The Case for ‘Contributory Ethics’: Or How to Think about Individual Morality in a Time of Global Problems

1. For some discussion of this point, see esp., (Lawford-Smith, Citation2016).

2. Budolfson discusses various versions of the Causal Impotence Objection to varying degrees in multiple publications, including his doctoral dissertation (Budolfson, Citation2012), a book chapter on the harm footprint of veganism (Budolfson, Citation2016), an article on utilitarianism’s specific response to the Causal Impotence Objection (Budolfson, Citation2019), and a as-yet unpublished manuscript that makes his core argument most directly (CitationBudolfson, Manuscript).

3. Data on per capita emissions, both globally and by country, are reported by the World Bank. Information can be accessed here: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/en.atm.co2e.pc. As of 2014, annual emissions of the average US citizen appear to have fallen from a high of more than 22 metric tons in the 1970s, to around 16.

4. For another consequentialist response to the Causal Impotence Objection that invokes triggering thresholds, see (Hedden, Citation2020).

5. Kagan and Norcross do not expressly say that such actions violate an obligation – for instance, Kagan writes that consequentialism ‘condemns’ acts that might ‘trigger’ massive harms (Kagan, Citation2011, p. 140). Norcross also uses the language of ‘condemnation’ (Norcross, Citation2004, p. 231). This might be in part because they are somewhat hesitant to employ deontic notions like ‘obligation’. Norcross, after all, defends a version of scalar consequentialism, which does not treat obligation as an intrinsically important deontic category. See, e.g. (Norcross, Citation1997) (Norcross, Citation2006).

6. For another discussion somewhat along these lines, see esp. (Johnson, Citation2003).

7. Hedberg argues for the conclusion that ‘individuals have a prima facie obligation to reduce their individual GHG emissions, unless they are already doing all that they can be reasonably be expected to do to reduce the impacts of climate change,’ (Hedberg, Citation2018, p. 67). Hourdequin writes, ‘The kind of unity that integrity recommends requires that an individual work to harmonize her commitments at various levels and achieve a life in which her commitments are embodied not only in a single sphere, but in the various spheres she inhabits,’ (Hourdequin, Citation2010, p. 449). Fischer devotes his book to exploring different attempts to ground obligations to go vegan (Fischer, Citation2020). In Chapter 9, he settles on the view that if one adopts a practical identity as an animal activist, then one acquires something like an obligation to go vegan – and this is the best or perhaps only way to account for an obligation to be vegan. For another integrity view, albeit one less concerned with obligation, see esp., (Boey, Citation2016).

8. I take it that this is close to the criticism that Colin Hickey makes of Kutz’s move here, when he says that arguments like this merely ‘slap a label of complicity’ onto participation in a collective harm (Hickey, Citation2017, p. 51).

9. Nefsky explores this terrain across multiple publications: (Nefsky, Consequentialism and the Problem of Collective Harm: A Reply to Kagan, Citation2011), (Nefsky, Citation2015), (Nefsky, Citation2017).

10. For instance, Nefsky writes, ‘My own view is that in such cases, the fact that individual acts of the relevant sort can help to change the outcome, but that the outcome will not (or is very unlikely to) turn on any individual one of them, yields – to borrow a term from Kant – an “imperfect” obligation to act in the relevant way’ (Nefsky, Citation2017, p. 2765).

11. One complication for this example arises because as of this writing, China is no longer accepting recycling from the United States, and so there is energized skepticism regarding whether recycled waste will, in fact, be recycled. For the sake of this example, we ignore this complication, as this is not, presumably, an insurmountable challenge. If any reader is skeptical that recycling is a particularly good example, we offer several others in the following sentence. Our point is that: even if there are objections to any particular example of a contributory action, there are plenty of others to choose from. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

12. Although we do not intend our view to require a particular normative ontology, we endorse the following claims (on which many formalized views could agree): 1. A reason is a consideration that counts in favor of something; 2. When reasons stack up in some way – perhaps that there is weightiest reason, or overriding reason, to do some particular thing – then they entail that one ought to do that thing; and 3. That one has reason to do, or ought to do, a thing does not imply that one is obligated to do so, as an obligation is a strict requirement (which likely entails that others have standing to demand, and that various reactive attitudes are justified).

13. While Nefsky ultimately gestures toward her view that individuals have various imperfect obligations, she primarily focuses on reasons – writing, ‘my focus in this paper is on the question of how there can be reason to act in the relevant ways in collective impact cases, when it looks as though doing so won’t make a difference. Often, though, discussions of these cases have focused on the stronger question: is there a moral obligation to act in these ways’ (Nefsky, Citation2017, p. 2744)?

