The sane approach to real collective responsibility

Sara R. Chant

pp. 313-328

in: Anita Konzelmann-Ziv, Hans B. Schmid (eds), Institutions, emotions, and group agents, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

In this paper, I offer an argument for the existence of "real collective responsibility' and the beginnings of an analysis of it. "Real collective responsibility' refers to the responsibility that is borne by a group of individuals, but which is not reducible to the responsibility of each individual in the group. The approach I take is to draw an analogy between the uncontroversial way in which an individual's moral responsibility may be mitigated when her behavior is coerced, and the way in which group dynamics may exert pressure constraining the behavior of each member of a group. This sort of consideration suggests that real collective responsibility may occur when a group finds itself in a highly stable, accessible Nash equilibrium, which I refer to as the SANE condition for real collective responsibility.