Lepora and Goodin (2013) On Complicity and Compromise (4)

Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin. On Complicity and Compromise (2013)

Grading Engagement with Wrongdoing Dimensions of Difference

One pertains to the role the agent plays in doing or contributing to the doing of the wrong—the way in which her acts contribute to or partially constitute the wrong. The other basic dimension pertains to the mental stance the agent takes towards the principal wrongdoing and plan of action under lying it.

4.1 Role in the Doing

Remember, we are dealing here with situations where there is a principal action that is wrongful. And we are dealing with secondary actions that relate to the principal wrong in various ways (ranging from winking at it, making it happen, working for it, elaborating and extending it, forgiving it and abetting it, all the way to jointly performing it).

4.1.1 Essentiality

‘definitely essential’:

One is if it is ‘(even partially) constitutive’ of the principal wrongdoing. That is the case if the principal wrongdoing is constituted by that act, perhaps combined with various others.

A secondary action can be ‘definitely essential’ to the principal wrongdoing in another way, causally rather than constitutively. A secondary action is definitely essential to the principal wrongdoing when the secondary action is a necessary condition for the execution of the wrong in every one of the possible ways in which the wrong might be executed.

Morally, actions should be assessed on the basis of what consequences might reasonably have been expected at the time of the action, not on the basis of what actually resulted in the end.

 

Notice, however, that the notion of individual difference-making lies at the heart of the notion of ‘potentially essential’ contributory acts as well. Viewed in prospect (which, as we emphasized in Chapter1, is the right way to view these things), a contributory agent’s act is called ‘potentially essential’ pre cisely because there is some suitably nearby possible world in which his act will indeed individually make a difference, and the outcome in that world will be different had he acted differently. Recall the case of the back-up assassin from Chapter3. Her role is potentially essential. Her firing will be causally essential to the success of the assassination if the first assassin’s gun jams. And her role should still be seen as potentially essential, even if retrospectively it turns out thatthatpotential wasnotactualized (the first assassin’s shot proved lethal).

Consider another standard case of causal overdetermination. Think, for example, of the firing squad where four marksmen fire and their bullets strike the victim’s heart simultaneously, resulting in his death. We would not say of any one of the marksmen that he was, in the actual course of events, an individual difference-maker. Had he not fired, the bullets of other three would still have killed the victim. But each of their contributory acts can nonetheless be regarded as potentially essential (a counterfactual individual difference-maker), in that there is some possiblescenario (e.g. the other three’s guns jammed) in which any one of them would have been an individual difference-maker.

This notion of ‘counterfactual individual difference-making’ can also help in dispelling many mysteries sometimes surrounding ‘causation by many hands’.16 Take the case of the firebombing of Dresden.17 Hundreds of planes were involved in the bombing, contributing to the deaths of 35,000 people. But because of the huge number of contributory actions, it is tempting to regard eachpilot’s contribution tothe outcomeasvanishinglysmall—sosmall that we might be tempted to assume the outcome would have been the same had any one of the pilots been sick on that day and unable to fly.

In ordinary bombings, even if each pilot’s bombs contributed only a little bit, the contribution of each will have made the outcome just that much worse than it would have been otherwise. Usually, some people who died from this pilot’s bombs would not have died from anyone else’s bombs, for example.

True, their actions taken together ‘caused’ the firestorm—theoutcome—just as we have been saying. But it could also be said that the pilots’ actions, taken together, ‘constituted’ the firebombing—the act that was wrong.

4.1.2 Centrality

Suppose that the contributory act in view is a necessary condition of the execution of the wrong along M of the N possible ways in which the wrong might be executed. Weight each possible way according to the probability p of it occurring. A contributory act will be said to be more ‘central’ to the principal wrongdoing the larger the ratio of pM to pN—in other words, the larger the proportion of probability-weighted possible paths along which it is essential. We call this ‘centrality’.

The notion of centrality is a function of two separate factors: magnitude of contribution to the principal wrongdoing, and probability for that contribution to be essential for the wrongdoing

As we have been emphasizing, calculations of the ‘centrality’ of a contribu tion to a wrong’s occurring make sense only prior to the event. Of course, manyeventualities that were highly likely ahead of time might not in the end transpire, or vice versa. But morality by its nature is supposed to be action guiding. It is supposed to tell us, ahead of time, what we should do; and it evaluates our action retrospectively only in light of what could and should have been expected to occur, at the time we had to act. Therefore, as stated in Chapter1, we are here developing a framework to evaluate a contribution prospectively, without reference to retrospective information concerning whether contribution X actually contributed to wrong Y or whether wrong Y actually occurred

4.1.3 Proximity

By ‘proximity’ we do not mean to refer to physical location but rather to the place of the act in causal chain of contributions that, taken together, are sufficient for the principal wrongdoing to occur. Even if some particular contributory act of mine is necessary for a plan of wrongdoing to succeed, if there are a great many more chance and choice nodes yet to come in the causal chain before the planned wrongdoing occurs, then it is less certain that what I now do will actually eventuate in the wrong; and my moral responsibility is mitigated in consequence.

