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Global obligations, collective capacities, and ‘ought implies can’

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Abstract

It is sometimes argued that non-agent collectives, including what one might call the ‘global collective’ consisting of the world’s population taken as a whole, cannot be the bearers of non-distributive moral obligations on pain of violating the principle that ‘ought implies can’. I argue that one prominent line of argument for this conclusion fails because it illicitly relies on a formulation of the ‘ought implies can’ principle which is inapt for contexts which allow for the possibility of non-distributive plural predications of agency, which are precisely the contexts in which we might expect non-agents to be obligation-bearers.

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Notes

  1. Those who have supposed this include Wringe (2005, 2010) and Nussbaum (2006) (see especially pp. 279–280).

  2. Predications of properties to groups may be either collective or distributive. When a predicate is applied to a group distributively, the truth of the predication entails that each member of the groups has the property in question. When it is applied non-distributively, or collectively, it does not. ‘The students surrounded the building’ is an example of a non-distributive predication: it can be true without it being true of any one student in particular that they surrounded the building. By contrast ‘the students entered the building’ would typically be read as involving distributive predication—that is to say as entailing that each student entered the building. For further discussion of distributive and non-distributive predication, see Smiley and Oliver (2013) and for the idea that obligations may be attributed non-distributively, Wringe (2016, 2018).

  3. Recent advocates include Wringe (2005, 2010, 2014) and Nussbaum (2006) (see especially pp. 279–280). Prominent critics include Valentini (2015) and Lawford-Smith (2015).

  4. A number of other authors have claimed either explicitly or implicitly—that non-agent groups can be capable of doing things (for example Schwenkenbecher 2013, 2014; Isaacs 2011, 2014). But neither of them gives explicit accounts of what is involved in a non-agent group having a capacity in the way Pinkert does. Shapiro (2014) gives an account of widely distributed shared agency, on which shared agency requires a shared plan to carry out a particular action. However, although his account provides a plausible set of sufficient conditions for a group of agents having collective capacities, it is far from clear that it identifies a necessary condition (as the examples I give in Sect. 6 of collectives acting without a plan suggest.) Furthermore, his account is unlikely to be of use to the advocate of global obligations for reasons analogous to those I mention in Sect. 2 for thinking that humanity as a whole is unlikely to be a collective agent (Igneski 2017).

  5. There are a range of possible views on the topic. For discussion of some of them see Wringe (2018) pp. 337–339

  6. Wringe (2005, 2016).

  7. Schwenkenbecher (2013, p. 326).

  8. Wringe (2010, 2014).

  9. Sinnott-Armstrong (1984), Saka (2000), Mizrahi (2009) and Graham (2011). For responses to Sinnott-Armstrong (1984), see Streumer (2003), Howard-Snyder (2006) and Vranas (2007). For positive cases for Ought Implies can see Howard-Snyder (2006), Vranas (2007), Streumer (2007) and for an attack on a key claim on which Streumer and Vranas depend see Littlejohn (2009). For a response to Graham (2011), see Littlejohn (2012). Reasons of space preclude a full review of these debates in this paper.

  10. French (1979). Cf also List and Pettit (2011).

  11. For extended discussion of the plausibility of this view see Wringe (2014).

  12. See for example Gilbert (1989, 2006) and List and Pettit (2011).

  13. Aas (2015) is an exception. See Sect. 3 for discussion of his view.

  14. Recent examples include Valentini (2015) and Lawford-Smith (2015). Aas (2015) may be an exception: he accepts AP, but does not think it rules out the possibility of 'unstructured' moral agents. But he does not address the possibility of humanity as a whole being an agent. Some philosophers, including Wringe (2010) reject AP; for a thorough critique of the arguments in this paper see Schwenkenbecher (2013). (I’m grateful to both Aas and Schwenkenbecher for useful discussions of their views both in correspondence and in Schwenkenbecher’s case also in person.)

  15. Darwall (2006) and cf also Stern (2011).

  16. Lawford-Smith (2015).

  17. Lawford-Smith (2015, p. 234).

  18. Lawford-Smith (2015, pp. 235–236).

  19. Note that the ‘excuse’ here is used to rebut a claim of forward-looking obligation, not as a way of deflecting backward-looking blame (consistent with the agenda set out in Sect. 2).

