Abstract
Building on Peter French’s important work, this chapter draws three distinctions that arise in the context of attributions of moral responsibility, understood as the extent to which an agent is blameworthy or praiseworthy. First, the subject of an attribution of responsibility may be an individual agent or a collective agent. Second, the object of the responsibility attribution may be an individual action (or consequence) or a collective action (or consequence). The third distinction concerns the temporal dimension of the responsibility attribution. Sometimes responsibility for an action is attributed to an agent at the time of the action. At other times responsibility for an action is attributed to an agent sometime after the action has taken place. Taken together, these three binary distinctions yield eight types of responsibility attribution. It is argued that a collective agent’s responsibility for a past collective act is properly understood on the same theoretical model as is an individual’s responsibility for a past individual act. While most assume that responsibility over time is a straightforward matter of identity over time, it is argued that instead this is a matter of psychological or attitudinal connectedness. The possibility is considered that this relation also grounds attributions involving an asymmetry between subject and object, such as individual responsibility for past collective action, but a skeptical worry is raised that such attributions entail an unpalatable form of moral luck and should therefore be rejected.
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Notes
- 1.
See Strawson (1962).
- 2.
See French (1976, 443–444). He argues that blame is a two-place predicate (e.g. “We blame X for Y”). Insofar as one can be more or less blameworthy for a given object, responsibility in the sense of blameworthiness or praiseworthiness is (at least) a three-place predicate.
- 3.
See French (1984).
- 4.
For ease of expression I’ll speak of the object as being an action rather than an action or consequence, but the disjunction should be taken as implied.
- 5.
- 6.
The point here is that moral responsibility needs to be indexed to time. The manner in which I’ve placed the temporal index here naturally accords with a four-dimensionalist ontology; the subject of a responsibility attribution is an agent at a time rather than an agent simpliciter. But this is not the only option, and nothing in what follows requires the adoption of four-dimensionalism. For example, one might instead hold that moral responsibility is a four-place rather than three-place predicate relating subject, object, degree, and time. Or one might hold that instantiation itself is a temporal relation or appeal to a temporal sentential operator. Which account one prefers will depend on one’s favored solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics (see Lewis 1986, 203–205).
- 7.
Note that on this conception the distinction between individual responsibility and collective responsibility is wholly accounted for in terms of the relata of the moral responsibility relation. Alternatively, one might attempt to account for the distinction, not in terms of distinct relata, but in terms of distinct relations as May (1987), chapter 4 appears to hold.
- 8.
- 9.
For example, it is widely acknowledged that there is an epistemic condition on responsibility.
- 10.
Note that the debate in the literature about whether responsibility is essentially historical is a debate most fundamentally about the proper conditions of Type 1 attributions. It is not directly a debate about the conditions of Type 2.
- 11.
Locke, for example, appears to endorse this view: “In this personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment” (1694, 46). Many others have agreed.
- 12.
- 13.
As Parfit asks in relation to the question of survival in such cases, “How could a double success be a failure?” (1984, 256).
- 14.
One might object to this claim by appealing to four-dimensionalism. According to the objection, prior to the fission operation there were actually two distinct but overlapping space-time worms occupying the Bonnie body. While this move might help one resist the fission cases as counterexamples to the claim that personal identity is necessary for diachronic responsibility, one will still be forced to deal with further counterexamples. This is because four-dimensionalism, as such, does not provide an account of the relation that unifies two person-stages as stages of the same space-time worm. The four-dimensionalist must appeal to some account of the unity relation, whether it be psychological or biological, and there are then further counterexamples to the necessity claim given those particular accounts. See Shoemaker (2012).
- 15.
One might object that Red at t2 is just as blameworthy for the murder as is Red at t1, it is simply that it is less appropriate to overtly blame Red at t2 than Red at t1. I agree that it would be less appropriate to overtly blame him at t2 than at t1, but I believe that the best explanation of this judgment is simply that he is less blameworthy at t2 than at t1. See Khoury (2013, 737–738, 744). Also see Khoury and Matheson ms.
- 16.
Note that Red at t2 is personally identical with Red at t1 on the two most popular accounts of personal identity: the psychological criterion and the biological criterion.
- 17.
See Parfit (1984, 204–207). The qualification is needed because persistence will hold only when connectedness holds uniquely (i.e. one-one, not one-many). But because whether this relation holds uniquely or not is arbitrary, psychological connectedness captures “what matters” in the persistence of psychological states.
