Responsibility Incorporated

Pettit, Philip

doi:10.1086/510695

Cited by 319 publications

(253 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Group agents are constituted in three distinct ways: through the shared and mutually adjusting aims and plans of several individual agents (as in a string quartet) [7]; through the establishment of one representative to act on behalf of one or more individual agents (for example, a labor union) [8]; and through procedures that gather judgments and distribute tasks in such a way that the three capacities of considering, choosing in response to considerations, and acting in response to choice are competently executed (think of a corporation) [9].…”

Section: A Legitimately Governs B Only If B Remains a Free Moral Agenmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Idea of Legitimate Authority in the Practice of Medicine

2017

AMA Journal of Ethics

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Legitimate authority is the normative power to govern, where a normative power is the ability to change the normative situation of others. Correlatively, when one has the normative power to govern others, these others face a normative liability to be governed. So understood, physicians do not have legitimate authority over their patients, and patients do not have legitimate authority over their physicians. An authority is legitimate only when it is a free group agent constituted by its free members. On this conception, associations of physicians sometimes have legitimate authority over individual physicians, and physicians sometimes count as members subject to the legitimate authority of these associations. This might be so even when they have not consented to membership. IntroductionDisagreement over the proper practice of medicine is an enduring feature of contemporary health care: patients might disagree with their physicians about the suitability of resuscitation in end-of-life care; individual physicians might reject the guidance of medical associations over the off-label use of atypical antipsychotics; or employers might challenge a legal requirement to provide their employees insurance coverage for contraception. Sometimes the question of who should decide in the face of such dissension is posed as a question of who has legitimate authority over whom. As we shall see, this only sometimes is the most perspicuous way to understand the challenge of resolving disagreements in medicine.

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Section: A Legitimately Governs B Only If B Remains a Free Moral Agenmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Idea of Legitimate Authority in the Practice of Medicine

2017

AMA Journal of Ethics

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“…216-7). Among others, Pettit argues that many groups meet these necessary conditions (Pettit 2003(Pettit , 2007Pettit and Schweikard 2006).…”

Section: Irreducible Collective Responsibility and Paradoxes Of Judgmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The claim here is that the premise-based procedure enables the collective to preserve a stable identity and pursue common goals over time as earlier interconnected decisions of a group are in this procedure regarded as premises of the proposition to be decided upon at a later time. By contrast, the conclusion-based procedure could generate inconsistencies at the collective level because each decision is voted upon according to members' views on the given issue, irrespective of the fact that this decision may potentially conflict with the conclusion that earlier judgments of the same group would logically entail (Pettit 2001(Pettit , 2007.…”

Section: How the Individualist Should Really Respondmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Or, conversely, some think that the metaphysics of collective agency is unproblematic, and since the metaphysics of collective agency is unproblematic, we have no reason not to acknowledge the attributability of moral responsibility to such collective agents (see French 1979). And then there are some who put forward independent but in their conclusions converging collectivist (or anticollectivist) arguments in both areas (e.g., Pettit 2007). opposing positions will depend on one's assessment of their respective contributions in both "theatres of war".…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are Individualist Accounts of Collective Responsibility Morally Deficient?

Szigeti

2013

Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents

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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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“…2 In the present context, ought certainly implies can, so if responsibilitycollectivists are to make good on their claim that we should sometimes ascribe responsibility to the group qua group, then they have to show that we can ascribe responsibility to the group qua group. The task, in short, is to show that groups can be proper addressees of responsibility-ascriptions, that some groups at least are "fit to be held responsible" (Pettit 2007a). Since there is a good case to be made that moral responsibility presupposes agency, this task will involve, among others, showing that the collectives can be agents.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective Responsibility and Group-Control

Szigeti

2014

Synthese Library

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Collectives are more or less structured groups of human beings. Responsibilitycollectivism is the view that the moral responsibility of at least some such collectives is something over and above the combined moral responsibility of individual group members. This paper focuses on one of the key conditions of responsibility: the requirement of control. It is plausible that this requirement also applies to collective agents and so collective responsibility presupposes group-control. Responsibilitycollectivists have often tried to unpack the idea of group-control as non-causal control. I argue that non-causal control is not an admissible basis for attributing responsibility. Only causal group-control is. This is because non-causal group control does not provide the right kind of information regarding the ancestry of a certain outcome. In the second half of the paper, I discuss the difficulties which arise for responsibility-collectivism if one understands group-control as causal group-control. One of these difficulties is whether causal group-control is consistent with ontological individualism. The second concerns the relationship of group-control and individual control. I argue that the first difficulty is manageable, but only at the price of having to accept a solution to the second difficulty which runs counter to the original aim of the responsibility-collectivist of characterizing irreducible collective responsibility as compatible with individual responsibility. Worse still, responsibility-collectivists may have to choose sides in other areas of social ontology as well. This further raises the price of this position.2

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Responsibility Incorporated

Cited by 319 publications

References 18 publications

The Idea of Legitimate Authority in the Practice of Medicine

The Idea of Legitimate Authority in the Practice of Medicine

Are Individualist Accounts of Collective Responsibility Morally Deficient?

Collective Responsibility and Group-Control

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