  20. Lawford-Smith (2015, pp. 234–235).

  21. Pettit (2007).

  22. I’m grateful to Sean Aas for comments which helped me to clarify my views here.

  23. We will meet passengers on a sinking boat again in Sect. 4. I’m indebted to a referee for this journal for the suggestion that their introduction here might contribute to the persuasive force of the argument at this point and to Stephanie Collins and Holly-Lawford-Smith for further discussion.

  24. See for example Aas (2015).

  25. Collins (2013).

  26. One might not think there is a collectivization duty. One might think that just as in Variant Two, the swimmers have a collective obligation to stop the ship from sinking even prior to forming a collective agent, and that they have derivative individual obligations to jump out and swim. The important point is that on any view, the swimmers don’t have an Impossibility Excuse in this case.

  27. Wringe (2016). Note that since no individual can stop the boat from sinking, without the co-operation of others, no-one has an individual obligation to save the non-swimming passengers. Here at least, ‘Ought implies Can’ significantly constrains the distribution of obligations.

  28. Isaacs (2011, pp. 144–154) suggests that such groups are ‘putative agents’ and have ‘putative obligations’. But I take it that putative agents aren’t agents, and putative obligations aren’t obligations. Collins (2013) suggests that we might see groups of this sort as being ad hoc agents since there is an obvious course of action available to them. But the idea of agents who constitutively (as opposed to contingently) only have one course of action available to them seems highly dubious.

  29. Lawford-Smith (2012).

  30. We might deny this. If so, we have a case where neither the can of agency nor the can of plural agency is in place, and the example doesn't tell us anything either way. We might also say that if they had succeeded it could only have been as a result of the fluke that each person tried in the right way. But it only follows that the soldiers could not stop Hitler in the plural agency sense of can if we are willing to say that even in the case of a success on the part of the soldiers (attributable to the fluke of them all trying the right thing) whereby Hitler was stopped it wouldn’t be true that the soldiers stopped him. We might say this. But we typically count an individual agent's fluky successes as successes of that agent (as many cricket score cards bear witness.) Why say differently for a group of agents? (I’m grateful to both Holly Lawford-Smith and Stephanie Collins for written comments and discussion here though both apparently remain unpersuaded.)

  31. Pinkert (2014).

  32. Aas (2015) might hold that any collective that satisfies Pinkert's conditions just is a collective agent. For he thinks there are no further substantive conditions on collective agency than collective capacity.

  33. Pinkert himself thinks that for many global obligations the belief requirement is satisfied (pers. comm). Those who agree need read no further: as far as they are concerned my task is already complete.

  34. Cf Southwood and Wiens (2016) who deny that what is actual must be feasible.

  35. One reader suggested that Pinkert’s distinction between immediate and mediate joint ability is sufficient to provide us with a sense in which the rescuers in Small Steps can save the drowners. This can’t be right. There’s nothing the rescuers can do immediately at the time the rescue commences that will put them in a position to be able immediately to complete the rescue.

  36. As Wringe (2016) suggests.

  37. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a conference on Collective Obligations at University College Dublin in June 2015, at a panel organized by Kendy Hess, Violetta Igneska, and Tracy Isaacs at the MANCEPT workshops in political theory in 2016. I was also able to discuss several of the issues discussed in this paper at a workshop on Collective Obligation and Collective Capacities organized by Nic Southwood at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU in August 2018 (whom I also thank for support during a research visit during which this version of the paper was finalized.) I’ve received useful written comments from Sean Aas, Stephanie Collins, Holly Lawford-Smith and Felix Pinkert as well as several readers I am unable to identify and one referee for this journal and also had helpful discussions of related issues with Sandrine Berges, Gunnar Bjornsson, Andrew I Cohen, Paul Mikhail Podosky Leonie Smith, David Schweikard, Anne Scwhenkenbecher, Nic Southwood, Will Tuckwell and Davd Wiens, none of whom should be held responsible either collectively or individually for any of my errors.

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    Bill Wringe

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Wringe, B. Global obligations, collective capacities, and ‘ought implies can’. Philos Stud 177, 1523–1538 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01272-6

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