The Second Mistake in Moral Mathematics is not about the Worth of Mere Participation

Petersson, Björn

doi:10.1017/s0953820804001189

Cited by 27 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…One might be tempted to think of influence in terms of potential to facilitate the process that would lead to or constitute the outcome in question (cf. Petersson ). But this does not seem to be required.…”

Section: Some Questions Concerning Shared Obligationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Essentially Shared Obligations

Björnsson¹

2014

Midwest Studies In Philosophy

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Section: Some Questions Concerning Shared Obligationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Essentially Shared Obligations

Björnsson¹

2014

Midwest Studies In Philosophy

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“…Intuitively, it might seem that the relevant causal involvement would have to be one of at least facilitating the causal process, or make it more likely to produce the outcome (cf. Petersson 2004). But while that might be true for responsibility for outcomes of individual actions, it is not required in The Lake.…”

Section: Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Joint Responsibility Without Individual Control: Applying the Explanation Hypothesis

Björnsson

2011

Moral Responsibility

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This paper introduces a new family of cases where agents are jointly morally responsible for outcomes over which they have no individual control, a family that resists standard ways of understanding outcome responsibility. First, the agents in these cases do not individually facilitate the outcomes and would not seem individually responsible for them if the other agents were replaced by non-agential causes. This undermines attempts to understand joint responsibility as overlapping individual responsibility; the responsibility in question is essentially joint. Second, the agents involved in these cases are not aware of each other's existence and do not form a social group. This undermines attempts to understand joint responsibility in terms of actual or possible joint action or joint intentions, or in terms of other social ties. Instead, it is argued that intuitions about joint responsibility are best understood given the Explanation Hypothesis, according to which a group of agents are seen as jointly responsible for outcomes that are suitably explained by their motivational structures: something bad happened because they didn't care enough; something good happened because their dedication was extraordinary. One important consequence of the proposed account is that responsibility for outcomes of collective action is a deeply normative matter.

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“…For a discussion, see e.g Eggleston (2000)Gruzalski (1986);Jackson (1997);Parfit (1986);Petersson (2004); Shrader-Frechette (1987).10 The example is inaccurate historywise (cf.Suetonius 2003 [121]). For instance, had Brutus not agreed to stab Caesar, there would most likely have been no murder.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If you have trouble accepting this argument, seePetersson (2004Petersson ( , 2018 for a more expounded version of it. He proposes this argument first in relation toParfit's (1984) second mistake in moral mathematics (and the discussion that followed it), and second in relation toFeit's (2015) suggestion that a plurality (i.e.…”

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confidence: 99%

Causing Global Warming

Gunnemyr

2019

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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Do I cause global warming, climate change and their related harms when I go for a leisure drive with my gas-guzzling car? The current verdict seems to be that I do not; the emissions produced by my drive are much too insignificant to make a difference for the occurrence of global warming and its related harms. I argue that our verdict on this issue depends on what we mean by 'causation'. If we for instance assume a simple counterfactual analysis of causation according to which 'C causes E' means 'if C had not occurred, E would not have occurred', we must conclude that a single drive does not cause global warming. However, this analysis of causation is wellknown for giving counterintuitive results in some important cases. If we instead adopt Lewis's (2000) analysis of causation, it turns out that it is indeterminate whether I cause global warming (etc.) when I go for a single drive. Still, in contexts where we seek to control or understand global warming, there is a pressure to adopt a more fragile view of this event. When we adopt such a view, it turns out that a single drive does cause global warming (etc.). This means that we cannot like Sinnott-Armstrong (2005) and Kingston and Sinnott-Armstrong (2018) reject the idea that I should refrain from going for a leisure drive simply because such a drive does not cause global warming. Keywords Causation. Causing harm. Causal influence. Global warming. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. David Lewis If I go for a leisure drive with my gas-guzzling car, am I then causing global warming and its related harms? In BIt's not my fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations^(2005) Walter Sinnott-Armstrong makes the case that I do not. This is the claim I question in this paper. Sinnott-Armstrong's paper has been extensively discussed, (for instance by Braham and Van

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The Second Mistake in Moral Mathematics is not about the Worth of Mere Participation

Cited by 27 publications

References 2 publications

Essentially Shared Obligations

Essentially Shared Obligations

Joint Responsibility Without Individual Control: Applying the Explanation Hypothesis

Causing Global Warming

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