In A. Konzelmann Ziv & H. B. Schmid (eds.), Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents. Springer. pp. 329-342 (2013)
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Abstract |
Individualists hold that moral responsibility can be ascribed to single
human beings only. An important collectivist objection is that individualism is morally deficient because it leaves a normative residue. Without attributing responsibility to collectives there remains a “deficit in the accounting books” (Pettit). This collectivist strategy often uses judgment aggregation paradoxes to show that the collective can be responsible when no individual is. I argue that we do not need collectivism to handle such cases because the individualist analysis leaves no responsibility-deficit. Harm suffered in such situations can have only two sources. Harm is either due to culpable wrongdoing by individuals. Harm is then redressed by holding these individuals responsible. Or harm does not result from culpable wrongdoing. Such harm may have to be redressed too, but not because anyone is responsible for it. Therefore, the charge of moral insensitivity against individualist
accounts can be rejected. Furthermore, in the last section of the chapter I will show that collectivist talk about moral responsibility can be used for ethically questionable purposes as well. Collectivists cannot claim the moral high ground.
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Keywords | responsibility agency collectivism individualism judgment aggregation Pettit List |
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References found in this work BETA
Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age.Christopher Kutz - 2000 - Cambridge University Press.
Aggregating Sets of Judgments: An Impossibility Result.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2002 - Economics and Philosophy 18 (1):89-110.
The Corporation as a Moral Person.Peter A. French - 1979 - American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (3):207 - 215.
View all 23 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Moral Luck and The Unfairness of Morality.Robert J. Hartman - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (12):3179-3197.
Being One of Us. Group Identification, Joint Actions, and Collective Intentionality.Alessandro Salice & Kengo Miyazono - 2019 - Philosophical Psychology 33 (1):42-63.
Why Change the Subject? On Collective Epistemic Agency.András Szigeti - 2015 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (4):843-864.
Exploitation and Joint Action.Erik Malmqvist & András Szigeti - 2019 - Journal of Social Philosophy 50 (3):280-300.
View all 6 citations / Add more citations
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