I have to this point been somewhat equivocal with regards to what it means for a system, as a distinct entity, to acquire responsibility for an outcome that it occasions. In particular, I have not explained how a system may be held morally responsible, despite being complex in the way I have just described. In other words the statement about the tax system with which I started is clearly claiming a causal relation between that system and the harm accruing to the disadvantaged; perhaps being a complex system is sufficient to give the collective entity a distinct causal role, but without any moral implications. For example, it might be possible to think of complex systems as simply instantiating a particular variety of collective action problem. In other instances where collective action problems occur, we think their effects suboptimal, but we do not direct moral criticism at the circumstances which led to the problem71. At least on face value, however, it appears that it is natural to ascribe a moral role
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On this see Anderson (2011).
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It could be objected that the remainder of responsibility should not accrue to the system itself, but rather to other individuals who are in a position to influence the system or its consequences; in a democracy, this might stretch as widely as the voting population. However, the point is that it is the uncertainty with which the actions of any individuals are translated into the working of the system that generates the remainder and requires its reassignment. Identifying more individuals that might be held responsible does not answer this challenge.
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To illustrate this point, consider Hardin’s famous example of ‘the tragedy of the commons’. A situation arises in which it is individually rational for each individual to act in a way which is irrational when
to the system. We might imagine, for example, a politician standing up in parliament and making a statement about the injustice of the system. What would be clear here is that she is blaming the tax system, and is not simply pointing out an interesting causal connection, blame that is deserved by that system on the basis of the harm it causes. She is finding the tax system morally responsible.
Nonetheless, it might still be objected that to the extent that it is the system that is being held responsible, it is only causal responsibility that is relevant. Any moral content is directed at those individuals responsible for creating and operating the system, and the complexities of the system simply serve to obscure this fact. To see that this is not the case, and that it is entirely legitimate to ascribe moral responsibility to the system, it is necessary to return to the conditions for moral responsibility that I set out in chapter three and to see how the role of complex systems in mediating action is different from the role that standard collective action problems play in shaping the outcomes of collective activity. A system is morally responsible if it deserves to be held morally responsible, and such desert is generated when the subject of responsibility stands in the relation of ‘moral ownership’ to that for which they are held responsible. This relation is generated either by the exercise of reflective agency or, as I suggested in chapter three, by the mediation of reflective agency. It is the latter relation that is relevant in the case of complex systems.
In order for a system to hold the kind of non-agential moral responsibility I have described three conditions must be satisfied. The first is that it must be a system as set out above. It must take set types of input and through the application of a rule-based structure produce outputs of a certain type. Importantly, the rule-based structure eliminates the possibility of the system forming attitudes on values either explicitly or implicitly. The second condition for non- agential moral responsibility is that the system is sufficiently complex to generate a remainder of responsibility that cannot be properly assigned to the creators and operators of that system; in other words the system itself acquires at least partial ownership of the outcomes it occasions. Finally, the third condition is that the system is the product of the actions of moral agents. While the important remainder of responsibility ultimately accrues to the system itself, it is only because it is a system created by and operated by moral agents that moral
responsibility is generated in the first place. One way to look at this third condition is to think of ownership for outcomes transferring from individuals to the system itself once that system
viewed at the collective level. While this situation is bad for everyone, part of the ‘tragedy’ is that it occurs despite the fact that no apportionment of blame is appropriate (Hardin, 1968).
reaches the necessary level of complexity. It is only when individuals exist with moral ownership themselves that they may transfer it to the entity that is the system.
The first two of these conditions I have argued for already, but the third is new and it is this that sets complex systems apart from traditional collective action problems. To start with, consider the difference between systems created by humans (as moral agents) such as the tax system and others to which moral responsibility does not accrue. An example of a system that is not susceptible to ascriptions of moral responsibility would be the climate system that produces the weather of a given region, even though such systems can generate huge harms for humans. The relevant distinction between the two types of system is that the one is created by the actions of moral agents and the other is not. The reason that some systems accrue moral responsibility is that such responsibility is generated by the collective operation of moral agents, but it is not possible to distribute it in its entirety to those agents. The system that the collective operation generates must itself account for the remainder. Where there is no generation of responsibility in the first place (such as in the case of the climate system) there is no remainder of responsibility to allocate. I will use the term ‘morally significant system’ to identify those that are created by agents and that can accrue responsibility in this way. This explanation provides external support for our practice of holding certain systems morally responsible. Importantly, traditional collective action problems, such as Hardin’s ‘tragedy of the commons’ noted above, are naturally occurring. The coordination challenges that arise from a situation such as this, where a course of action is individually rational but collectively irrational, are not created by humans, although they necessarily refer to humans. Conversely, the coordination challenges arising from a complex tax system are entirely the result of the human actions that created that complexity in the first place. They thus generate moral responsibility, although not of a kind that can be fully distributed to individuals.
It may be objected here that the reason it makes sense to ascribe moral responsibility to systems created by moral agents is not because those systems have accrued a remainder of responsibility, but because in doing so we appeal to individuals who are in a position to influence those systems and make the necessary changes. In response I again appeal to my explanation of what moral responsibility is – that it is based in the appropriateness of directing reactive attitudes at a subject on the basis of what that subject deserves. Morally significant systems are blamed (and praised) in their own right, as the tax system example illustrates. Moreover, such reactions are deserved on the basis of the contribution that the complex operation of the system makes to the end result, distinct from the identifiable contributions of
any individuals who either design or operate the system. I am not denying the sense of appealing to individuals who are in a position to influence the system; I am only denying that ascriptions of moral responsibility to the system are made on this basis.