Abstract
In Chap. 2, a basic analysis of the nature of individual (retrospective) liability responsibility was set forth, and it was taken as uncontroversial at least insofar as the basic conditions of responsibility are concerned. From that analysis, I now seek to build a notion of collective moral responsibility for use in the criminal law. Indeed, just as the analysis of individual moral responsibility was used to determine the extent to which an individual moral agent is punishable, the analysis of this chapter will seek to serve as the conceptual means by which to determine the extent to which a certain kind of collective might be “punishable,” i.e., forced by the state to compensate parties they harm wrongfully.
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Notes
- 1.
The analysis will be congruent with, for the most part, the views set forth in J. Angelo Corlett, “Corporate Punishment and Responsibility,” Journal of Social Philosophy, XXVIII (1997), pp. 96–100; “Collective Punishment,” in Patricia Werhane and R. Edward Freeman, Editors, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics (London: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 117–120; “Collective Responsibility,” in Werhane and Freeman, pp. 120–125; “Corporate Responsibility for Environmental Damage,” Environmental Ethics, 18 (1996), pp. 195–207; “Collective Punishment and Public Policy,” Journal of Business Ethics, 11 (1992), pp. 207–216; “Corporate Responsibility and Punishment,” Public Affairs Quarterly, 2 (1988), pp. 1–16.
- 2.
Margaret Gilbert , Sociality and Responsibility (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 152.
- 3.
Burleigh T. Wilkins , Terrorism and Collective Responsibility (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 97.
- 4.
Joel Feinberg , Doing and Deserving (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 223.
- 5.
This condition is related to the notion of collective feelings of guilt based on collective wrongdoing. For an incisive discussion of collective guilt, see Margaret Gilbert , “Group Wrongs and Guilt Feelings,” The Journal of Ethics, 1 (1997), pp. 65–84.
- 6.
This notion of collective fault [(i), (v)–(vi)] is borrowed from Feinberg ’s notion of individual liability responsibility (See Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, p. 222).
- 7.
For an incisive discussion of shared moral responsibility for inaction, see Larry May, “Collective Inaction and Shared Responsibility,” Nous, 24 (1990), pp. 269–278; Sharing Responsibility: Expanding the Domain of Moral Responsibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); David Copp, “Responsibility for Collective Inaction,” American Philosophical Association (Central Division), 1990; and Gregory Mellema, “Shared Responsibility and Ethical Dilutionism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 63 (1985), pp. 177–187.
- 8.
Gilbert , Sociality and Responsibility, p. 147.
- 9.
Gilbert , Sociality and Responsibility, p. 148.
- 10.
Gilbert , Sociality and Responsibility, pp. 150–151.
- 11.
For accounts under which terrorism and other forms of political violence might be morally justified, see J. Angelo Corlett, Terrorism: A Philosophical Analysis (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), Philosophical Studies Series, Volume 101; Ted Honderich, After the Terror (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2002); and Wilkins , Terrorism and Collective Responsibility.
- 12.
Virginia Held , “Corporations, Persons, and Responsibility,” in Hugh Curtler, Editor, Shame, Responsibility, and the Corporation (New York: Haven, 1986), p. 164.
- 13.
Held , “Corporations, Persons, and Responsibility,” p. 164.
- 14.
Held , “Corporations, Persons, and Responsibility,” p. 165.
- 15.
Held , “Corporations, Persons, and Responsibility,” pp. 166–167.
- 16.
Held , “Corporations, Persons, and Responsibility,” p. 166.
- 17.
Held , “Corporations, Persons, and Responsibility,” p. 161.
- 18.
This is an account of collective action based on the analysis of human (individual) action in the theory of action articulated by Alvin I. Goldman [For suggestive remarks about whether or not collectives are intentional agents, see Alvin I. Goldman, A Theory of Human Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 226. For a helpful discussion of the plausibility of collective beliefs, desires and intentionality in light of Daniel Dennett’s “intentional stance,” see Austen Clark, “Beliefs and Desires Incorporated,” The Journal of Philosophy, XCI (1994), pp. 404–425].
- 19.
Michael Bratman, “Shared Cooperative Activity,” The Philosophical Review, 101 (1992), pp. 327–341; Michael Bratman, “Shared Intention,” Ethics, 104 (1993), pp. 97–113; Michael Bratman, “Responsibility and Planning,” The Journal of Ethics, 1 (1997), pp. 27–43.
- 20.
David Copp, “What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal Theory,” Dialogue, 23 (1984), p. 250.
- 21.
Copp, “What Collectives Are: Agency, Individualism and Legal Theory,” p. 268.
- 22.
Such collective rule systems may be enacted formally, as in a national or corporate charter, or informally, as when the rules of the system are unwritten but understood and abided by members of the collective (as in the case of an academic association or society such as the American Philosophical Association).
- 23.
Raimo Tuomela , “Actions By Collectives,” Philosophical Perspectives, 3 (1989), p. 476.
- 24.
