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Moral Responsibility for Distant Collective Harms

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Abstract

While it is well recognized that many everyday consumer behaviors, such as purchases of sweatshop goods, come at a cost to the global poor, it has proven difficult to argue that even knowing, repeat contributors are somehow morally complicit in those outcomes. Some recent approaches contend that marginal contributions to distant harms are consequences that consumers straightforwardly should have born in mind, which would make consumers seem reckless or negligent. Critics reasonably reply that the bad luck that my innocent purchase contributes distantly to harm provides insufficient grounds for moral blame; moreover, such distant and seemingly inevitable collective effects are not by themselves obvious reasons for agents to refrain from acting. Granting these criticisms, I argue that the harm that agents do through knowing contributions to distant collective harm actually builds on the morally sparse agential phenomenology of everyday purchases and decisions: contributors who knowingly disregard distant harms, rather than being reckless or negligent about consequences they should have foreseen, very directly perpetuate the moral invisibility and the lack of recognition from which the global poor generally suffer. This provides agents with clearer moral reasons to refrain from knowing participation in unstructured collective harms, and clearer reason to bear them in mind in acting.

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Notes

  1. Kutz provides an excellent introduction to this phenomenon in Kutz (2000), 166–203. For more recent discussion of the debate, see Isaacs (2011), 130 ff.

  2. This point is common to the versions of this position put forward by Young (2011), Hayward and Lukes (2008), and Sinnott-Armstrong (2005).

  3. The Moderate view notably forms the backbone of Iris Marion Young’s (2011) final work, Responsibility for Justice.

  4. Kutz (2000) provides the clearest statement of this criterion, but it is a staple in much of the literature on distributive collective responsibility. For recent discussion and development of this view, Miller (2006). In speaking of “joint intention” throughout the paper, I have in mind cooperation paradigms with mutual knowledge conditions like those proposed by Bratman (1999), Gilbert (2006), or Tuomela (2007).

  5. Barry views this as an application of Samuel Sheffler’s “common-sense” notion that “individuals are thought to be more responsible for what they do than for what they fail to prevent” (2005, 109).

  6. The appeal of this position is reflected in a recently popular Salon article on sweatshop labor. In line with Sinnott-Armstrong and Young, both of whom tout the pragmatic plausibility of the Moderate view, the Salon author concludes, “Individual shopping choices are good for soothing the soul, but only supporting or joining collective efforts can hope to have a practical effect.” Jake Blumgart, “Sweatshops Still Make Your Clothes,” Salon (March 21, 2013), http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/sweatshops_still_make_your_clothes/ Accessed 7/1/2014.

  7. The Weak view notably dodges this conceptual criticism, since it is premised on the idea that past contributory actions are morally irrelevant in the first place. The proponent of a Weak view has to contend primarily with Barry’s intuition that contributions necessarily generate stronger moral ties (see n. 5 above).

  8. This requirement is discussed at several points by Petersson (2013, 848, 850, 862).

  9. Notably, Barry reads Young as denying the Contribution Principle (2005, 112–116). I suggest a more charitable reading of Young, as above; the only version of the Moderate view that is meaningfully distinct from a Weak view would be one that retains the Contribution Principle.

  10. David Miller in a related way uses the uncertainty of causal connection between individuals and UCH as a reason to detour by saying, first, that “we” are collectively “outcome responsible,” and next, that we as individuals are outcome responsible in virtue of being members of the responsible collective (2012, 631). For a similar view, see also Shei (2005). Unlike Petersson and myself, Miller does not regard causal involvement as necessary condition for having a share of outcome responsibility for phenomena like sweatshop labor (636 ff.).

  11. Petersson draws this strategy from Moore (2009, 410–425).

  12. The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed garment factories for numerous Western retailers, killed more than 1100 garment workers and injured 2500; reports indicate that some employees were coerced to work despite the building’s publicized structural safety issues.

  13. For examples and discussion, see Kutz (2000), 166–167, 175. For an insightful discussion of lack of intent in unstructured collective cases, see Sadler (2007, 492 ff.).

  14. See Clark (2008), Lafont (2005).

  15. This paradigm of “mindless” cognitive reliance originates in Heidegger (1962, 102ff.). Heidegger’s thesis has recently been confirmed by Dotov et al. (2010); for a survey of recent research, see Clark (2008).

  16. I am agnostic on whether the correct term would be negligence, recklessness, or some other term, since my only concern is whether contributors are culpably thoughtless in any sense about the (distant) harm they do. For a discussion of the terminological distinctions between negligence, recklessness, and other varieties of culpable thoughtlessness, see Husak (2011).

  17. I am referring to this as a “proxy” for contributory intentions in Lawson’s argument because Lawson presents his view as an extension of Kutz’s view: (1) intent to contribute overrides problematic causal connections to harm, and (2) the fact that the agent should have been foreseen her act as a contribution counts as a contributory intention.

  18. Note that the examples Lawson uses to establish the teleological criterion for shared responsibility are “structured” cases (following Kutz), such as the Dresden bombing or cooperation in a murder (2013, 228–232).

