Lepora and Goodin (2013) On Complicity and Compromise (6)
Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin. On Complicity and Compromise (2013)
Assessing Acts of Complicity A General Framework
How morally blameworthy an act of complicity is is a function of four things:
the moral badness of the principal wrongdoing;
whether (and, insofar as it is scalar, by how much) the secondary agent crosses the threshold of moral responsibility for having contributed to it;
how much of a contribution his act made (or might make) to the principal wrongdoing;
and the extent to which the secondary agent shares the purposes of the principal wrongdoer. Phrased as a formula:
pro tanto blameworthiness for an act of complicity = function of (badness of principal wrongdoing, responsibility for contributory act, extent of contribution, extent of shared purpose with principal wrongdoer)
6.1 The Basic Strategy
6.1.1 Delimiting the Scope
The first, we might say, amounts to something ‘worse’ than complicity. Co-principals do wrong themselves; their acts partially constitute the princi pal wrongdoing. Yourself doing wrong—doing something that is constitutive of the wrong—is something more(and other things being equal, worse) than contributing to the wrongdoing of others.
The second amounts to something ‘less’ than complicity, or anyway some thing ‘other’ than complicity. The act might still be blameworthy in itself; but it is not blameworthy as a form of contribution to the wrongdoing of the other person. Complicity involves secondary acts that are at least potentially conse quential causal contributions to the wrongdoing of another. Acts that are invariably causally inconsequential make no contribution to the occurrence of the principal wrongdoing of another.
6.1.2 Some Legal Precedents (and Confusions)
The badness of the principal wrongdoing (Jim’s pulling the trigger, thus killing the woman) does indeed exceed the badness of the contributory act (Sam inducing him to do so, by threatening to kill Jim’s own wife)—just as intuitively we think it should. Blackstone is vindicated. But because Sam is fully responsible for his actions, whereas Jim is acting under duress and thus excused responsibility for his, the blameworthiness of Sam-the-inducer comes out as greater than that of Jim-the-killer. Sam is more to blame, even though Jim has done something that is worse.
Ourformula thus...serves to vindicate the fundamental intuition that has long underlain the law of complicity, which is that thebadness of contributing to the wrongdoing of another is derivative from and a function of the badness of the wrong that the other has done with the aid of that contribution.
Note well, however: the link is between the blameworthiness of each of the agents and the badness of the wrong. There is no direct relationship between the blameworthiness of the principal and the blameworthiness of the acces sory. That is where the legal approaches err—in trying to draw a direct con nection between the blameworthiness of the people themselves, instead of drawing the connection between their blameworthiness and the wrong to which each of them contributed.
6.2 Elaborating the Moral Formula for Pro Tanto Blameworthiness for Complicity
pro tanto blameworthiness for an act of complicity = function of (badness of principal wrongdoing, responsibility for contributory act, extent of contribution, extent of shared purpose with principal wrongdoer)
6.2.1 The Badness Factor
By the ‘badness of the principal wrongdoing’, we mean to refer to the badness of the wrong—the badness of the fact that wrong was done. We mean to separate that out from the blameworthiness of the wrongdoer as a person... Contributory acts are causal contributions. What are thereby caused are wrongs and the bad outcomes following from them. What is caused is not the wrongdoer. It is therefore the badness of the wrong that is done, and not the blameworthiness of the principal agent doing it, which should rightly figure in the moral assessment of acts contributing to causing the wrong to be done. Hence, our ‘badness factor’.
Badness of the principal wrongdoing
(bf) How morally bad is the principal wrongdoing?
6.2.2 The Responsibility Factor
By ‘could and should have known’ in the two ‘knowledge’ elements, we mean just this: among those things it was possible for the agent to find out at all, this is one of the things he should have invested enough time and effort to have found out. ‘Should’ operates only over the range of things you could possibly have known. (‘Ought implies can’, so if ‘could’ is zero—if there’s no possible way you could have known—then there is no saying you ‘should have known’.) ‘Should’ specifies what, among those things, you could possibly have known—what you should actually have known.
Insofar as any one of the conditions V or Kc or Kw is not satisfied, the secondary agent is not responsible for contributing to the principal wrong doing. And if the secondary agent is not responsible for any of those reasons, the ‘pro tanto wrongness of her act of complicity’ is also zero in consequence
6.2.3 The Contribution Factor
6.2.4 The Shared Purpose Factor
The minimal mental condition for a secondary agent’s being responsible at all for contributing to another’s wrongdoing is that the second ary agent knew (or could and should have known) that he was doing something that could contribute to someone else’s action that the secondary agent knew (or could and should have known) was wrong. But secondary agents who actually approve of the wrongdoing and share the wrongful purposes of the wrongdoers are even worse.
6.4 Applying the Formula to Some Classic Examples
