Joint Action and Participation

A familiar distinction is that between joint action where the group is a structured collective and arguably counts as a novel agent (over and above the constituent individual agents), and joint action of an unstructured collective where the agents are the individuals and there is no novel group agent (Schwenkenbecher 2013: 3; Pettit & Schweikard 2006).

But recall that we were interested in understanding participation in order to make sense of the idea that the individual is in a position to act for the relevant reasons. That is, we need to secure Look-back-look-ahead at the level of the individual participant. It is not yet clear how the notion of collective or joint agency is supposed to do this. As it turns out, for some cases it seems straightforward how an individual might be in a position to act for the relevant reason, and so the case of being held responsible is clear. Other cases are more challenging and will require us to reconsider some assumptions about the nature of agency and acting for reasons.

First, the straightforward cases. Consider an amusing case described by Wringe.

Office: Two people share an office. Due to bad weather the roof starts to collapse. The person who needs to be informed has to be informed by email. A has the technical expertise necessary to describe the damage to the roof in an informative manner, but doesn’t know how to use email. B is a computer wizard who doesn’t know the first thing about roofs. Between them, they can pass an informative message to the right person. Individually, neither of them can.

(Wringe 2014: 479)

A and B are collectively responsible for informing someone of the roof damage, and they can do something about it by sending the email with the relevant information.

But recall that the capacity to perform the relevant action is not enough for responsibility. There is, in addition, the question whether one has reason to. Now, in this case, it seems that each participant does have the relevant reason. The need to inform the relevant party is a reason to compose a message in A’s case and serves as a reason for what A does. Even if A can’t accom­plish the entirety of the task by himself (because the message must be sent by email and he doesn’t know how to do that), he has a relevant reason for his part (composing the message) and thus can do something about the matter. Barring other considerations, it seems then that A sat­isfies Look-back-look-ahead and can be held responsible (alongside B) in the matter. Likewise for B with regard to sending the message that he himself cannot compose.¹⁸

But other cases, such as that of over-determination, pose a challenge for understanding how an individual can act for the relevant reasons.¹⁹ We can get to a problematic case by stipulating in the Humiliation scenario that whether or not an individual participates in the bullying makes no difference for the humiliating outcome; the others will engage in bullying irrespective of what the individual does. Given that it makes no difference whether one joins in the bullying — that refraining or attempting to intervene won’t change the humiliating outcome — it’s not clear how one has a reason to do anything to stop the bullying. The principle is something like this:

Makes no difference: Sometimes a morally significant outcome S results from the con­tribution of multiple individuals, and S would result irrespective of the actions of any one of the individuals.

If something like this is true, then we lose our grip on a reason that figures as a condition for responsibility. In what sense, then, can one (along with others) be blamed for humiliating the child?

One reaction to the makes no difference worry is to reject Look-back-look-ahead, allowing for responsibility and blame, even in the absence of the relevant forward-looking reason to act on. Kutz (2002: 563) seems to defend a position like this. He describes these cases as involving a “mediated relation to harm, where injury is brought about through the actions of others... many of them are cases where what any one individual does makes no difference; only together do individuals cause harm.” He adds that

It’s a familiar fact of our moral and legal practices that we blame, punish and demand compensation from complicitous agents even though what they did made no diffe­rence.. The puzzle arises because, if causal contribution is necessary to responsi­bility, then no one is responsible, for no one makes a difference.. What complicitous responsibility centrally challenges is an appealing, intuitive principle of responsibility, that someone can only be responsible for events over which he had control.

(Kutz 2002: 563)

Kutz says that “Once we have an analytical understanding of co-operation, a normative account of complicity follows suit” (2002: 563) On this view, an individual counts as “inclusive” author of actions performed by another agent when each has a participatory intention that joins them in a single collective endeavor; responsibility tracks this inclusive authorship.²¹

Seeing how responsibility tracks authorship is not controversial so long as we’re talking about each author really contributing and making a difference. But what happens when we don't make a difference? Kutz (2002: 564) insists that the point still holds: “... in cases of full over-determination, when no individual really does make a causal difference, blame.