  19. If this is not intuitive, consider an example offered by Janna Thompson: if a group of neo-fascists commits a crime in Europe, an unaffiliated group of young Neo-Nazis in the U.S. does not earn complicity just because they endorse and identify with the group’s goal (2006, 157).

  20. I presume this requirement is obvious to avoid holding people responsible for “butterfly-effect”-style consequences.

  21. Sher takes for granted that the acts in question are “wrong acts,” and in most cases are ones for which the agents in question intuitively “would definitely be blamed” (2011, 24).

  22. My sense is that this may be true in reference to the human costs of climate change, despite the greater symmetry in the roles of polluters: in actual cases, the human costs are bound to include the contributions of local officials, governments, and others whose contributions are necessary to translate the proximate effects of an individual’s action into distant harms.

  23. Sinnott-Armstrong explicitly insists that overdetermination or imperceptibility of harm are not his reasons for denying responsibility for UCH; he instead cites lack of causal dependency and lack of culpable intent: “My exhaust is not sufficient for the harms of global warming, and I do not intend those harms” (2005, 291).

  24. Sinnott-Armstrong admits entirely that Sunday drives in a heavy emitting car certainly do contribute to global warming, and that this will cause real suffering in the long run to the poor in developing nations (2005, 293–294). Young unfortunately often elides the moral positions of those who know and acknowledge their “social connection” to harms, and those who contribute unwittingly to UCH (2010, 99–100). I am considering only agents who grasp their “social connection” at a level at least sufficient to start discharging the forward-looking responsibilities the Moderate view entails—like our complicit reformer.

  25. Isaacs’ argument, again, is that the term “moral wrong” is simply misapplied without agency, and this is lacking in collective circumstances unless there is a joint intention.

  26. Schutz’s (1967) work is largely devoted to explicating the phenomenological difference between these and its consequences for individual and group action; for a concise explanation of the transition between face-to-face experience and ideal types, and back again, see esp. pp. 186 ff.

  27. Here I set aside debates over whether agents are responsible for contributions that make no difference, since I have already discounted responsibility for concrete outcomes of unstructured collective action on other grounds. For discussion, see Kagan’s (2011) case that overdetermination cases are logically impossible; for a reply to Kagan and defense of overdetermination as an excusing condition in UCH, see Killoren and Williams (2013).

  28. I recognize that one could offer an act-consequentialist story instead: the agent knows vaguely that act A has more grave costs than B; without knowing the exact cost of A, she knows enough not to choose A. Nevertheless, I presume this consequentialist story would still need to solve the problems raised in §2–3 in order to explain (e.g., to Sinnott-Armstrong) why it is rational for the agent to see the UCH as a consequence hinging on her own act.

  29. For a more concise statement and defense of Pogge’s argument, see Pogge (2005).

  30. On Kant’s overall “juridical” conception of moral responsibility, see Uniacke (2005).

  31. For examples of this see Kutz (2000), 176 ff.

  32. The apparent Kantian universalizability of contributory maxims has also been noted by Sinnott-Armstrong (2005).

  33. See Young (2011, 127–8); Blumgart, “Sweatshops Still Make Your Clothes” (op. cit.).

  34. Young notes importantly that many of the actors nearer to the problem, including local governments and factory managers, arguably suffer from coercion and constraint in their actions as well (2011, 129). A consumer’s relative leeway is admittedly less if her own economic situation forces her to purchase goods from a given retailer; however, a case like that would merely count as a possible excusing condition.

  35. Pogge argues that we cease to be guilty for our contributions to UCH just in case we take action to compensate the victim; perhaps the complicit social reformer could be seen as doing just that (2005, 69–70). Yet Pogge and I agree fundamentally on the Strong view that there is a moral wrong done by contributors to UCH that demands rectification. We disagree much more narrowly on whether continual compensatory acts can sufficiently erase a continual stream of wrongs within a Kantian framework.

  36. Where I would favor the Moderate view in cases like this, Pogge notably retains the Strong view here as well: on Pogge’s model, Darla’s broader participation in this unjust institutional order already qualifies her for backward-looking responsibility (2005, 60); David Miller’s (2012) or Shei’s (2005) models would say the same (see n. 10 above).

  37. Consider that, conversely, I would not have cause to pat myself on the back for my purchases if it turned out that global capitalism made the lives of Chinese factory workers go well.

  38. It is popular to suggest, as Young has, that boycotting businesses that source from sweatshops and switching to ethical sources will make sweatshop workers worse off. There are numerous replies: (a) this is a merely pragmatic argument, and the Strong view may be conceptually correct even if a boycott leaves some people worse off; (b) most importantly, signaling with my purchases that moral businesses can succeed best is, at least in the long term, good for global labor. One could potentially claim that the Kantian wrong vanishes if, e.g., my sole reason for retaining a lucrative investment in a mining company that uses child labor is to do right by those children (and not at all for my own profit). I leave it an open question whether that position is credible to the reader.

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    David Zoller

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Zoller, D. Moral Responsibility for Distant Collective Harms. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 18, 995–1010 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-015-9568-6

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