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I am interested in identifying kinds of individual action that contribute to generating collective level properties and hence collective moral responsibility. This will require me to specify the links between individual actions and collective properties. Given, however, that my ultimate interest is in moral responsibility, both collective and individual, the question also arises as to the links between the moral responsibility that may be ascribed to an individual for their part in collective activity, and the moral responsibility that resides at the collective level.

As I outlined in chapter four, the relation between the properties of individuals and those of a group is one of supervenience. This means that the group level properties are entirely

determined by those at the individual level, in the sense that it is necessarily the case that if the lower level properties were to be replicated exactly in another case, the higher level properties would be replicated as well. This is not to say, however, that the group level properties are reducible in any meaningful sense to the individual ones, since there may be various configurations of lower level properties that will result in the production of exactly the same higher level properties. Nonetheless, it does make sense to say that the group

properties come about because of the properties of individuals.

The relation between moral responsibility at the individual and group levels is not of this kind, however. To see why, recall the different models of moral responsibility that I set out in the preceding chapters. The first applies in cases of joint action, as set out by Miller, where responsibility accrues directly to the individuals who are parties to the action. What each individual may be held responsible for requires reference to a property at the collective level – the joint action that none could undertake individually – but the responsibility only comes about as a result of each individual’s reflection on their participation in the action, and accrues directly to them. The second model applies in cases where organisation structure allows the group to possess properties such as intention and reflection, and hence constitute a distinct moral agent. In these cases responsibility is generated irreducibly at the group level. Lastly, the third mechanism (which applies to morally significant systems) involves a collective entity being ascribed responsibility that is generated by the individual actions of its members. In none of these situations is it true that a group entity is responsible because individuals are responsible, or vice versa, although the reasons for this are different in the three cases.

To start with, take joint actions. Here the only kind of responsibility that is present, as Miller sets out, is ‘interdependent individual responsibility’. Individuals generate their own

responsibility directly, albeit interdependent with the responsibility of others. This is because it is each individual who intends to pursue the collective action, and reflects upon this choice in a way that generates moral responsibility. Therefore there is no question of him being

responsible because the collective is responsible75. The situation where responsibility is generated at the collective level through the operation of collective moral agents is more complex. In such cases it may well be true that both the collective itself is morally responsible, and so are its individual members. However, the collective would still not be responsible because its members are. This is because the property of being morally responsible at the individual level is not one upon which group level properties depend. Therefore it would be incorrect to say that the moral responsibility of the collective is determined by the moral responsibility of individuals or that the collective is responsible because individuals are responsible. There will undoubtedly be some correlation between the two since there will be cases where, for example, a blameworthy collective action supervenes on a blameworthy individual action76. However, this correlation between individual and collective responsibility will not be perfect since the standards against which each action (individual or collective) is judged will be specific to that action and the entire context in which it is undertaken. It is possible that collective responsibility will be generated even when there is none amongst the constituent individuals.

This relation works both ways, and it is therefore equally mistaken to think that individuals can be held morally responsible because the collective of which they are a part is responsible. This observation brings me back to the notion of a ‘contributory action’. Individual moral

responsibility for actions taken within an organisation will be judged in the context of how those actions contribute to group level outcomes. Still, even in this case the individual would not be morally responsible because the group is morally responsible. They would be morally responsible for their contribution to the group’s moral failure because they failed to fulfil an obligation; and the group would be morally responsible in its own right. The two kinds of moral

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For joint actions such as this there is no possibility of the collective being responsible at all. The only collective property present is collective action, and this property alone is not sufficient to establish a potentially responsibility bearing collective entity.

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As an example of such a situation, recall the example I developed in chapter five of the informally structured bank that makes a loan to ‘person C’, even though it is likely that C will default and lose her house. While issuing the loan is an irreducibly collective action for which the bank as a corporate agent can be held responsible, this outcome is entirely foreseeable to the three partners in the bank when they are deciding on their contributory actions. Therefore there is at least a prima facie case for holding them all individually morally responsible as well.

failure (individual and group) have a common causal root, but they remain distinct and are judged separately. This conclusion is, I take it, in line with that reached by Margaret Gilbert in her discussion of the relation between individual and group level responsibility. As Gilbert says: ‘What does the blameworthiness of the collective’s act imply about the personal

blameworthiness of any one member of that collective? From a logical point of view, the short answer is: nothing. Everything depends on the details of a given member’s particular

situation.’ (Gilbert, 2006: 109).

The final case is that of morally significant systems. In these organisations the collective itself does not possess the capability to act reflectively and so cannot generate moral responsibility at the collective level. Rather, it is the reflective actions of individuals who populate the system that generate the responsibility for its outputs. The important feature of morally significant systems, however, is their inherent complexity. This complexity generates epistemic

boundaries which severely curtail the extent to which the individuals can be held responsible for the outcomes of the system. No agent who introduces or changes a rule, or operates an existing rule within the formal structure that constitutes the system, will be able to know fully the implications of his actions. Therefore, those individuals become ‘decoupled’ from the outcomes of their actions and the responsibility that accrues as a result. However, since the complexity is a property of the organisation, it licenses the transfer of the responsibility that would fall on individuals to the system itself. Here we might say that the collective level organisation is responsible because the individuals that populate it generate moral

responsibility, but it is not responsible because they are responsible. In fact the opposite is true and it is because it is not possible to find individuals responsible for the full impact of their actions that the system itself acquires moral culpability.