The issue of responsibility always stood acute in the minds of humanity. Throughout history, the fair division of responsibility was upon judges and rulers who decided what would be fair. Individual decisions without any systematic basis are not always fair, so there were made numerous attempts to give the answer to the question and resolve it once and for all. And while the cases where a group is responsible for an individual’s action seem more understandable and reasonable – Feinberg (1968, pp. 679-680), for example, even mentions the historical examples of collective responsibility, when the whole village was liable for each of its residents’ actions, the issues of the relationship between individual and collective responsibility should also be solved.
Why should anyone be responsible for the actions of a group? The answer comes automatically – because he participated in a group action or because he was a part of a group. Prior to making a certain action, the crucial part that should be present within the agent is the intention to perform this act. This is not solely the desire to do but the want or desire in action. As group or collective is a plural subject and has its own intention when performing certain actions, it is important to consider what these intentions are and where do they reside. It would be reasonable to draw an analogy – if a single agent intends to do something, then this intention is inside his mind. Sadly, but for the case of a group or collective such approach is not available since there is no such thing as the collective mind as a separate entity. And if the collective mind is not the case, then the shared intention should reside in the minds of the group members. As Bratman (1993) argues, the shared intention consists of individual intentions and their interrelations. Bratman concludes his thoughts on the shared intentions with the following list – the shared intention is the case only when first of all, all the group members intend to perform an act as a group. The second requirement is that each member of a group intends to perform an act in accordance and because of all the intentions mentioned in the first point and meshing subplans of all the participants of shared intention. Subplans are the ways of realization of the shared intention. The third requirement is that all of the group members who have a shared intention share the knowledge of the first two points.
If the first point is not the case, then we cannot speak of a shared intention. If for example, I intend that we go to the theatre together, and you intend to go there alone then there is no shared intention. The second point is a bit more complicated but not less necessary than the first one. If for example, the reasons for one's action are not the intentions of all the group members but his own intentions not shared by other group members then these actions would be coercive to others and, hence, do not comprise the content of the shared intention. If the subplans of the group members do not mesh then, we also cannot speak of the shared intention. Suppose the example with going to the theatre – if you want to go to listen to the opera, and I want to watch a regular play, our subplans do not mesh, and it is hardly a shared intention. But if you want to go to listen to the opera and I do not care about the play, then our subplans for the action mesh, and we do have a shared intention. The third component of the shared intention is also essential. Shared intention requires some coordination of plans and actions between the agents who intend to perform this action, so they have to know at least that others whom they intend with together also conform to their intention, otherwise shared intention would not be possible at all.
Having decided upon the concepts of blameworthiness, responsibility and shared attention, we might proceed to answer whether individual members are responsible for the actions of the group. Following Feinberg (1968) I will describe three types of group fault where the group guilt is distributable between members and the liability of individual members in every case.
The first type is when the group fault is caused by the independent contribution of every member’s fault. To illustrate this case Feinberg (1968, p.683) presents the example with drowning man. Suppose a man is swimming in the public beach with no professional life savers. He starts to drown and is screaming and begging for help and while there are no professionals, the beach is full of good swimmers who hear man's voice but no one helps, and he eventually is left to drown. In this case, the responsibility of each swimmer on the beach contributes to the whole group responsibility and is independent of others as they did not have a shared intention as described in the previous section. The law does not impose any punishment or responsibility for this type of cases. One of the most popular reasons for that is if the responsibility would be imposed on one, then it should be imposed on others too. And if the group is very vast, suppose there were several hundred or even thousands of people on the beach then the hardships in executing this type of charge will be enormous. Nevertheless, the actions not performed by the swimmers on the beach were in essence voluntary and they definitely violated moral norm to save human life when one begs for help. They could have failed to do anything because all thought that if there are so many people on the beach someone would definitely save the drowning man, they could also do it out of fear or some other reason, what is the most important is that no one rushed to the water and helped the man. So, it could be concluded that all of those who heard the cry for help are liable for the harm. In this case, it would be reasonable to suggest that each of them bears the equal amount of guilt because they all were in the same conditions and all did (or failed to do) the same.
The second type of the distributable group responsibility is the one which lies in the folkways and is supported by all members of the group. Feinberg (1968, p.686) presents the attitude of whites of the American South to the blacks as the example of such case. The ones liable for the violence are not only the ones executing particular acts of violence but also all of the group members (here Southerners) for supporting such way of things and receiving respect and material benefits from their attitude. All who conform to the abovementioned criteria are blameworthy and responsible for all the harm done. The guilt here is composed of the direct component for doing the acts of violence and the indirect one of supporting and benefiting from the former. One could say that it is rather difficult to assess the indirect component of the responsibility due to the fact that little to no evidence about the total amount of harm are present at the moment.
