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“It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.” (Oscar Wilde)
I’m super busy these days so, instead of championing “another crazy view”, I’m going to talk about two related issues without advocating any particular stance. Ideally I’d like this to turn into a forum of ideas where you, the reader, describe why you think what you do about this stuff and we all become more enlightened through this sophisticated process of sharing. But I realize that that might not be realistic given the sparse comments Alex and I receive and your general reluctance to formulate an opinions into words on the interweb. Nevertheless, here we go.
First, I want to ask: can we hold groups responsible for what they, as a group, do? And, if yes, can we justifiably attribute blame to all individual members of a group if they, collectively, did committed some wrong? Let’s look at an example: Assume that it was wrong for Americans to re-elect George “Dubya” Bush. I’m focusing on Dubya’s re-election because, I think, here we can say that that act was a foreseeable wrong and this will get around objections from those who’d say: “uhhh, I didn’t know he’d be such a fuck-up.” So if it’s true that him getting re-elected was a wrong, can we consider ALL Americans (who, at the time of his re-election, had the capacity to vote) responsible for that wrong? To try to answer this, let’s divide American voters into two groups: (1) those that voted for Bush; and, (2) those that didn’t. The former can, surely, be held responsible for obvious reasons – they played a direct and intentional role in his re-election. But, surely, the latter group can be held responsible as well since they had the means to prevent his election, either through casting their vote in a meaningful way or by contributing resources (e.g. time, money) towards a campaign against Bush. So the members of (2) share some blame in virtue of their failure to do enough to prevent his re-election. Okay, since all American voters fit into these two groups, can we say that all Americans are therefore responsible for Bush? Seems like yes. Can we say that they are “collectively” responsible? Again, seems like yes. Now even if you want to challenge me on how we got to this point, for the moment, just assume that (through the means I described or some other method) we can hold all voting Americans responsible for the re-election of Bush. With that in hand, can we trace the responsibility back down to individuals? By that I mean can we say our American friend - call her Jenny – is responsible for Bush’s 2nd term? Can we say: “Jenny, you jerk, it’s your fault we have to deal with Dubya!” Intuitively we might think not, after all, nothing she did as a individual agent made him get re-elected (or could have prevented him from getting re-elected). But this intuition is hard to grapple with, especially since we do treat friends like Jenny as if they were directly responsible for Dubya; regardless of her political leanings. If you think the Bush case is too much of a charged of an example, consider something else: The actions or activities of corporation X contribute to the destruction of our environment. Are the employees of X collectively responsible? Those who played a part in decision making processes are: either for contributing to the decisions that led to X doing those harmful acts or for not taking sufficient steps to influence the decisions such that the harmful things wouldn’t have happened (these would be managers, for instance); or, for being a cog in, that contributes to the efficiency of, a machine that does actions or activities that are considered bad (these would be file clerks, for instance). Here, more vividly that in the Bush case, people who don’t want to be considered responsible to the wrong being done by the collective can leave – if you don’t agree with what’s being done, leave the group. So all those who stick with corporation X can justifiably be considered responsible for the harmful acts of corporation X, right??
Needless to say, there’s heaps written on this stuff in moral and political philosophy. While I find it really interesting, I haven’t, unfortunately, had a chance to become familiar with it at all. And even though someone learned on this stuff could comment on this post with a response that would adequately address the points I raised (I welcome anyone able and willing to do it), I’m more interested in hearing the intuitive responses from others who haven’t really thought about this stuff before. But maybe I’m just on my own thinking there something worth talking about here. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.
9 comments:
i just want to officially state that i was not of voting age in the last election and that before coming to NZ I was an active part of the Obama campaign! So if by some horrible tragedy he loses, it is not my fault. That is all.
This is a bloody interesting post,Paul. I wish I wasnt neck deep in law exams so I could this some real thought. Instead, what you are about to read is a hasty response, written at 330am, that isn't exactly principled or well-reasoned. But its intutitve, which is what you asked for...so here goes.
Firstly, how about this as a 2 -part test to see if it is fair and just to apportion blame to all members of a group for the actions of some of its members.
1) Was the individual (who is a member of the group) aware of the action taking place?
In this respect, it would be wrong to say that all soldiers in the US Army should bear some responsibilty for Abu Graib.
2) Did the individual have some ability to influence the decisions of the group?
I guess there are sliding scales of ability to influence, and perhaps their is a case for factoring 'ability to influence' into the 'level of blame'. I suppose having one vote in a general election would be an ability to influence, albeit small. But we may be less willing to hold the citizens of a dictatorship responsible for actions conducted in their name of their state ( Mugabe's Zimbabwe ) than we would be to hold citizens of a democracy responsible for actions conducted in the name of their state (Bush's America).
