Joint Responsibility without Individual Control: Applying the Explanation Hypothesis

This paper introduces a new family of cases where agents are jointly morally responsible for outcomes over which they have no individual control, a family that resists standard ways of understanding outcome responsibility. First, the agents in these cases do not individually facilitate the outcomes and would not seem individually responsible for them if the other agents were replaced by non-agential causes. This undermines attempts to understand joint responsibility as overlapping individual responsibility; the responsibility in question is essentially joint. Second, the agents involved in these cases are not aware of each other's existence and do not form a social group. This undermines attempts to understand joint responsibility in terms of actual or possible joint action or joint intentions, or in terms of other social ties. Instead, it is argued that intuitions about joint responsibility are best understood given the Explanation Hypothesis, according to which a group of agents are seen as jointly responsible for outcomes that are suitably explained by their motivational structures: something bad happened because they didn’t care enough; something good happened because their dedication was extraordinary. One important consequence of the proposed account is that responsibility for outcomes of collective action is a deeply normative matter. 1 Joint moral responsibility without individual control Sometimes a number of individuals seem jointly morally responsible for events over which they, as individuals, had no control. Consider a simplified case: The Lake: Alice, Bill and Cecil each have a small boat in East Lake outside their town. One day last spring, each painted the boat and, unknown to the others, poured excess solvent into the lake. In the back of their heads, they all knew that this could affect the wildlife, but each of them decided that it would be a hassle to dispose of the solvent in a safe way and hoped that nothing bad would happen. However, as the JOINT RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT INDIVIDUAL CONTROL 2 DRAFT 15 APRIL 2010 [email protected] solvent from all three diffused throughout the lake over the next few days, its concentration became high enough everywhere to prevent micro-organisms in the lake from reproducing during the next few weeks, thus leaving higher organisms without food and effectively wiping out all fish in the lake. The concentration of solvent exceeded the threshold for the microorganisms by quite some margin: although the solvent from only one of the three would not have been enough to kill off the fish, the solvent from two would have. Let us assume that all three agents satisfied conditions of moral accountability. They were not being forced or manipulated to do what they did and they had both the capacity to reason and reflect on the values involved and the relevant sort of control over their own decisions and actions. Then it seems that we can rightly hold them responsible for recklessly pouring solvent into the lake. But to just about everyone that I have confronted with the case, it also seems clear that they are morally responsible for the death of the fish, that is, for an outcome of their actions over which they had no control as individuals. Similarly, it seems that voters can be morally responsible for the outcome of a referendum, citizens for toppling a dictatorial regime, consumers for good or bad practices of companies they patronize, and frequent flyers and drivers of SUVs for climate effects, even though, as individuals, they could not have significantly affected those outcomes, practices or effects. The question of this paper concerns the conditions for such joint responsibility for outcomes of collective actions. In the next section, I explain why a case like The Lake provides difficulties for standard ways of understanding collective responsibility. In section three, I propose a preliminary analysis of joint responsibility based on variations on The Lake. To support this analysis, section four introduces the Explanation Hypothesis, a model of our concept of moral responsibility that was developed to account for various aspects of individual moral responsibility for decisions, actions and outcomes. In section five, I show how the Explanation Hypothesis subsumes and deepens the analysis of section three. In section six, finally, I suggest a way of turning the Explanation Hypothesis’ characterization of our concept of moral responsibility into an account of moral responsibility as such. One of the important consequences of the proposed account is that responsibility for outcomes of collective action is a deeply normative matter. Some caveats are in order. First, the concern of this paper is moral, retrospective responsibility for events. Space prevents me from saying anything about the tight and interesting connections between this topic and other questions discussed under the heading of JOINT RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT INDIVIDUAL CONTROL 3 DRAFT 15 APRIL 2010 [email protected] “responsibility”—questions concerning legal liability, moral or legal obligations to ensure outcomes or to take responsibility for outcomes by compensating those harmed, and questions about what characterizes responsible persons, or responsible decision procedures. Second, since the concern is with joint responsibility of individual agents, I will not say anything about the claim that collectives can be responsible for an outcome when none of their members are. (For recent defences of “autonomous” corporate responsibility, see Arnold 2006, Pettit 2007, Tännsjö 2007, Copp 2007; for criticism see Corlett 2001, Haji 2006, McKenna 2006, Miller 2007.) Third, the primary concern here is with outcome responsibility rather than responsibility for decisions. The conditions under which individuals are responsible for their decisions are themselves highly contestable, but I will assume that all individuals in the cases discussed are autonomous, in control of their own decisions and actions, capable of rational deliberation, suffering from no motivational maladies, and, as a result, responsible for their own acts or failures to act. Fourth, since our concern is with difficulties pertaining specifically to the understanding of how individuals are jointly responsible for outcomes, I will assume that other difficulties pertaining to outcome responsibility can be overcome, in particular the fact that outcomes often depend on factors outside the agent’s control. (For discussion, see Feinberg 1968: 681-82; Nagel 1976; Sverdlik 1987: 74; May 1992: 42-45; Enoch and Marmor 2007 e.g.). Finally, although it is clear that individuals can be jointly responsible for good outcomes, I will follow most of the literature and focus on responsibility for bad outcomes. It should be clear, however, that the discussion generalizes to good outcomes.