Copp writes, “A collective, one might say, could not have any ‘immediate impact’ on the world, but can only have impact ‘through’ the actions of persons. Alleged actions of collectives can always be explained ultimately in terms of the actions of persons. The question here, of course, is why should we regard this as showing that collectives do not act, rather than merely as showing how their actions can ultimately be explained?” [See David Copp, “Collective Actions and Secondary Actions,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 16 (1979), p. 178].
- 25.
Larry May, The Morality of Groups (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), pp. 65f.
- 26.
Peter A. French, Collective and Corporate Responsibility (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), Chapter 4.
- 27.
This point against French’s argument for the moral responsibility of some corporations is found in Corlett, “Corporate Responsibility and Punishment,” p. 4 (For a more recent assessment of French’s theory of collective responsibility , see Corlett, “Corporate Punishment and Responsibility,” pp. 86–100). This argument counts also against Larry May’s argument that the key to corporate intentionality lies in the redescriptions of actions of corporate-individuals into acts of corporations themselves (See May, The Morality of Groups, pp. 65f.).
- 28.
Copp, “Collective Actions and Secondary Actions,” p. 178.
- 29.
G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969). For a critical assessment of Anscombe’s idea of intention, see Cora Diamond and Jenny Teichman, Editors, Intention and Intentionality: Essays in Honour of G. E. M. Anscombe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979).
- 30.
Goldman, A Theory of Human Action, p. 71.
- 31.
Copp, “Collective Actions and Secondary Actions,” p. 178.
- 32.
Feinberg , Doing and Deserving, p. 227.
- 33.
John Ladd argues that there is a “logical” way to distinguish collective actions from those of its constituents, especially in highly organized collectives [See John Ladd, “Morality and the Ideal of Rationality in Formal Organizations,” The Monist, 54 (1970), pp. 492–496]. However, this logical distinction is blurred in the actual world of collective decision-making where it is often difficult to distinguish between a conglomerate and its constituents as intentional or as teleological (goal-oriented) agents.
- 34.
Tuomela , “Actions By Collectives,” p. 494.
- 35.
Raimo Tuomela , “Collective Action, Supervenience, and Constitution,” Synthese, 80 (1989), p. 243.
- 36.
Tuomela , “Collective Action, Supervenience, and Constitution,” pp. 254–255.
- 37.
Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, Translators (New York: The Free Press, 1947), p. 113.
- 38.
Raimo Tuomela , “We Will Do It: An Analysis of Group-Intentions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60 (1991), pp. 249–277. Tuomela’s analysis of collective action, intention and responsibility is further elaborated in Raimo Tuomela, The Philosophy of Sociality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
- 39.
The plausibility of collective belief attributions is considered below.
- 40.
It is assumed, of course, that the Goldmanian notion of human action is an adequate model for collective intentional action .
- 41.
It might be argued that collectives themselves need not act intentionally for collective intentional action ascriptions to be justified. Instead, one might argue, collectives are intentional agents to the extent that their members share an intention. However, this point assumes the plausibility of the idea of the intersubjectivity of intentions, a notion that is itself problematic [See Wilfred Sellars, Science and Metaphysics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 217f.].
- 42.
Harry G. Frankfurt , The Importance of What We Care About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). See Keith Lehrer, Metamind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) and “Freedom, Preference, and Autonomy,” The Journal of Ethics, 1 (1997), pp. 3–25, for a competing higher-order or “metamental” compatibilist theory of freedom. For discussions of freedom and moral responsibility , see John Martin Fischer , Editor, Moral Responsibility (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); John Martin Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will (London: Blackwell, 1994); John Martin Fischer, My Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Responsibility and Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); John Martin Fischer, “Responsibility, Control, and Omissions,” The Journal of Ethics, 1 (1997), pp. 45–64; John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Editors, Perspective on Moral Responsibility (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993). See also The Journal of Ethics, 3:4 (1999), pp. 275–384; The Journal of Ethics, 4:4 (2000), pp. 307–417; The Journal of Ethics, 6:3 (2002), pp. 199–303; The Journal of Ethics, 10:3 (2006), pp. 211–352; and The Journal of Ethics, 12:3–4 (2008), pp. 191–341.
- 43.
Holly Smith, “Culpable Ignorance,” The Philosophical Review, 92 (1983), pp. 543–571.
- 44.
Margaret Gilbert , “Modelling Collective Belief,” Synthese, 73 (1987), p. 198.
- 45.
For an account of the difficulties of collective knowledge see, J. Angelo Corlett, “Social Epistemology and Social Cognition,” Social Epistemology, 5 (1991), pp. 140f. This constitutes part of my reply to Frederick Schmitt’s critical comment (see note 11) on J. Angelo Corlett, “Epistemology, Psychology, and Goldman,” Social Epistemology, 5 (1991), pp. 91–100 [Also see J. Angelo Corlett, “Goldman and the Foundations of Social Epistemology,” Argumentation, 8 (1994), pp. 145–156; and J. Angelo Corlett, Analyzing Social Knowledge (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1996), Chapters 2–3.].
- 46.
For example, see Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, Third Edition (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1989); Alvin I. Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, Second Edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000); John Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1986).
- 47.
Margaret Gilbert , On Social Facts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
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Corlett, J.A. (2013). The Problem of Collective Responsibility. In: Responsibility and Punishment. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0776-4_10
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