And that raises an interesting question in itself - if you try and affect the decision of your group and you fail, should you still be held responsible, because you did not try hard enough. I would say that it varies on a case by case basis, and I'm not quite sure how to elocute how I would distinguish the various cases. But I think its plausible to draw a distinction between groups where 'a marketplace of ideas' are encouraged, in that case contributing to the public debate and dissenting from the decision taking from the majority of your group may exonerate from blame. (like if in 2004, u were a Kerry, or a Nader voter.)But if you are a member of a group that demands a rigid public adherance to a certain decision, then you would have a duty to leave the group or you would be complicit in the decision. Like if you were a Liberal in a Conservative Parlimentary Cabinet that decided to abolish the public health system.
I'm reluctant to include 'ability to leave the group' as a factor in this test. Obviously there is a difference between the actions of a group that is freely entered into, and where membership is constantly consented to and renewed, and groups where membership is an innate part of who you are. On those grounds, you should expect to share some blame if you are a KKK member at a lynching, even if you stand at the back and look largely disintered OR if you are a police officer who is told, as part of his duty as a police officer, to open fire on a protest march. But it gets a bit trickier to say 'all white people are responsible for slavery' or 'all men are complicit in rape'. But I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line between when you have the ability to renounce your membership and when you dont. The distinction I'm struggling with most is on national identity. Obviously if you dont want to be complicit in Bush's America, its possible to move to Canada (or Mexico). But is nationality such an inherent value that this be a wrong sacrifice to ask any American, no matter how anti-Bush they are, to make.
And lastly, on the whole Bush's America thing. Mostly 'cos I feel sorry for poor American exchange students who come to New Zealand and find themselves being asked 'how could they support President Bush', here's my attempt at absolving (at least the Californians and the New Yorkers) from blame. With the US electoral college the way it is, living in a strong Democrat state like California means your Kerry vote was just another Kerry vote in a state that was always going to vote Kerry. In that respect, a Kerry voter in California had only a slightly bigger ability than I did back in New Zealand to make John Kerry the President. And sure, Mr and Mrs CaliforniaDemocrat could have taken a campaign road-trip to Ohio - where making people change their vote from Bush to Kerry ACTUALLY had a bearing on the election. But then again a student at Leithbridge in Canada had the same ability to make that road trip....
Shortly after I published this blog post, Jessica and I had an IM convo about it. Here’s the gist of our dialogue:
Jessica: I’m not sure that things would have been better had Kerry been voted into office. But, sure, you can place the blame on the collective American population for voting someone into office. However - instead of placing blame on people - it is probably better to think of solutions for things that have gone wrong. Looking back on decisions in order to learn from them isn't a bad thing, but to regret them or blame others for causing events that you believe are harmful isn't very productive.
Paul D: I agree, playing “the blame game” has its limits... but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. The worthwhile-ness of assigning blame is important, for instance, when figuring out how (if at all) those wrongs should be righted. And that’s a good point: fixing things and offering solutions are a separate and distinct from assigning blaming. But “the blame game” is, often, a necessary step to deciding on how to move forward and how to the wrongs should be repaired.
Jessica: Okay, so could you blame the media (as a collective institution) for the degraded morals of today's youth? …does this relate to your idea here?
Paul D: The media is an interesting example of another possible collective that can be blamed for a wrong... interesting case because they are very loosely a "group". By that I mean it's easy to say that an American citizen is part of the group "Americans", but deciding who is relevantly part of the group "media" seems to be a harder thing to do – are bloggers who “report” news and information or editorialize part of the media? I think you’re right that important challenges are raised when we try to say a group should be blamed for something but can’t clearly identify who is or isn’t a part of that group.
Jessica: And this compounds the issue. When, for instance, everyday people (so clearly non-media types) regurgitate something offensive (or something that causes moral decay) they saw in the media they contribute to the problem… which makes all of us responsible. If we’re all responsible it’s fruitless to place any blame.
Paul D: Interesting line of thought.
Paul,
By your argument, hundreds of millions of people are responsible for the war in Iraq - in 49 different countries. They all voted for (or did not adequately oppose) the election of leaders, who publicly supported the war.
http://pwhce.org/willing.html#list3
So, you can blame your American friend, and your New Zealand friend, and your British friend,etc.
