed as separate individual group members or as private persons).
Our analysis of group responsibility engages each of these three levels. When the group is responsible as a group, at least some of the members generally, except for some special cases, are collectively responsible for what the group does intentionally, and, as a default, every member is to an extent responsible for a we-mode group’s actions and indeed for every other group member’s participatory actions.
The above idea of the responsibility of a group and also of its members for one and the same outcome has been disputed in the literature. The core of the criticism is that this kind of dual responsibility idea is redundant as only individual members’ responsibility really counts in attributions of responsibility: If the individuals are collectively causally responsible for an outcome, the group cannot at the same time be causally responsible for it. The alleged causal group responsibility is taken by the critics to be redundant and hence it suffices to deal with the individual group members’ causal responsibility and control.
Group responsibility typically connects to the members’ responsibility by entailing their responsibility qua group members, or, as we may say, it entails that the members qua members are jointly responsible for the item that the group is responsible for. The members’ responsibility need not always be responsibility qua group members, but might be their responsibility qua private persons in the case of a group with loosely connected members (e.g. consider an organized tourist trip to Paris by some people, or think of an I-mode group). An I-mode group is a social group consisting of members who typically think and act individualistically. In all cases the members are also privately morally responsible for their own actions.
Our general view of a group’s attitudes is that they are irreducible to the members’ attitudes (see Tuomela 2013: chapters 3 and 5, and Tuomela and Makela 2016 for discussion), and it can accordingly be suggested that the same also holds for the case of group responsibility.
Basically, the group’s (or group agent’s) control can be taken to amount to the group’s filtering for what is in accordance with the group’s ethos (i.e. group’s constitutive goals, beliefs etc.) and excludes other possibilities. Here “filtering” can be taken to mean group members’ jointly seeing to it that the group acts in accordance with its ethos, this can take place by way of members assisting, supporting, and monitoring one another.
This kind of filtering approach involves a kind of concrete plan making by the group for what its members should bring about by their actions as group members. Such bringing about a planned and intended outcome by the group in many cases requires additional planning and decision making by the group, e.g. concerning what is to be done, when, where, and how, etc. In all, the group members here do what they do based on the background platform that the group, so to speak, here represents when viewed as an (extrinsically) intentional agent. The group not only plans and initiates its action, but also monitors and controls that the group members carry it out when the circumstances are feasible. Loosely speaking, at least in simple cases, the group is constituted by its members and its main principles (ethos), and the members not only plan and reason but also realize the plans through their actions with the idea that the group is constituted by “us-together” and its ethos. If the group disintegrates after its intentionally performing, say, a blameworthy action (that perhaps originally was meant to be a praiseworthy action in accordance with the group’s ethos but was not performed with the care it should have been performed) the members are generally collectively responsible for it. Here the blameworthy result occurred because they had not acted properly as group members in accordance with the group’s plan. The fact that the ethos of the group in question is fully shared (or so we presently assume) and mutually known by the group members to be shared can be taken to play the role of filtering the actions and leaving out only the unfeasible ones, and leaving the group perhaps only with a single action normatively required by the ethos or possibly by the group leader and assigned to the group to act on.
The group is typically an occurrent active cause of the outcome in question — through its members’ functioning in the right way as ethos-furthering group members — in some cases based on a leader’s instructions or orders. However, a group can sometimes be a mere dispositional passive cause as well.
Assuming that the members of a (we-mode) group identify with the group and thus are disposed to act in accordance with its ethos, the group necessarily figures in the group members’ minds and actions and, we can say, motivates the members’ thinking and acting in the direction required or triggered by the ethos. The central idea here is that the group serves to initiate and maintain the members’ action through the mentioned psychological mechanism. The group, through its ethos suitably internalized by its members and through their accordingly motivated actions, can be said to intermediately cause the group’s relevant action (the “occurrent” or “active case”) or at least be a standing cause (the “dispositional” or “passive case”) for it — such a standing cause may become manifest in appropriate circumstances. As a result the group will be responsible both for its praiseworthy and its blameworthy actions and their outcomes, which take place through the members’ actions. As the group’s actions are constituted by its members’ actions, the group will be responsible also for its members’ participatory actions (and lack of them in other cases). This kind of group responsibility involves that the members of a we-mode group are responsible for their own participatory actions as well as typically to an extent responsible also for the other members’ participatory actions (e.g. in situations in which some of them require help). We suggest that the members may be regarded as responsible for what the group has intentionally done even in cases where the group disintegrates after the action has been performed and where the members had valid excuses for non-participation in the case of a blameworthy group action or group-induced outcome.
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