Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals

229 Pages·2019·1.349 MB·English

by  Stephanie Collins

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Group Duties
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Group Duties
Their Existence and Their
Implications for Individuals
Stephanie Collins
1
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3
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Preface
I first got annoyed by group duties in 2009. I was doing a Master of
Public Policy course at the University of Auckland, for which I took
Anita Lacey’s excellent class ‘Global Governance’. Each week we were
presentedwithanewcrisis:globalization,sovereignty,poverty,security,
andsoon.Obviously,theproblemswerevastandcomplex.Ateachturn,
the entities charged with solving the problems either seemed incapable
ofsolvingthem(e.g.whenweconsideredthedevelopmentpoliciesofa
particular state, or the impotent remonstrations of the UN Security
Council) or seemed (to me) to be not the kinds of things that could
eventrytosolveanything(e.g.whenweponderedwhattheinternational
communitymightdoaboutethniccleansing,orhowtheBrettonWoods
Institutionsshouldtogetherapproachloanconditionality).Ipersistently
feltthattheaspirationsoftheworldwerebeingthrust—byscholarsand
practitionersalike—intothehandsofthewrongsortsofentities:diffuse
and amorphous ‘frameworks of governance’ or ‘communities of prac-
tice’,ratherthanspecificandmaterial‘agentsofgovernment’.Yet,atthe
globallevel,whatchoicedoscholarsandpractitionershave?
It turned out I was a philosopher by disposition, so I returned to
Philosophyandhavesinceintermittentlyworkedonthequestion:when
wewanttodemandthatourworldgetsbetter,towhatsortsofgroupmay
we address that demand? Is it too ambitious to say that ‘humanity’
should solve global ills? Is it too reductive to say it’s all down to
individuals?Thisbookismyattempttoaddressthosequestions.Unfor-
tunately, the book doesn’t come close to bringing the philosophical
rubbertobearonthepoliticalroad.ButIhopeitprovidestheconceptual
toolstoatleastpartlyguideourpoliticalthought,talk,andpractice.
As it turns out, it is tooambitious to saythat humanityshouldsolve
global ills. And it is too reductive to say it’s all down to individuals.
Instead, I suggest, we need a mixed approach. The approach comes in
three parts, which together make up my Tripartite Model of group
duties. First, there are groups that are mere combinations—collections
of agents that don’t have any goals or decision-making procedures in
common.Thesegroupscannotbearmoralduties.Instead,whenweare
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vi 
temptedtoattributedutiestothem,weshouldre-castthepurportedduty
asaseriesofduties—onebornebyeachagentinthecombination.Each
duty demands its bearer to ‘I-reason’: roughly, to do the best they can,
givenwhatever they happen to believe the others willdo. Second, there
are groups whose members share goals but lack decision-making pro-
cedures.Thesearecoalitions.Coalitionsalsocannotbearduties,buttheir
alleged duties should be replaced with members’ several duties to ‘we-
reason’:roughly,todoone’spartinaparticulargrouppatternofactions,
on the presumption that others will do likewise. Third, and finally,
collectives have group-level procedures for making decisions. They can
bear duties. Collectives’ duties imply duties for collectives’ members to
usetheirroleinthecollectivewithaviewtothecollectivedoingitsduty.
In recent years, I’ve had numerous heated exchanges about these
issues. It’s impossible to name everyone who’s helped me by arguing
withme,sinceIcan’tremembereveryseminarroomandpubinwhich
theseideashavecomeup.Somepeoplehavebeenthankedinthejournal
articles and book chapters associated with this research, given in the
Reference List in this volume. But I’d like to single out some agents—
individualandcollective—formentionhere.
First,theSchoolofPhilosophyattheAustralianNationalUniversity,
the Politics Department (and particularly the Manchester Centre for
Political Theory) at the University of Manchester, and the Institute for
ReligionandCriticalInquiryattheAustralianCatholicUniversityhave