- 18.
Parfit (1984, 206) defines strong psychological connectedness as enough connections to ensure that identity holds day to day, on a revised Lockean view of personal identity. Strong connectedness, then, is a non-scalar binary relation unlike psychological connectedness simpliciter. Appeal to overlapping chains of strong connectedness (i.e. psychological continuity) is necessary in order to craft an account of personal identity from the notion of psychological connectedness. This is because personal identity is a form of numerical identity and so must have the logic of numerical identity (e.g. it must be non-scalar and transitive), but psychological connectedness does not have the appropriate logic (e.g. it is scalar and intransitive).
- 19.
See Khoury (2013), and Khoury and Matheson ms.
- 20.
This language comes from List and Pettit (2011).
- 21.
- 22.
See Davidson (1980).
- 23.
- 24.
See Dennett (1987).
- 25.
- 26.
I take it that one of the primary insights of Strawson’s (1962) landmark essay is that this is what moral responsibility is most fundamentally about. Silver (2002, 2005) and Tollefsen (2003) have defended a Strawsonian approach to collective responsibility according to which appropriate collectives can be the proper target of the reactive attitudes. Recently, Björnsson and Hess (2016) have argued that appropriate collectives can also be the proper bearers of the reactive attitudes. In my view the Strawsonian approach is complementary to, rather than an alternative to, the functionalist approaches of French and List and Pettit.
- 27.
Janna Thomson appears to invoke this view when she says: “They [properly organized collectives] ought to act responsibly, and when they do wrong they ought to make recompense. Since these collectives persist through time and, in many cases, through the generations, so, it seems, do their responsibilities” (2006, 158; also see her remarks on 159–160). Abdel-Nour endorses the claim that identity is necessary and sufficient for both individual and (arguably) collective diachronic responsibility: “No matter when the agent’s role as cause of a bad state of affairs is discovered or established, this discovery incurs a responsibility on her merely by virtue of her identity with the agent who performed the deed” (2003, 697). Also see Van den Beld (2002).
- 28.
This language comes from List and Pettit (2011, 34).
- 29.
One might appeal to four-dimensionalism in order to attempt to resist this counterexample. The same remarks apply in the collective context as do in the individual context. See note 14.
- 30.
The plausibility of this claim depends, in part, on the correct account of collective numerical identity. Suppose that the correct account appeals to, as do the most popular accounts of personal numerical identity, some form of continuity such as psychological or attitudinal continuity, or some form of physical continuity. Continuity is a relation that is non-scalar and transitive, as it must be if it is to play the appropriate role in an account of numerical identity (which is non-scalar and transitive). Though these logical features of the continuity relation allow it to play the appropriate role in an account of numerical identity, they entail the possibility that continuity can hold in the absence of any “direct connections” whatsoever. That is, continuity is a relation that is made up of overlapping chains of some other underlying relation. There can be overlapping chains of that underlying relation over some duration (and so continuity) even if there are no direct chains of that underlying relation over that duration (and so no direct connections). If the correct account of collective numerical identity looks something like, for example, Parfit’s Psychological Criterion (1984, 207), then it will be possible that a collective at one time is numerically identical with a collective at another time even though they share no attitudes whatsoever. For example, it would be possible for a collective at t1 that is an attitudinal and functional duplicate of the Nazi SS to be uniquely continuous with, and for that reason numerically identical with, an attitudinal and functional duplicate of Oxfam at a later time t2. It is in light of such cases that the claim that collective numerical identity is sufficient for diachronic responsibility is most difficult to sustain. On this point in the individual context see Khoury and Matheson ms.
- 31.
See note 17.
- 32.
- 33.
Notice that this formulation allows for the possibility that there are additional requirements. For example, one might wish to hold that diachronic responsibility requires that the agent in some way freely chooses to continue to have the relevant attitudes.
- 34.
According to this view, if an individual member votes against that policy of collective action then she may not be responsible for that particular collective action because she is not relevantly connected to the collective’s “springs of action.” It should be emphasized, however, that this in no way implies that there is nothing else for which the individual is responsible (e.g. her becoming a member).
- 35.
There are a number of accounts in a similar general spirit. For example, Abdel-Nour (2003) argues that an agent can be properly connected to the past action of another (and arguably of a past collective like a nation) via the emotion of pride, and that this grounds attributions of responsibility. According to Abdel-Nour, “when there is national pride, there is national responsibility” (713). May (1992) argues that one can be responsible for the acts of a distinct agent in virtue of sharing the relevant attitudes that gave rise to the act.
