Isaacs, Tracy (2011). Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1. Collective Wrongdoing, Collective Harm, Collective Solutions: Four Cases
Both the genocide in Rwanda and the mishandling of Canada’s blood supply for over a decade highlighted for me the need for an effective account of responsibility at the collective level, or at least an account that would make sense of the moral complexities of collective contexts. In neither case would a thoroughly individualistic analysis either of action or of responsibility adequately capture the collective dimensions of the wrong done. To be sure, individuals do not usually escape responsibility in cases of collective wrong, but the scale and complexity of these and other cases render stories of individual responsibility incapable of capturing the full range of responsibility. In Rwanda, for example, though individuals were incited to participate and did so in the tens of thousands, the extensive nature of the genocide reveals it as a collective act, that is, the act of a collective. No one individual can be said to be responsible for the massive atrocity [잔혹 행위]. The presence of collective responsibility in cases such as this does not discount the responsibility of individuals. Not only are individuals responsible for their contributions but also, I argue later, the normative character of individuals’ contributions ows in large measure from the collective endeavor of which they are a part. Many morally significant collective action contexts involve a similar normative complexity. In Canada’s tainted blood scandal, we see oversights and negligence [부주의] at the collective level and at the level of individuals who were in positions to make decisions. Focusing only on individuals would not have uncovered the serious systemic dificulties in how Canada’s blood supply was administered. Focusing only on organizations such as the Canadian Red Cross, Health and Welfare Canada, and Armour Pharmaceuticals would have allowed individuals who played pivotal contributory roles to walk away blameless. From a normative point of view, neither scenario would have been satisfactory. A two-level theory of moral responsibility, one that recognizes responsibility at the individual and the collective level, is the best and simplest way to capture the structure of responsibility in these cases. The purpose of this book is to develop and defend such a theory.
What makes this kind of case [climate change] different from the cases of genocide in Rwanda and the tainted blood supply in Canada is that while the cumulative outcome of our actions constitutes harm, it is less clear whether the harm is the result of collective wrongdoing. There appears not to be a joint or coordinated effort behind the outcome. And if the attribution of negligence requires that someone or some group should have known better, we might not even be able to explain humanity’s impact on the environment as resulting from collective negligence. Rather, we are now experiencing the cumulative impact of individuals living their lives in ways that, until recently, no one had good reason to question.
Another area of practice in which collective solutions appear to be needed is the range of social practices that result in oppression. Oppressive social practices, such as social practices of racist or sexist discrimination, often take place in contexts where they are difficult to identify because they have come to be accepted as normal. For example, the earning power of women globally is still far less than the earning power of men globally, and there are patterns indicating systemic wage inequity and lack of opportunity along the lines of race, ethnicity, and class. Individuals’ connection to this level of social practice is terribly opaque. What is not so opaque is this: adequately addressing wrongful social practice will require a collective solution.
2. Two Levels of Moral Responsibility
I defend collective moral responsibility as an essential level of responsibility, providing normative reasons as well as action-theoretic considerations in support of this position. Philosophers have been and will continue to be attracted to the apparent simplicity of thoroughgoing individualism, thus seeking reductive accounts of collective moral responsibility in which there is, in the end, no real collective moral responsibility. I argue in support of collective moral responsibility, not just as an interesting or efficient conceptual tool or a shorthand placeholder for a set of claims about the responsibility of individuals but, more important, as normatively necessary for adequately understanding collective efforts. In addition to sorting out the theoretical considerations surrounding responsibility in collective contexts, there are more practical reasons for retaining the idea that collectives, not just individuals, can be responsible. I now turn to some of these practical considerations.
The denial of collective responsibility prevents us, as individuals, from seeing our own moral effectiveness. We can see more possibilities for our own moral effectiveness when we understand our actions in terms of participation in collective ventures. I might think, for example, that what I can donate to cancer research won’t make much difference. But when I think of my donation as part of a coordinated fundraising e ort, its significance changes. From the point of view of an individual moral agent, “every little bit counts” only when we can see that others with whom we are acting together are also doing something. Think of some small part of a machine. If we take it out, it is useless on its own. The part only makes a difference when it is working in concert with the other parts. When each part is doing its job, the whole thing works. It is very important for individual moral agents to understand themselves as playing possibly small, but certainly valuable, parts. When individuals think of their actions in this way, moral possibilities expand.
3. Theoretical Background
Let me state very generally how I understand moral responsibility and the way it is different in kind from causal and legal responsibility. I want also to explain the distinction between moral responsibility, understood as an evaluative concept, and moral responsibilities, understood as another way of describing our duties or obligations.
Moral responsibility is the blameworthiness and praiseworthiness of moral agents. It differs from causal responsibility in a number of ways. First, moral agents can be morally responsible and causally responsible, whereas nonmoral agents, inanimate objects, forces of nature, and events can only be causally responsible. An avalanche [눈사태] may be causally responsible for a number of deaths, but the avalanche is neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy. Second, though causal responsibility frequently accompanies moral responsibility, it does not always. Usually, if I am blameworthy for something, then my actions caused it. So, for example, consider a situation in which you loan me your car and I return it as a write-off [폐차하는 것이 나은 차량]. There might be circumstances in which I am blameworthy for the damage to your car even though I was not the driver. For example, upon getting the car from you I in turn might have given the keys to my teenaged son, who then drove your car into a tree. In this case, his actions caused the car’s condition, but I am blameworthy to the extent that you entrusted the vehicle to my care. Third, there are cases in which agents may be causally responsible for something without being blameworthy. Excuses and accidents are two scenarios in which causal responsibility and moral responsibility come apart from each other. Accidental heroics, in which someone inadvertently saves the day, are another example. Praise is not in order in cases such as these. In short, causal responsibility has no necessary normative implications. Moral responsibility is essentially normative in nature, insofar as it is an agent’s blameworthiness or praiseworthiness for her or his morally significant actions.