How does this work? Take Kutz’ case of the picnic (2000b: 154; see Nefsky 2015: 250—1 for insightful discussion.) We are setting up a picnic together. While I go to fetch a cooler from the car, you carelessly spread the blanket in such a way as to destroy a flowerbed. There is nothing that I could reasonably have done to make a difference to avoid the consequence; I did every­thing right — in particular, I can’t keep a constant eye on you; you’re not a child and have no record of reckless disregard for landscaping. And yet, Kutz suggests, I am partly accountable for the damage — though much less so than you, of course. Some support for this assessment might come from comparing my culpability as a participant in the joint action with that of some other picnicker on the other side of the park who had nothing to do with me and my careless picnic partner. That individual on the other side of the park seems not to be at all implicated in the damage to the flowerbed, whereas my culpability, though attenuated, is real. At least, that is the intuition. Thus Kutz concludes:

Whatever the ultimate account of complicitous responsibility...will have to go at least partly by way of the participatory intentions of the agents — their will, independent of its effect, to join in a collective act that does injury. For in the absence of any salient individual causal contribution, surely it is the co-operation itself that explains respon­sibility. Implication follows participation.

(Kutz 2002: 564)

Kutz is making the point that a lack of control need not preclude responsibility; but the point would seem to extend to our concern — the idea of acting for reasons that amount to doing something about S. As one of Bjornssons bullies, I am implicated as a participant in the activity. But because I can’t make a difference, there is nothing really for me to do about the bullying and humiliation; there is no reason for me to act one way or the other.

If we accept Kutz’ intuitions about the picnic case, then we do seem to have an instance of accountability and responsibility without having the relevant reason grounding it — without, that is, the reason that figures in doing something about the matter. Regarding Parfit’s famous case of the harmless torturers, Kutz (2002: 564) says “Parfit himself struggles to accommodate consequentialist ethics to a form of responsibility that seems, on its face precisely independent of individual consequence.” For our purposes the moral would seem to be that we don’t need to secure Look-back-look-ahead at the individual participant level, so long as we have joint or collective agency.

Now, it may seem that Kutz has identified a way of thinking about responsibility without reason for action (assuming that his intuitions about the picnic case are compelling). But it is troubling to concede that for many of the cases where an individual makes no difference whereas a collective effort does address the matter, the individual participant in the collective effort is not acting for any relevant reason and so doesn’t count as doing anything about the matter. On the contrary, it seems that the individual who is doing her part of some collective effort is very much doing something about the matter, and acting for the relevant reason.

This concern becomes clearer and more pressing when we recognize the possibility that one might not be a part of the collective effort. For all that Kutz has said so far, it seems that when one is not a participant in some collective effort to address some environmental problem, one is not accountable for not making an effort. Kutz might then suggest that in this case one should join in such an effort. But what would be the motivation or reason for doing so? It can’t be the consideration that we would have thought would generate the reason to do something, such as averting environmental disaster or preventing the kid’s humiliation as the case may be. After all, the worry was that the individual has no such reason in these makes no difference cases (Nefsky 2015: 261—3).

Thus, even if we set aside the concerns about how to establish joint action, it seems that Kutz’ proposal doesn’t get right the reason that one takes oneself as having for doing one’s part in the collective activity. It’s not as if there is no reason that one might try to locate in Kutz’ view. One might, after all, be concerned with accountability and blame. And if Kutz is right that one has accountability in this situation — and indeed there are views where mutual accountability is constitutive ofjoint action (Gilbert 1990; 2009) — then such a concern will generate reasons to act. But, though a possibility, this is not the sort of reason one naturally has for doing something in these sorts of cases. Accountability was not one’s concern; doing something to avoid envir­onmental disaster was (Nefsky 2015).

I suspect that the challenge raised for Kutz’ approach points to the idea that account­ability is not fundamental; the rightness of the action, or the reasons that make the action right are what really matter.²² Look-back-look-ahead connects backward-looking responsibility and accountability with forward-looking reasons for action. But the important thought underlying Look-back-look-ahead is that this isn’t merely a connection or correlation; the forward-looking reasons that make the act the right thing to do (partially) explain or ground facts about blame and responsibility. The sort of pure accountability that Kutz has in mind for complicitous responsibility is problematically ungrounded.

That being said, I think that there is something right in Kutz’ invocation of intention. This, after all, is what secures the individual participation needed for the individual agent to be implicated in collective responsibility. But we also need the access to reasons for action that make sense of what one is doing in participating.

17.4