On the ultimate responsibility of collectives

Midwest Studies in Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 292-308

  Haji, Ish ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61049296397     PISSN: 03636550     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4975.2006.00141.x     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), esp. bk. III.
2. See Moral Appraisability: Puzzles. Proposals, and Perplexities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), chaps. 6-7.
3. Fischer and Ravizza propose and defend an account of authenticity in Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chap. 8.
4. A probing discussion on authenticity and autonomy can be found in Alfred Mcle's Autonomous Agents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 ), chap. 9.
5. See my Moral Appraisability and my Deontic Morality and Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
6. Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996);
7. Derk Pereboom. Lving Without Free Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
8. and Stewart Goetz ("A Noncausal Theory of Agency," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49 (1998): 303 16] ) will not accept this assumption.
9. "What the condition [of ultimate responsibility] requires is that there not be any sufficient ground or reason (condition, cause, motive) of our actions for which we are not ourselves to some degree responsible. Or, putting it positively, we must be responsible to some degree by virtue of our own voluntary actions for anything that is a sufficient ground (arche) or reason (condition, cause, or motive) for our acting as we do." Robert Kane, "The Dual Regress of Free Will and the Role of Alternative Possibilities," Philosophical Perspectives 14 (2000): 57-79, p. 66.
10. See, for example. Randolph Clarke, Libertarian Accounts of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
11. Harry G. Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person," The Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5-20.
12. John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility, chap. 8.
13. For elaboration, see, for example, my "Indeterminism, Explanation, and Luck," The Journal of Ethics 4 (2000): 211 35;
14. and Derk Pereboom, "Living Without Free Will: The Case For Hard Tncompatibilism." in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 477-88.
15. Autonomous Agents, 165-72.
16. Peter French, "The Corporation as a Moral Person "American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 207 15;
17. reprinted in The Spectrum of Moral Responsibility, ed. Peter French (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 290-304.
18. The Spectrum of Moral Responsibility, 299.....302.
19. A contrasting view is to be found in J. Angelo Corlett, Responsibility and Punishment (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 105: "[C]orporatc liability ascriptions are justified to the extent that each and every corporate-individual member of the corporate-collective has significant power to act intentionally in relation to the specific wrongdoing in question."
20. I indicate a complication here merely to set it aside. One may well be dubious about whether a corporation can grasp any concepts, including the concept of moral wrongness and, hence, one may well be skeptical about whether a corporation can bring about anything in light of the belief that it is doing wrong in so acting. For an interesting discussion on the plausibility of ascribing beliefs to corporations, see Austen Clark, "Beliefs and Desires Incorporated," The Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 404-25.
21. See Mele's Autonomous Agents, 216;
22. and "Soft Libertarianism and Frankfurt-Style Scenarios." Philosophical Topics 24 (1996): 123-41, 132-33.
23. Margaret Gilbert's work on group or collective belief, guilt, and decision strongly suggests this line of thought. See, for example, Gilbert's On Social Facts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989).
24. Ishtiyaque Haji and Stefaan Cuypers, "The Problem of Manipulation Reconsidered," International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (2004): 439-64.
25. See, for example, Gilbert's On Social Facts; Sociality and Responsibility: New Essays in Plural Subject Theory (Lanham. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000);
26. "Remarks on Collective Belief," in Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge, ed. Frederick F. Schmitt (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1994), 235 56;
27. and "Modelling Collective Belief," Syntheses 73 (1987): 185-204.
28. Sociality and Responsibility, 144.
29. and "Modelling Collective Belief," 191.
30. See, for instance, Moral Appraisability, chaps. 8 9
31. and Deontic Morality and Control, chap. 10.
32. See Responsibility and Control, chap. 8.
33. A penetrating discussion of sharing responsibility is to be found in Michael J. Zimmerman,"Sharing Responsibility," American Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1985): 115-22.
34. Virginia Held, "Corporations, Persons and Responsibility," in Shame, Responsibility, and the Corporation, ed. Hugh Curtler (New York: Haven, 1986), 164.
35. John Kekes, "Collective Responsibility as a Problem for Liberalism," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 20 (1995): 416-30, p. 417.