- 36.
Contrast with, for example, David Silver’s (2002) account. While he helpfully frames the issue of Type 6 attributions as one concerning an individual’s proper ownership of past collective action, his positive account of this ownership seems to imply that there are no differences amongst members with respect to their responsibility for a collective act. This is because, on his account, one owns the past actions of a collective of which one is a member, simply in virtue of the fact that one is a full-fledged member of that collective. But, arguably, it is implausible that all members of a collective are all equally responsible for the past acts of the collective. Some, for example, may reflectively endorse (i.e. be attitudinally connected to) the attitudes that gave rise to the past action to a greater extent than others, and this seems morally relevant.
- 37.
One can accept that collective attitudes supervene on individual attitudes without accepting that a collective’s attitude towards a proposition supervenes on the attitudes of its individual members with respect to that very proposition. See List and Pettit (2011, 64–73). It’s worth noting that the relevant supervenience relation may not be a form of attitudinal connectedness, as defined here, insofar as the latter but not the former involves a causal relation.
- 38.
The same issue arises in the case of individual diachronic responsibility for individual action (Type 2).
- 39.
The notion of tracing is familiar in the literature on free will and moral responsibility in the individual context. Many theorists believe that an appeal to tracing is necessary in order to explain a range of cases of moral responsibility such as drunk driving cases. For example, suppose that an agent freely and knowingly becomes inebriated at a party and subsequently drives home and kills a pedestrian. Stipulate that the agent lacks the control required for moral responsibility at the time of the accident. But, intuitively, the agent is responsible for killing the pedestrian. Many think that we can properly explain the agent’s responsibility only if we trace back from the control-deficient event (the killing of the pedestrian) to some non-control-deficient event (e.g. the agent’s getting drunk). See, for example, Fischer and Ravizza (1998), and Fischer and Tognazinni (2009). Some theorists have raised problems for tracing and offered alternative accounts. See Vargas (2005), Khoury (2012), King (2014), Shabo (2015), and Agule (2016).
- 40.
See Kutz (2000).
- 41.
- 42.
Kutz (2000, 122) makes explicit the distinction between object and basis.
- 43.
This is true with respect to the actual above accounts referenced. Here is a sketch of an argument for the general claim that this relation must be contingent. Note first, that no plausible basis of an individual’s responsibility for a collective act, such as her own individual contribution, will itself be sufficient for the occurrence of the collective act. This is because collective action is only possible in the context of the contributions of multiple individuals (i.e. a collective).
Secondly, one can argue that no particular individual contribution is itself necessary for the collective act by appealing to the multiple realizability of collective action (see List and Pettit 2011, chapter 3). French noted early on that certain kinds of collectives, what he called conglomerates, could be multiply realized: “The existence of a conglomerate is compatible with a varying membership. A change in the specific persons associated in a conglomerate does not entail a corresponding change in the identity of the conglomerate” (1998, 44). And it is not implausible to hold that collective action is also multiply realizable such that the actual contribution of any particular member could be fulfilled by another individual. If so, then the actual contribution of any particular member won’t be necessary for the occurrence of the collective action. Assessing the extent to which collective action is multiply realizable in this way would require a full account of the individuation of collective action.
- 44.
- 45.
I defend this claim, in slightly different terms and in relation to individual responsibility, in Khoury (2012).
- 46.
Or more carefully, for the conduct of an agent with which the former is not relevantly continuous.
- 47.
French (2016) has recently raised an objection in a sympathetic spirit against particular accounts of complicity.
- 48.
I should reemphasize, too, that my skepticism only concerns responsibility construed as blameworthiness or praiseworthiness. It is plausible that individuals may have duties or obligations in light of the actions committed by the groups of which they are members. And so it is plausible, in this distinct sense, that individuals can be responsible for (i.e. have a duty to respond to) collective harms. See Radzik (2001).
- 49.
A distant ancestor of this piece was a chapter in my doctoral dissertation of which Peter French was the director. Peter is well known for his writings, but he is also a devoted teacher and mentor and I thank him for his continued support through the years. I also thank Zachary Goldberg for inviting me to contribute to this volume and for comments on the manuscript, and Benjamin Matheson for helpful discussion and comments.
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Khoury, A.C. (2017). Individual and Collective Responsibility. In: Goldberg, Z. (eds) Reflections on Ethics and Responsibility. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50359-2_1
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