I wish you had not written so much about a methodology for placing blame as a commentary about how few people take individual responsibility. The worst part of America right now is a widely held notion that we can blame our problems on everyone else. Even worse, we expect our problems to be solved by others (i.e. government). The same can be said for countries expecting America to bail them out when they're in trouble (Europe loves America when Russia starts rolling tanks into Georgia)- but likes to blame America for all the international problems that the rest of the world has neither the might nor the ambition to tackle.
Collective responsibility is a total cop out. America leads the world in the ideology of individual responsibility, even if it's drastically weakening in this election environment. Americans need to ask less from their government and more from themselves. Passing blame is easy - and makes for wonderful philosophical banter. The truly productive people in society will go out and try to change what they do not like. If certain elements remain unchanged despite our best efforts, we either die trying - or give up. Trying and failing seems much more noble than blaming others for wrongs that we've not even attempted to confront with real action. Usually, smart, hard-working people don't have reason to blame anyone.
Dear Anonymous,
I'm not sure if your claim that what I said can be extended to all those who live in countries that were/are involved in the Iraq war. One reason why I picked the dubya re-election case was because of the foreseeable wrong of it; I'm not sure if the same can be said for all those states involved in Iraq. When the war was getting started there was a lot of talk by American officials about WMDs and Saddam's intentions... talk that turned out to be false. Surely this is a relevant fact: states who supported the war because of misinformation given to them by their the US aren't as (if at all) responsible; (more) onus falls on those who misled others. This ties into a related point. It seems to make sense to talk about degrees of responsibility. Surely in cases like the Iraq war one party is more responsible than others (e.g. USA more so than NZ). In the end, though, properly assessing blame must be an after-the-fact-thing.
I don't see how collective responsibility is a "total cop out"; I don't follow why placing blame on collectives precludes individuals for taking responsibility as well. "Passing the blame" isn't what collective responsibility is about - if someone is genuinely responsible for some wrong doing, nothing about it will be different if it's because of something she did as an individual or if it's because of something she did as part of a collective. As I previously said going out and righting wrongs is important, but accurately placing fault is often a necessary precursor to being able to do that. So, trying and failing, and placing blame, aren't mutually exclusive. If someone is a member of a collective that is responsible for some wrong she has an obligation to work towards righting it; the fact that others are also responsible in no way allows her to deflect her responsibility to other members of that collective.
Paul,
First, I would contend that there is MUCH more foreseeable wrong with going into any war than with re-electing a president, whose only bad decision to date was the same that his opponent supported. In fact, it's more likely that ending the war early would have had disastrous effects on the region. Incidentally, your clear bias underlines the inherent danger of the blame-game; it's heavily subjective. You overlook the overpowering sentiment in America (only three years after 9/11) that national security was at risk. I would argue that New Zealand citizens should question their own leaders, who supported Bush in 2004, more than faulting an American voter who has far less direct impact on American foreign policy.
But, really, we should do neither. The exercise is counterproductive, because you assume that the "collective" is easily defined. Why not blame all of mankind? The REASON is that we are each responsible for our own, individual judgments and acts. That is my point. Talking about a collective responsibility merely propagates a sense of "sharing" guilt - Bush is not allowed to say, "Well, you guys voted for me." Countries and companies do not commit crimes; individuals do. You devalue the individual by suggesting that I favor pollution, if the company for which I clean floors produces smog. Doesn't your argument favor the crazy conservatives, who plaster the campaign with Obama's guilt by support/association with Ayers and Reverend Wright?
Certainly, more than one person can be to blame for errors, but let's address each as an individual. My obvious tangent in the previous post concerned the idea that speaking of an ill-defined "collective" responsibility is merely a way for people to distribute their own blame - in a way that would mitigate it (which you also note as a potential downside). But, you promote a culture of tracing blame rather than one that fosters self-evaluation. It follows, that people look first to blame others (blindly labeling them "government" or "America") rather than looking at their own role in the world.
Bottom line - responsibility is a personal quality. No need for the "collective" bit. And, the act of placing blame carries a subjective (often moral) nature...which, again, is entirely individualistic. We are best to each focus our judgments on ourselves, instead of contemplating the tangential fault (and insulting) of others.
[Reply to Anon. 2]
You seem to have completely missed my point, so I'll try to clarify it again, but I fear we're just going to end up talking past each other since most of these points have already been made. I was tempted to get drawn into a petty debate about your tangent assertions. But, in the end, I thought it best to only reply to your comments that are relevant enough to the main topic.
