Collective Obligation

According to Wringe 2006 we have good reasons for accepting the existence of Global Collective Obligations  - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole. One such reason is that the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think  that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. However, obligations of this sort would be of little interest – either theoretical or practical – if they did not give rise, either directly or indirectly, to any kinds of reasons for individuals to behave in certain ways. In this paper, I argue that in many situations, forward-looking global  obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing  into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met.

There are a number of reasons for accepting the existence of Global Collective Obligations - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole. One such reason - outlined in Wringe 2005 - is that the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. However, obligations of this sort would be of little interest – either theoretical or practical – if they did not give rise, either directly or indirectly, to any kinds of reasons for individuals to behave in certain ways. In this paper, I argue that in many situations, forward-looking global obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met

There is good reason to think that moral responsibility as accountability is tied to the violation of moral demands. This lends intuitive support to Type-Symmetry in the collective realm: A type of responsibility entails the violation or unfulfillment of the same type of all-things-considered duty. For example, collective responsibility necessarily entails the violation of a collective duty. But Type-Symmetry is false. In this paper I argue that a non-agential group can be collectively responsible without thereby violating a collective duty. To show this I distinguish between four types of responsibility and duty in collective contexts: corporate, distributed, collective, shared. I set out two cases: one involves a non-reductive collective action that constitutes irreducible wrongdoing, the other involves a non-divisible consequence. I show that the violation of individual or shared duties both can lead to irreducible wrongdoing for which only the group is responsible. Finally, I explain why this conclusion does not upset any work on individual responsibility.

Many harms require collective solutions. Think, for instance, of rescuing a drowning swimmer by forming a human chain. This is a collective harm that can be prevented only if several individuals contribute. It is futile to try and prevent a collective harm on your own. In light of this, I propose that: Whether a collective harm obligates an agent to do something depends on what others (are disposed to) do. To explore this relation further, I consider situations in which (1) too few or (2) too many people are disposed to contribute to harm prevention. In such situations: (1) the outcome is not feasible, or (2) some contributions are redundant. According to most existing proposals, these factors are irrelevant. I argue that a harm obligates an individual to contribute to its prevention only if it is reasonably likely that she can help prevent it. According to the prospect account that I defend here, the risks of infeasibility and redundancy must remain within acceptable limits.

Stephanie Collins’ Group Duties offers interesting new arguments and brings together numerous interconnected issues that have hitherto been treated separately. My critical commentary focuses on two particularly original and central claims of the book:

(1) Only groups that are united under a group-level decision-making procedure can bear duties.

(2) Attributions of duties to other groups should be understood as attributions of “coordination duties” to each member of the group, duties to take steps responsive to the others with a view to the group’s φ-ing or express willingness to do so.

In support of the first claim, Collins argues that only groups that can make decisions can bear duties, and that the ability to make decisions requires the relevant sort of decision-making procedure. I suggest that both parts of this argument remain in need of further support. I furthermore argue that Collins’ account of coordination duties gets certain kinds of cases wrong, and suggest that attributions of duties to groups without decision-making procedures are more plausibly understood as attributing shared duties.

There appears to be a conflict between autonomy and solidarity which rests on the belief that solidarity requires that individuals renounce at least some fundamental aspects of autonomy. Solidarity, as a means to bringing about socio-political change, requires that people cooperate reliably and that cooperation endures over time, and so appears to demand a form of group-rule and deference to group judgments. Autonomy, on the other hand, is thought to require that we pursue goals and choose means according to our own best judgment, ultimately independent of others.
In this paper I argue that there is a back-story to autonomy that needs to be considered as well, so that we can distinguish two aspects of autonomy: autonomy as an ongoing process, and instantaneous autonomy. Solidarity will be shown to enhance autonomy as an ongoing process, while the demand of instantaneous autonomy will sometimes override solidarity but not threaten it.

In this paper, I argue that a well-known objection to subsistence rights developed by Onora O'Neill - namely, that such rights would generate obligations without an obligation-bearer, can be answered if we take such rights to impose an objection on the wrold's population, taken collectively.

Does the norm against harm extend to probable harms and to collective harms? This has been questioned because the harm that someone risks might not materialize, and because a contribution to a collective harm can as such be harmless. Against this, I argue that the norm against harm prohibits an action whenever it is reasonably likely and reasonably clear that the agent can (help) avoid the harm by opting for an alternative course of action. What is reasonable depends on how harmful the outcome is as well as on the burden that not performing the original action imposes on the agent. I go on to compare the causal condition of this ‘prospect account’ to two common alternatives: causal control and causal contribution. Neither of these can accommodate risk in a plausible way. Furthermore, they issue in implausible verdicts when either too few or too many people are disposed to contribute to a collective harm. In contrast, the prospect account limits the risk of contributing to a collective outcome that is not feasible and that of making a contribution that is redundant to morally acceptable levels.

In this paper I develop an account of member obligation: the obligations that fall on the members of an obligated collective in virtue of that collective obligation. I use this account to argue that unorganized collections of individuals can constitute obligated agents. I argue first that, to know when a collective obligation entails obligations on that collective’s members, we have to know not just what it would take for each member to do their part in satisfying the collective obligation, but also what they should do if they cannot do their part because others will not do theirs. I go on to argue (contra recent proposals) that it is not good enough for members in this situation to reasonably believe that others will not do their part. Rather, for a member of an obligated collective to permissibly escape doing her part in a collective obligation, she must both reasonably doubt that others will do their part and stand ready to act in case others do as well.

This necessary condition for collective obligation points the way to plausible sufficient conditions – conditions that, I argue, allow unstructured collectives to bear obligations. For (a) if a collective’s members are individually obligated to be ready to do their part, in a given collective action, and (b) if that individual readiness makes it sufficiently likely that the collective will in fact act, then it is hard to see what could block an attribution of collective obligation. In particular, in that case there ought to be no additional objection that there is no existing, organized “agent” on which the obligation might fall. For agents are, simply, things that can act. To be able to act is just to be able to succeed by trying. Unstructured collectives try to do something, I argue, when each member acts on their willingness to do their part in that thing if others do theirs; sometimes they succeed, producing a collective action. Some unstructured collectives, therefore, can succeed by trying; therefore, they can act; therefore they are agents.