successively provided supportive and stimulating intellectual homes.
Mycolleaguesateachofthoseinstitutionshavebeentremendous.
I also thank the Mind Association, whose award of a Research Fel-
lowship gave me the six months in which I wrote the first draft.
I workshopped and revised that draft while a Campus Visitor at the
Australian National University, under the auspices of Nic Southwood’s
AustralianResearchCouncilFutureFellowshipFT160100409‘Feasibility
in Politics: Taking Account of Groups and Institutions’. I completed
furtherrevisionswhileaResearchVisitingProfessorattheUniversityof
Vienna with Herlinde Pauer-Studer, for which this book has received
fundingfromtheEuropeanResearchCouncil(ERC)undertheEuropean
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant
agreementNo740922).
I am grateful for the permission to include extended, revised, and
updated discussions from a previous publication in this book. The
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 vii
discussion of membership duties in Chapter7 is drawn from Collins,
Stephanie, ‘Duties of Group Agents and Group Members’, Journal of
Social Philosophy, Volume 48, Issue 1, pp. 38–57, Copyright © 2017,
JohnWileyandSons,doi:10.1111/josp.12181.
I thank Jelena Belić and Zoltan Miklosi for organizing a two-day
manuscript workshop funded and hosted by the Central European
University, and Christian Barry for organizing a two-day manuscript
workshopfundedandhostedbytheAustralianNationalUniversity.For
reading chapters (or indeed the full draft) and giving commentaries at
those workshops, I thank Christian Barry, Jelena Belić, Olle Blomberg,
Frank Hindriks, Holly Lawford-Smith (twice), Zoltan Miklosi, Avia
Pasternak, Simon Rippon, Nic Southwood, Kai Spiekermann, William
Tuckwell, and Bill Wringe. Other valuable participants included Renée
Jorgensen Bolinger, Max Fedoseev, Jasper Hedges, James Edgar Lim,
Duncan Martin, Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Anne Polkamp, and Shang
Long Yeo. The full draft was also read and dissected by Bob Goodin,
NielsdeHaan,andtwoanonymousreadersforOxfordUniversityPress,
whoturnedouttobeDavidKillorenandMarionSmiley.
My thinking on these issues has been shaped by conversations with
many other people, including (but not limited to) Elizabeth Ashford,
Robert Audi, Gunnar Björnsson, Sara Rachel Chant, Garrett Cullity,
Alexander Dietz, Toni Erskine, David Estlund, Kendy Hess, Onni
Hirvonen, Säde Hormio, Christine Hobden, Violetta Igneski, Tracy
Isaacs,ElizabethKahn,ArtoLaitinen,ChristianList,DavidMiller,Philip
Pettit, Felix Pinkert, Paul-Mikhail Podosky, Richard Rowland, David
P. Schweikard, Anne Schwenkenbecher, Leonie Smith, Thomas Smith,
AnselmSpindler,andAnnaStilz.Althoughshe’snamedabove,Ishould
mention that my greatest intellectual debt is to Holly Lawford-Smith.
Ourjointworkoncollectives’dutieshasgreatlyinformedmyapproach
in this book—even though she disagrees with several of its arguments.
Finally,mygreatestpersonaldebtistoJonathanFarrell,whosesupport
during the initial development of this book has stayed with me
throughout.
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Contents
1. TheTripartiteModel 1
1.1 IntroducingtheTripartiteModel 1
1.2 NearbyIssues 6
1.3 TheTripartiteDistinction 10
1.3.1 Collectives 11
1.3.2 Coalitions 16
1.3.3 Combinations 20
1.4 TheScopeoftheModel 21
2. ArgumentsforCombinations’andCoalitions’Duties 27
2.1 Introduction 27
2.2 FiveArgumentsforCombinations’andCoalitions’Duties 29
2.2.1 Individuals’Duties 29
2.2.2 GroupBlameworthiness 33
2.2.3 Convictions 36
2.2.4 HumanRights 38
2.2.5 Demandingness 41
2.3 CombinationsandCoalitionsasMoralAgents 43
2.3.1 CombinationsasAgents 46
2.3.2 CoalitionsasMoralAgents 51
2.4 Conclusion 58
3. AgainstCombinations’andCoalitions’Duties 60
3.1 Introduction 60
3.2 TheAbilityArgument 63
3.2.1 Abilities 63
3.2.2 AnalysingAbilities 65
3.2.3 Combinations’andCoalitions’AbilitiesareReal 74
3.3 TheDecisionArgument 85
3.4 Conclusion 94
4. CoordinationDuties 96
4.1 Introduction 96
4.2 Responsiveness 97
4.3 Collectivization 108
4.4 TheCoordinationPrinciple 114
4.5 Conclusion 124
5. DifferentiatingCombinationsandCoalitions 126
5.1 Introduction 126
5.2 TheHi-LoExample 127