(1) Nothing about collective responsibility makes it necessarily “heavily subjective”. What you seem to be getting at is the idea that morality is necessarily subjective. If that's what you think, fine. Go ahead be that kind of person. But I never made any such claim. And this is, really, a separate discussion than what I'm after here. If you think something else, your unnecessary defensive arm waving about America has clouded your message. (More on this in the next point.)
(2) Whether or not it was your intention, you advocate a pro-hermit view (or, possibly, a pro-idealized-anarchy view). If you think we should all be hermits - where people shouldn't be part of any groups - fine, have fun alone in the bushes. That's what your implying when you say "We are best to each focus our judgments on ourselves, instead of contemplating the tangential fault (and insulting) of others." But if you want to say this AND say that we should have societies, you're committed to the following: since members of a society necessarily interact with each other it follows from YOUR view that we'd be best of in some sort of puppy-dogs'n'rainbows-hyper-idealized anarchy state where each person is only accountable to herself and only obligated to right wrongs as dictated by her own (biased and subjective) self-assessment. This ties back into your unsupported (and off topic) belief that morality is individuated. If you want to be relativistic about morality, fine. But don't say Joey did something wrong when he kills your dog -- according to (the way you expressed) your position, it's up to him whether or not he did something wrong.
(3) So, according to your view, evaluating the potential responsibility of collectives is counterproductive. From this it follows that the representative of a collective should never apologize for a wrong. Should an American president - who never owned a slave - apologize for slavery in American? Even if some continue to suffer from the lingering effects of slavery? Even if we just focus on members of a group (rather than representatives), your claim is unacceptable. Should an Australian that never did anything wrong, as an individual, to an Aboriginal ever apologize for the injustices suffered by the Aborigines? Answering ‘no’ to any of these questions seems to be a clearly unreasonable position. Being able to say ‘yes’ to any of these is dependent on adopting some conception of collective responsibility. And I'm not alone here. After all, representatives of groups frequently do apologize (and SHOULD apologize as part of righting a wrong) even when they, as individuals, didn't do anything wrong.
(4) What you said suggests the following: people shouldn't be held responsible for wrongs done by groups they belong to because, if they were held responsible for wrongs done by their group generally, it would somehow allow them to escape “genuine” responsibility. You also think that someone can only be held responsible if they themselves, as an individual, commit a wrong. In contrast, a broad collective responsibility view dictates that people can be held responsible even when they themselves didn't 'pull the trigger' (this is IN ADDITION TO being responsible for wrongs they themselves commit). You're incorrect in implying that collective responsibility spreads a finite amount of guilt around so that people get less than they should ("sharing the guilt" as you put it). That's not what collective responsibility entails. Proper collective responsibility is not "a way for people to distribute their own blame" to others. That’s a mischaracterization of collective responsibility. If members of a group are collectively responsible for something, they are each MORE responsible than were we to dismiss any conception of collective responsibility. Your view, on the other hand, suggests that individuals can’t be considered responsible for a wrong when then indirectly contribute to it. Furthermore, I don’t know what you mean when you say that collective responsibility "devalues" the individual. As I said collective responsibility dictates that individuals are additionally responsible for wrongs around them (not only wrongs they were directly responsible for, but also wrongs they were indirectly responsible for). How does that "devalue" the individual? Your misunderstanding here may have be my fault for being insufficiently unclear about this at the outset of the original post.
(5) You concede that "Certainly, more than one person can be to blame for errors." That's collective responsibility. Don't contradict yourself. If you think that, explain why you’re advocating a very limited or qualified version of collective responsibility. But if you're against any notion of collective responsibility, you can't make claims like this.
(6) We can still meaningfully talk about collective responsibility if it's ill-defined. (I never assumed, despite what you claim, that 'collective' is a well- or easily-defined term.) The noteworthy difficulty that arises without a robust definition of ‘collective’ is where to draw the line: who counts as part of a collective? And which collectives are relevant to what? But this is at the fringes of the discussion. A lot can still be said without needing to draw a line in the sand. However, if someone else wants to defend a rigid definition of ‘collective’, I welcome it.
(7) Lastly, and I meant to mention this in my last comment: When making my original post I was hesitant to use the USA re-election example. I employed it because I think it illustrates some interesting aspects of collective responsibility. But it, like the Iraq war, is a ‘hot button issue’ and people clearly get side tracked on irrelevant "biased" points and end up making unfounded and unreasonable claims. For instance I don't know what makes you think that "there is MUCH more foreseeable wrong with going into ANY war than with re-electing a president". (Here's one clear counter-example: The Allies in WWII.) So instead of discussing such matters here (discussions which are, I think, be better suited for an Alex-type post), let's try to strictly focus on the notion of collective responsibility. Maybe keep all subsequent comments that utilize an example focused on the Corporation X case??
