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Collective Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

R. S. Downie
R. S. Downie
Affiliation:
Glasgow University
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Extract

In his paper ‘Collective Responsibility’ (Philosophy, July 1968) Mr. D. E. Cooper argues for the thesis that collectives can be held responsible in a sense not reducible to the individual responsibility of the members of the collective. And he uses this conclusion to support views of individual responsibility and of blame and punishment which he wishes to assert independently. Is hall argue that although there is a sense in which the actions and responsibility of a collective cannot be analysed in terms of the actions and responsibilities of the individual persons who compose the collective, it is not moral responsibility which is involved. I shall then maintain that Cooper's account of collective responsibility does not support his account of individual responsibility; and that his account of individual responsibility is in any case false, if he means moral responsiblity.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 167 , January 1969 , pp. 66 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1969

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References

1 I have developed these points in ‘Social Roles and Moral Responsibility’, (Philosophy, January 1964) and in Government Action and Morality (London, 1964).Google Scholar