Collective moral responsibility: An individualist account

Midwest Studies in Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 176-193

  Miller, Srumas ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 44449090838     PISSN: 03636550     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4975.2006.00134.x     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. For an influential collectivist account, see Peter A. French. Collective and Corporate Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).
2. For arguments against collectivist accounts, see Seumas Miller, "Individualism. Collective Responsibility and Corporate Crime." Business and Professional Ethics Journal 16 (1997): 19-46,
3. and Seumas Miller and Pekka Makela, "The Collectivist Approach to Collective Moral Responsibility," Metaphilosophy 36 (2005): 634-51.
4. In this section I offer a revised version of an account I have propounded in a number of places. See my Social Action: A Teleological Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), chap. 8;
5. "Collective Responsibility," Public Affairs Quarterly 15 (2001): 65-82;
6. "Collective Responsibility, Armed Intervention and the Rwandan Genocide," International Journal of Applied Philosophy 12 (1998): 223-39;
7. "Individualism, Collective Responsibility and Corporate Crime."
8. On the notions of joint and collective responsibility see, for example, Michael J. Zimmerman, "Sharing Responsibility," American Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1985): 115-22,
9. and Larry May, The Morality of Groups (Notre Dame, IN: university of Notre Dame Press, 1987), chap. 4.
10. and Seurnas Miller, "Joint Action," Philosophical Papers 21 (1992): 275 99.
11. And the reason was causally efficacious in the right way, as was the intention. See Donald Davidson, "Freedom to Act," in Essays on Freedom of Action, ed. Ted Honderich (London: Routledee and Kegan Paul, 1973), 137-56. I do not want here to get bogged down in debates concerning the precise nature of moral responsibility and, more specifically, the relation between moral responsibility and determinism.
12. For example, Russell Hardin, Morality within the Limits of Reason (Chicago: University oi Chicago Press, 1988), 156-57.
13. Miller, Social Action, chap. 5
14. and Miller, "Collective Responsibility, Armed Intervention and the Rwandan Genocide."
15. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism (London: Methuen. 1948). 35-38.
16. This kind of analysis is capable of handling examples such as that provided by David Copp (PhD entitled, Individuals, Collectives and Moral Agency, Cornell university, Ithaca, New York, 1976, 178-79) involving the dilemma of a Prime Minister (PM) whose daughter is taken hostage by terrorists who demand that he free one of their members. The moral obligation of the PM qua father is to release the terrorist and save his daughter. On the other hand, the institutionally based moral obligation of the PM qua PM is not to release the terrorist, but rather to sacrifice the life of the person who happens to be his daughter. If the PM opts to release the terrorist he is morally responsible for failing to do his duty as PM; presumably, at the very least he would need to resign. (And if he is acting as the representative of, say, the members of the Cabinet, then perhaps they are jointly institutionally and morally responsible as well; accordingly, they should also resign.) If the PM chooses not to release the terrorist then he is morally responsible for failing to save the life of his daughter. He has to choose between two evils, and whichever option he chooses, he is morally responsible for it. But there is no need to invoke a mysterious notion of moral responsibility that attaches to the government as such, but not to the PM (and/or to the individual members of the Cabinet).
17. For more on the analysis of the notion of acting qua member of a. group, or qua role occupant, see Scuraas Miller, "Joint Action: An Individualist Account," in Elocutions, Institutions and Intentionality: Essays on Themes from the Philosophy of John Searle, ed. S. L.Tsohatzidis (New York: Springer, forthcoming).
18. David Copp, "On the Agency of Certain Collective Entities: An Argument from 'Normative Autonomy,'" Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30 (2006): 194-221.
19. See Kimberly Cass, "Expert Systems as General-Use Advisory Tools: An Examination of Moral Responsibility." Business and Professional Ethics Journal 15 (1996): 61-85. Such systems raise the issue of collective responsibility for cpistcmic or cognitive "actions," including comings to believe.
20. This notion of the collective moral responsibility of the designers of a joint mechanism is available to handle examples such as that of the tenure committee provided by David Copp ("On the Agency of Certain Collective Entities: An Argument from 'Normative Agency' " in this volume). The design issue in Copp's example is the collective responsibility for seeing to it that the specific voting processes of the committee deliver results consonant with university guidelines on tenure.
21. I accept the existence of positive rights, such as the right to security and subsistence. Such rights give rise to individual and collective responsibility. For the case in favor of positive rights, and an explanation of how rights generate responsibilities, see Henry Shue, Basic Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1996).
22. Contra some theorists, for example, Michael Bratman ("Shared Cooperative Activity," Philosophical Review 101 [1992]: 327-41), the members of the relay team do not intend the actions of the other members. How could the last runner, for example, intend the action of the first runner, given the latter action took place in the past?