2025-1 Seminar Ethics
Individual Responsibility for (and in) Collective Wrongs
1. The Overview of Chapter 4
So far, Isaacs has developed accounts of collective moral responsibility, according to which there are irreducible collective notions, such as collective intention, action, agent, and guilt. From this consideration, she has made a distinction between responsibility at the individual level and at the collective level. “Collective wrongdoing is the fault of a collective agent, not of an individual human agent, individuals are not blameworthy for it” (97).
However, one might worry that two level analysis seems to excuse individuals from responsibility in collective wrongdoing. A question then arises: “[w]hen individuals take part in collective wrongdoing, for what are they responsible—the collective wrong as such or…their contribution to it?” (102) To address this, Isaacs investigates whether individuals can be responsible for collective actions. She also distinguishes between responsibility for collective action and responsibility in collective action. “Although individuals are not morally responsible, as individuals, for collective action, we have good reason to think they can be morally responsible in collective action” (98).
We should distinguish people who are in executive roles from mere employees. Regarding the former, it is tempting to think that the individual’s act just is the act of the organization. Isaacs disagrees with this: while it makes sense to think of the leader as “setting” the intentions of the organization, what the individual does is only partly constitutive of what the collective does. Regarding the latter, they are not morally responsible for the collective wrongdoing because they neither set the intentions of the organization (as the executives do) nor have much knowledge of or commitment to those goals. However, they can be still blameworthy for (1) their personal contributions to a morally problematic collective goal, (2) their failure to do anything to stop the situation, or (3) their failure to distance themselves appropriately from the wrongdoing.
2. Discussion Questions
Let me briefly evaluate whether Isaacs’s two strategies—i.e., investigating whether individuals can be responsible for collective actions, and making a distinction between responsibility for collective action and responsibility in collective action—are successful. I will argue that some points she has made require further clarification.
First, I am not certain whether Isaacs’s explanation in Chapter 4 is consistent with her previous perspective. Take, for instance, the notion of collective intentions. It was earlier construed as “a state of affairs in which agents understand themselves as members of a collective and in relation to others, aiming as a group for the achievement of a collective goal, intend individually to do their part in the achievement of the collective goal, and mutually understand one another as doing the same” (48). However, in Chapter 4, she holds that in organizations, there is an asymmetry between members who are “setting” the intentions of the organization and those who merely perform their given tasks. This explanation does not seem to fit well with the so-called ‘state of affairs’ model. For some members apparently do not think much of the achievement of a collective goal as a group, while others set the intentions of the organization.
Furthermore, I shall point out that the meaning of “setting” is quite obscure in her explanation; Isaacs’s account apparently contradicts our general notion of “setting” and its ordinary usage. Isaacs would argue that such a setting is only partly constitutive of a collective intention—thus, an individual’s intention is not identical to a collective intention. However, it seems to me more natural to say that if I set the goal of A on behalf of A, then both my goal and the goal of A are one and the same. This, in turn, seems to be precisely why decision makers take responsibility for collective action.
Of course, Isaacs denies the possibility that individuals (even in executive roles) can be responsible for collective action. “Decision-makers for organizations must be regarded as responsible for the decisions they make—blameworthy for blameworthy decisions, praiseworthy for praiseworthy decisions—not because their actions and decisions are the actions and decisions of the organization, but because outside their role, their actions and decisions would not have the impact they do.” (108) She gives some reasons to endorse this view: (1) Decisions are sometimes made that no one would make alone. (2) The individual’s authority to make the organization’s decisions depends entirely on her or his role and the structures that empower that role. (3) Even when leaders in an organization set its intentions and interests, they do so under constraint of existing organizational policies, interests, attitudes, practices, and culture.
Arguably, decisions are sometimes made as such. However, it is equally true that decisions are sometimes made by individual alone (as has been the case in many dictatorships). Moreover, even if individual’s authority depends entirely on her or his role within the structure, it does not follow that the organization’s decision must be distinguished from an individual’s decision. I think it is innocuous to say that individuals use their authority to make their own decisions (which are, at the same time, the organization’s decisions). Finally, even decisions at the individual level are constrained by existing organizational policies, interests, attitudes, practices, and culture. However, this does not invalidate the claim that I am the author of my own decisions and actions. Although these constraints are taken into consideration in the decision-making process, they do not constitute the decision per se.