Moral responsibility is also different from legal responsibility, though both have normative features and there is some overlap between them. Legal responsibility ows from a legal system, and legal systems “recognize, create, vary and enforce obligations.” The main differences between moral and legal responsibility are in the range of objects for which one is responsible in each respective domain and in the enforceability of the associated obligations. In the moral domain, I am morally responsible, that is, blameworthy, when I tell a lie in order to borrow a friend’s car, but I am not legally guilty of anything. Similarly, I might be legally responsible, that is, guilty of a violation, if I do not stay for the duration of the long red light on a deserted country road in the middle of the night, but I am not blameworthy in any moral sense. These are familiar examples of the ways the moral and the legal cover some different territory. With respect to enforceability, law enforcement systems ensure that there are consequences for wrongdoers who are caught violating laws. Morality, however, has no comparable coercive systems in place (notwithstanding the power of peer pressure in the form of censure or praise).
In addition to these differences, legal responsibility suggests a di erent understanding of “responsibility.” Instead of being evaluative, legal responsibility is more closely associated with our obligations and duties as dictated by a relevant legal system. We have certain legal responsibilities according to that system. Sometimes, when discussing morality, we understand responsibility in this way, too. We are morally responsible, that is, morally required, obligated, or duty bound, to tell the truth and to refrain from harming. This is quite different from the normative-evaluative sense of moral responsibility that is my focus. While moral responsibility, in the sense of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness, is a function of how well or badly we fulfill our moral responsibilities, these are distinct senses of moral responsibility; running them together can create confusion. Whether agents are blameworthy or praiseworthy is a separate question from what morality requires of them in terms of duties and obligations. Unless I indicate otherwise, I use “moral responsibility” in the former, not the latter, sense. I now turn to a brief discussion of my assumptions concerning the features of responsible moral agents and the nature of praise and blame.
Responsible agents are sometimes blameworthy and sometimes praiseworthy for their actions. They are members of the moral community and, in virtue of that membership, there are normative constraints on what, morally speaking, they may permissibly do. I assume that most of us are morally responsible agents because we are capable of intentional actions, that is, we are able to act on the basis of reasons. Praise and blame function as normative evaluations of agents and their actions. Some philosophers have a consequentialist understanding of praise and blame, according to which these function primarily as tools for good behavior. This is not my view; though we might well act in particular ways in order to win praise, this is not the normative purpose of praise.
4. Collective Contexts and Moral Responsibility
Philosophers who attend to collective moral responsibility investigate, among other issues, the question of under what conditions, if any, it is possible to consider collective entities to be morally responsible agents. Views about collective responsibility range from the claim that it does not exist —that collectives cannot be responsible because they are not the right sorts of entities to qualify as moral agents—to the claim that some collectives, particularly but not only highly organized collectives such as corporations, can be morally responsible. But just as discussions of individual responsibility have overlooked the significance of the collective, most discussions of collective moral responsibility either pass over individual responsibility or deal with it badly. They pass over it by remaining entirely focused on responsibility at the collective level. Peter French, for example, has done important and influential work that emphasizes that corporate structures, policies, and decision procedures, not the intentions of individuals acting within corporations, ground corporate agency. According to his account, the moral responsibility of corporations is not related to, nor does it help us to determine, the moral responsibility of individuals acting within them. This is not a fault of the view, but it does mean that individual moral responsibility is not at all addressed in French’s discussion. Silence about individual responsibility is one of the main reasons French’s collectivist view has faced so much criticism. I pay careful attention to the impact of collective contexts on the responsibility of individuals, while at the same time addressing collective responsibility.
| individual responsibility arises in discussions of collective responsibility | |
| the claim that collective moral responsibility threatens to dilute [희석하다] or completely absorb individual responsibility, letting individuals off the hook [내려놓다] when they are actually accountable. | the claim that collective moral responsibility is illegitimate because it holds some individuals responsible for the acts of others. |
I show that neither of these consequences for individual moral responsibility follows from an adequate account of collective moral responsibility. Individuals would only be absolved of individual responsibility for their part in collective action if an attribution of collective moral responsibility necessarily exhausted all of the responsibility in a given case. The view I develop, in which I defend the individual and collective as two distinct levels of moral responsibility, does not entail that collective moral responsibility dilutes individual moral responsibility in any way. The reason for this is that collective moral responsibility is blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of a collective, whereas individual moral responsibility is blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of an individual. The concern that collective moral responsibility holds some moral agents responsible for the acts of others arises from the supposition that an attribution of collective moral responsibility entails that every member of the responsible collective is responsible as an individual. This does not follow from my view, where collective moral responsibility is understood as operating on a level distinct from individual moral responsibility. Individual moral responsibility is not a function of collective moral responsibility (or vice versa) and claims about the responsibility of collectives do not entail (or erase) claims about the responsibility of individual members. Gaining clarity on this point helps to address the most persistent worry about collective moral responsibility and to deny that worry’s adequacy as a reason for rejecting the possibility that collectives may be responsible.