Control accounts of moral responsibility argue that agents must possess certain capacities in order to be blameworthy for wrongdoing. This is sometimes thought to be revisionary, because reflection on our moral practices reveals that we often blame many agents who lack these capacities. This paper argues that Control accounts of moral responsibility are not too revisionary, nor too permissive, because they can still demand quite a lot from excused wrongdoers. Excused wrongdoers can acquire duties of reconciliation, which require that they (...) improve themselves, make reparations for the harm caused, and retract the meaning expressed in the original wrong. Failure to do these things expresses a lack of regard for the victims, and can make those wrongdoers appropriate targets of blame. (shrink)

When a group of persons such as a nation orcorporation has a relatively clear structureand set of decision procedures, it is capableof acting and should, it can well be argued, beconsidered morally as well as legallyresponsible. This is not because it is afull-fledged moral person, but becauseassigning responsibility is a human practice,and we have good moral reasons to adopt thepractice of considering such groupsresponsible. From such judgments, however,little follows about the responsibility ofindividual members of such groups; much moreneeds to be (...) ascertained about which officialsor executives are responsible for what beforewe can consider individual members of nationsor corporations responsible.Whether an unorganized group can be morallyresponsible is much less clear, but there havebeen useful discussions in recent years of thepossible responsibility of whites for racism,or males for sexism, and the like. In thisessay I explore arguments for consideringgroups or their members responsible for ethnicconflict. Such groups may lack a clearorganizational structure, but they are notrandom assortments of persons. Groups can andoften should take responsibility for theattitudes and actions of their members, and cansometimes be considered responsible for failingto do so. And persons often can and shouldtake responsibility for the attitudes andactions of the groups of which they aremembers. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that crowds can form morally evaluable collective intentions, even without formal decision making structures and that these intentions can direct morally evaluable collective actions. Although recent philosophical work in the area of collective moral responsibility goes some way to theorising collective agency and intentional action in crowds, we currently do not have theoretically sound basis for evaluating the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of particular crowds, even though these evaluations are regularly made. This thesis attempts to fill (...) this explanatory gap in the literature. In developing this explanation, I make a taxonomic distinction between aggregative and cohesive crowds; a distinction that is based on a claim about the specific properties of a crowd that make it capable of bearing ascriptions of collective responsibility. Simply put, cohesive crowds are distinct from aggregative crowds because their members develop and share a specific bank of common knowledge. This knowledge can often be acquired very quickly and - crucially - may come to be shared without explicit verbal or written communication. It develops through a phenomenological experience of joint attention and a sharing of beliefs. While this common knowledge includes shared understandings of the crowd’s aims and goals, it also crucially includes knowledge of the relationships between crowd members and of the capacity that they have to act together. I argue that coordinated actions in crowds are only possible when individuals know that they stand in a certain relationship with each other. Their beliefs and intentions must be shared not merely in the sense that individuals possess the same beliefs and intentions but also that each person knows that they know that they share those beliefs and intentions with the people around them. I argue that crowds become cohesive crowds when their members together develop collective awareness of their beliefs and intentions. It is this specific epistemic condition makes possible the spontaneous coordination of individual actions towards a goal that only a crowd can achieve. (shrink)