14. See, e.g. (Fischer, Citation2020) (Kingston & Sinnott-Armstrong, Citation2018) (Schwenkenbecher, Citation2014).

15. One complication for this claim about expressive value comes from Ewan Kingston and Sinnott-Armstrong in (Kingston & Sinnott-Armstrong, Citation2018, p. 184). They argue that consuming fossil fuels for fun by joyriding (‘joyguzzling’) could be a way of signaling how institutional solutions rather than individual ones are ultimately needed – and therefore, there is not an obligation not to joyguzzle. In reply, there are a few points worth making. First, we are not claiming that there is an obligation to refrain from the relevant activities – merely that there are reasons, so, on its own, this point from Kingston and Sinnott-Armstrong does not undercut our claim. Second, there are reasons to doubt that such activities will, in fact, have the relevant expressive function in many contexts, as there are reasons to think others will fail to interpret such activities in the intended way. But third, if joyguzzling did call attention to the need for institutional solutions to problems like climate change, then perhaps there could be reasons to engage in it. Nonetheless, the reason to act in this way with the relevant expressive function would be one reason among many – and, on their own, such reasons in favor of joyguzzling would not be decisive. And we take this to highlight the need for more work in contributory ethics (which we begin in the sections below); we need more rules of thumb or other deliberative strategies to help determine what we have most reason to do – whether that is to make a small contribution to raising awareness of the need for institutional solutions, or to refrain from making a harmful contribution to a massive system. We thank an anonymous referee for bringing this point to our attention.

16. In other words: we predict that these different accounts of reasons converge in supporting the claim that we have contributory reasons. The main difficulty for this prediction would arise for those with broadly Humean sympathies, according to which one’s reasons for action are closely tied to our desires. Perhaps some Humeans would claim that if someone were truly indifferent to the collectively bad outcomes we have discussed, then that person does not have reasons to refrain from, say, leaving all the lights on. Yet we do not take this claim to be a challenge to our argument. The causal impotence objection does not derive its force from indifference to massive, collective harms; it derives its force from each individual’s inability to make a meaningful difference to massive, collective harms. Accordingly, arguments that rest on motivational indifference will only show that individuals indifferent to massive collective harms lack the relevant reasons. And, if the argument in this paper only applies to those who care about the badness of the relevant massive problems, then we do not see this as a shortcoming of the argument; our aim is not to demonstrate that the skeptic or the amoralist has the relevant contributory reasons.

17. See (Raz, Citation1986), (Raz, Citation2006). Some might point out that Raz appears to intend to proffer his view about conditions under which we are obligated to comply with law. Yet as others have pointed out, Raz’s view seems better-suited to explaining when we are permitted to treat law as authoritative. For this point, see esp. (Hershovitz, Citation2011), (Perry, Citation2013).

18. Noting that it’s the structure of today’s world that raises these questions also hints at an explanation for why this project seems so difficult. Humans have, for most of their existence, lived in a wildly different context from that in which we find ourselves. The problems of a global society of billions of people raises fundamentally different ethical issues than did the smaller societies in which humans developed. It is thus not surprising that the moral tools developed do not fair well in solving the problems of contributory ethics: they didn’t, after all, evolve to do so. For a similar observation, see, e.g. (Jameison & Di Paolo, Citation2016), (Lichtenberg, Citation2010), (Parfit, Citation1984).

19. Admittedly, there are some views that claim that what our moral obligations are should be sensitive to our limitations as practical reasoners. For example, Brad Hooker argues that the rules we are morally obligated to follow will be quite responsive to our motivational and epistemic limitations. See (Hooker, Citation2000). So, for someone like Hooker, the task of developing Contributory Rules would not be terribly different from giving a theory of our moral obligations.

20. For an articulation of this claim, see, e.g. (Zwolinski, Citation2007). A distinct debate about ethically motivated boycotts focuses on whether such boycotts violate procedural requirements of liberal democracies – see (Waheed, Citation2012). For objections to the claim that ethically motivated boycotts violate procedural requirements of liberal democracy, see especially (Barry & Macdonald, Citation2019).

21. For a somewhat similar argument considered in defense of this conclusion, see esp. (Lichtenberg, Citation2010, pp. 564–565).

22. Lawford-Smith articulates a very similar principle, entitled ‘Minimize Injustice,’ although she appears to treat it as a prima facie duty rather than a contributory rule. See (Lawford-Smith, Citation2016, pp. esp. 139–140).

23. The verdicts about these examples might seem obvious, and they eschew the complexities involved in, say, the global supply chains discussed above. Nonetheless, these examples substantiate the claim that sometimes our reasons will obviously and decisively count against certain conduct that appears not to make a meaningful difference – regardless of whether there is an adequate reply to the Causal Impotence Objection. That is, we can grant that the person who takes a roundtrip Transatlantic flight to eat a steak dinner, then throws her aluminum can in the trash all while leaving her lights on has no obligation to refrain from the relevant conduct. Nonetheless, granting that she lacks this obligation hardly precludes the judgment that, all things considered, that person should not engage in that behavior.

24. Of course, we could imagine details of the case that would change the calculus (perhaps there are other relevant contributory reasons regarding the relevant corporations, etc), but that wouldn’t undermine the general point.