4.1.4 Irreversibility

Another important distinction is whether an act’s consequences are irrevers ible or not. An irreversible action might lock in a sequence of subsequent actions that lead to the principal wrongdoing. Although this action might not be particularly proximate to the wrongdoing in a causal sense, its causal influence on the execution of that wrong may still be particularly strong in this way. 

4.1.5 Temporality

After-the-fact actions can also play a causal role in relation to an ongoing practice of wrongdoing. Condoning a wrongful action today, for example, might contribute causally to the sustaining of a wrongful practice and thereby to tomorrow’s wrongful action pursuant to that. So too might conniving or consorting or even being contiguous to the wrongdoer.

4.2 Mental Stance towards the Wrongdoing and Plan of Wrongdoing

The principal wrongdoing, as we have characterized it, is based on a plan. The secondary agent’s stance toward that plan is important, both caus ally and evaluatively. It provides evidence of the secondary agent’s attitude towards the principal wrongdoing underpinned by that plan.

4.2.1 Planning Role

Plan-makers are agents who share in the formulation of the plan for the particular wrongdoing in question. Plan-takers are agents who have no role in designing the plan, and follow the plan as given by others.30 Maybe they ‘willingly adopt’ it as a guide to their own actions. Or maybe they just ‘grudgingly accept’ and ‘reluctantly comply’ with it. (Price-takers can similarly resent the price but purchase anyway.) Someone who is solely a plan taker might be absolutely essential to implementing the principal’s plan for wrong doing; she merely does not make the particular kind of contribution involved in ‘making’ (formulating) the plan.31

Just as we described co-principals as agents whose actions constitute the principal wrongdoing, so too can plan-makers be described as agents whose planning constitutes the plan behind the principal wrong. Those who are full joint wrongdoers are all, by definition, plan-makers. So too are the agents involved in conspiracy. Co-operators and colluders, although their actions constitute the wrongdoing, are not necessarily plan-makers: some might be nothing more than plan-takers, adopting the plan, tailoring their actions around it, monitoring changes, and changing in response.

Agents involved in condoning, consorting, or collaborating, in contrast, are typically no more than plan-takers.33 Thus, for example, most Vichy collabor ators merely (albeit, in some cases, enthusiastically) followed Hitler’s plan of wrongdoing without in any way fundamentally affecting its content. Like wise, conniving agents are characteristically plan-takers, overlooking a wrong or the plan lying behind it but not in any way contributing to the making of that plan themselves.

Complicity simpliciter represents more of a jumble in this respect. Compli cit agents might be either plan-makers or plan-takers. One scientist could be among those formulating the plan of building a nuclear bomb. Another scientist could be purely a plan-taker, doing a technical job purely for pay and to someone else’s specification. Both scientists would be complicit in the production of weapons of mass destruction, despite the very great differences in the roles they took with respect to formulating the plan itself.

4.2.2 Responsiveness

Plan-makers who formulate a plan and plan-takers who ‘adopt’ one, typically both internalize that plan and take it upon themselves to try to make the plan work.35 In so doing, they typically engage in two-way tracking of what each other is doing towards implementation of the plan.36

Plan-takers who do not ‘adopt’ the plan but merely ‘accept’ it are less likely to display mutual responsiveness towards one another’s actions in pursuit of the plan. In the paradigm case of merely ‘accepting’ the plan, plan-takers will be responsive to the plan but not responsive to one another’s actions in pursuit of the plan.That isto say, theywill doexactly whattheplanstipulates, no more and no less. And they may continue to do so even when they can clearly see that it will not actually serve (and might evenundermine) the larger purposes of the plan.

4.2.3 Shared Purposes

Like the principal wrongdoer, the secondary agent might have multiple purposes for performing one and the same action. Her action would then be overdetermined by purposes, one of which she shares with the principal wrongdoer but others of which she does not. True, she shares a purpose with the principal wrongdoer. But it is not clear that she has ‘acted from’ that shared purpose, as distinct from any of the other unshared purposes that would have led her to perform precisely the same action

thinking of ‘shared purpose’ in scalar rather dichotomous terms.

Purposes are things that can be more or less shared, in all of those respects. There is no straightforward mapping of ‘shared purpose’ onto the conceptual cousins discussed in Chapter3. While it is more likely that co-principals share purposes with one another, it is possible that even full joint wrongdoers might be doing the same thing for different pur poses; and the possibility of differing purposes is all the stronger with the other forms of co-principalship.