I hope I've made things sufficiently clear here, but I fear I haven't. Nevertheless I'm interested in what others, who have put some thought into this, think. But let's try to keep the discussion focused. (Or not... whatever). Thanks for your comment.
Paul,
I think we are getting somewhere. Your points #3 and #4 clearly outline areas where my disagreement lies.
Your example about American slavery goes to the heart of the matter. I believe you gloss over a reasoning that is the crux of your argument. You claim it is "clearly" unreasonable for me (or a current American President) to claim no responsibility for slavery. Explain. Collective responsibility devalues my individualism by bestowing on me the moral burdens of people to whom I am distantly related. I find this logic troubling - to say nothing of the impractical nature of this philosophy...unless blaming as many people as possible is your goal. People should not be judged by decisions and acts that they did not commit or endorse. You argue otherwise.
Convince me that you are right about the merits of collective responsibility and that I should not, then, judge Obama by his 20 year participation in a church that fostered racism and patent anti-Americanism. Personally, I think that relationship is complex and not meaningful to the election. But, you would argue that as a member of the congregation, Obama bears the blame for the barrage of negative ideas that spewed from its pulpit. If I bestowed on Obama even a minuscule amount of blame for Wright's comments, I would say he's unfit for the presidency. I do not confer such blame - you seem to advocate it.
Thank you for this discussion.
-Bob
Hi Bob --
Here's what I think we need to move forward on where you're focusing:
(i) A working definition of "collectives" that can adequately handles the following kind of question: What makes a group a 'collective' in the relevant sense?
(ii) A working definition of "collective membership" that can adequately handles the following kind of question: By what measure we should consider someone to be part of a collective in the relevant sense?
It may turn out that you and I have differing intuitions about how these key terms should be defined, but explicit definitions now seem necessary for this discussion.
However I think a cautionary note is required: We need to make sure to not conflate different meanings of responsibility. The relevant sense of responsibility involves attaching moral OBLIGATIONS to right wrongs. The irrelevant sense involves finger pointing but no force for the blamed party to do anything about it. Our ultimately goal needs to be something more than attributing blame. (I may have inadvertently imported this confusion by failing to be explicit about this earlier.)
Regardless, when Australians that, as individuals, never directly harmed Aborigines apologize for injustices committed against Aborigines by others they are expressing sympathy and (at least symbolically) separating themselves from the collective of persons who harmed the Aborigines. They are, also, declaring membership in a group committed to rectifying those injustices; they are assuming responsibility to correct the injustices. Their motivation for assuming this responsibility might be because they've gained from the lasting effects of the injustices suffered by the Aborigines. Americans could do a similar thing by apologizing for slavery. But only one American president needs to apologize for slavery, on behalf of those represented (that's one of his jobs). What's important to recognize here is that nations have everchanging membership. If we can say that a collective did something wrong in the past, and that collective endures longer than its individual members, that stain lasts on the collective until it is righted. Having said that, the way in which apologies tie into collective responsibility is an interesting topic. And while I've given some initial thoughts on it here, I think it's essential to first work out definitions (i) and (ii) before we can meaningfully discuss apologies.
While I'll stop short of offering definitions myself (something I want from others) I will say this: there seems to be 2 distinct kinds of cases (which I'll call, the "voter" case and the "preacher" case). The voter case refers to groups where members of the collectives are capable of influencing the decisions or actions of the leader (or group at large). The preacher case refers to groups where the individuals of the collective CAN'T really influence the decisions of the leader (or, really, the group at large). An example of the former might be a town whose mayor is democratically elected (and vote to pass laws, etc), or a group of friends heading out on the town for the night. An example of the preacher case might be corporation X (or a religious congregation); here a secretary (or the average member of congregation) can't meaningfully impact the decisions of her collective (i.e. the decisions made by the CEO/preacher). So groups of the preacher case variety might be ruled out from talk of collective responsibility UNLESS we want to bring in a clause of knowledgeability - e.g. if a member of a preacher-type collective is knowledgeable about wrongs being done by the collective but remains part of it, she is also responsible for those wrongs (we can say she, at least, implicitly endorsed those decisions). This might allow us to say why voters are responsible for the wrongs committed by their elected officials while ruling out the corporation X case or your Obama counter-example (since, from what I understand about the Obama/Wright situation, Obama claims he wasn't knowledgeable about what Wright was doing).
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