The third type of distributable group fault is when a collective has a shared intention in performing some act which is morally bad. When the guilt of a person in such act is not put to question, the amount of personal guilt is surely the topic for careful consideration. Feinberg (1968, p.684) tells that according to the law, there are four types or individual responsibility in the case of crimes. The felons are classified into the following categories: perpetrators, abettors, inciters, and criminal protectors. To illustrate ‘who is who,' Feinberg (1968, pp.684-685) presents the bank robbery case. Suppose A and B plan a bank robbery, they tell their plan to their friend C, who supports and encourages them for a crime. They borrow weapons from D and hire E as their driver. After having executed their plan, the criminals are pursued by police and are forced to go to E's uncle F. F provides them with shelter and food hospitably and sends them on their way. In this case, all of the mentioned people are guilty in the bank robbery, however, A and B would be considered bearing the largest portion of guilt and considered perpetrators, E would bear slightly less responsibility as he is an abettor, C and D are inciters, and F is a criminal protector. Although the relative degrees of bearing responsibility are decided in this case and are rather obvious, the question is to what exact extent is each of the members of a group action responsible for such action. Following the legal system, it is clear that the responsibility of the individual members for a group act is distributed according to their contribution to the act as a whole. It is also important to note that the ones who perform the most of a peculiar act do not always bear principal responsibility. It is commonly considered that the individual who incited and encouraged others to act or created the shared intention in the group is the most responsible. In this light, another issue rises – by which qualities or actions can such individual be identified?
In most cases it is hard to divide the responsibility properly. Mathematical calculations can be employed in simpler situations where the degrees of responsibility can be judged by the part of material gain or loss experienced, number of lives taken, performed part of the whole action or some else parameter that can be calculated and partially assigned to each member of the group. However, to many cases, such mathematical computations are not possible. Two issues rise in this light – the practical and the theoretical one. The practical consists in finding for which part of an act is each of the contributing members responsible. Theoretical part consists in proper dividing the whole responsibility into parts. The complex situations arise when the choice is to be made about a voluntary support or participation in some act. Consider the politician who is known for promoting corruption or dishonest policies. If on the elections people vote for him and he will eventually be elected to government where he will conform to his previous course of action and, thus, will harm people with his actions. To which extent are the people who elected him responsible for his actions. Another type of issues arises when the group members conform to the group's actions not because of their consent but because of some kind of coercion. Consider Nazi Germany, it is obvious that not all of those days Germans wished to support the political course set by Hitler. Yet, they paid their taxes and by this contributed to the harm caused by the German army. In some sense, their actions were voluntary because they chose to pay taxes. From another point of view, what choice did they have? If they did not pay the taxes, they would be put to prison or even shot. What part of responsibility should they be assigned with?
Another aspect of the problem of individual responsibility for the collective actions is the issue of assigning value. When someone is responsible for some harm, this harm has to be valued in some way. Without assigning some value to the consequences of an act, the discussion about the responsibility loses it sense. If what someone is responsible for cannot be valued in any way then what should be performed further with this responsibility? This can be expressed in simpler words: ”He is responsible, so what?” This is why the valuing process is the important part of the responsibility discussion. When it comes to assigning value to material objects which can be assessed directly, there are no issues. The objects, decisions, or consequences which cannot be directly assessed can be valued with the use of cost-benefit analysis developed by the economists. But what about human life? According to Broome (2008) the methods or assessing the value of human life nowadays are based on the ability of an individual to pay for prolonging his life which is pretty dubious and controversial. This is why a new system of assigning value to human life should be developed. Why is this even possible? Broome (2008) comes to a conclusion that the value of human life is not infinite but finite. He also concludes that the harm done to an individual by shortening or the benefit gained by prolonging his life equals to the difference between the values of longer and shorter life. The question how this value should be found is left open. In Broome's (2008) point of view, the value of life depends on two characteristics – quality and quantity. While, in some cases, the quantity can be found easily, in other ones, it is now impossible to determine (how many years would person live if she was not killed). The issues of defining quality and the balance between these two traits are also to be found.
The issue of individual responsibility in collective fault always bothered human minds. The problem of distributing guilt fairly and justly was often a subject for debates throughout history. Even now we do not have a distinct model which would tell the just way of deciding to what extent the individuals are responsible for the actions of a group as a whole in each case. The problem lies not only in practical grounds – of how to find which part of the harm is each individual responsible for, but also in the theoretical part – how should harm be valued. The issue of assigning value to human life also has not been resolved yet. What can be known for sure is that “all of the individual members may, at least, be relatively blameless" (Gilbert 2006, p.110). Further considerations on assigning specific part of group guilt to particular individuals strongly depend on the context and particular details of an act. In the cases where the fault can be distributed or calculated mathematically the part of the responsibility born by each member can be easier explained and justified than in the cases where such calculational method cannot be applied. Nevertheless, the model answering all the issues should be developed in order to answer all the questions raised in the field of individual and group responsibility.
References
Bratman, M. (1993). Shared Intention. Ethics, 104(1), pp.97-113.
Broome, J. (2008). What is your life worth?. Daedalus, 137(1), pp.49-56.
Feinberg, J. (1968). Collective Responsibility. The Journal of Philosophy, 65(21), pp.674-688.
Gilbert, M. (2006). Who's to Blame? Collective Moral Responsibility and Its Implications for Group Members. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 30(1), pp.94-114.
