Switch to: Citations

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World.Elizabeth Cripps - 2013 - Oxford University Press.
    Climate Change and the Moral Agent examines the moral foundations of climate change and makes a case for collective action on climate change by appealing to moralized collective self-interest, collective ability to aid, and an expanded understanding of collective responsibility for harm.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   51 citations  
  • “My Emissions Make No Difference”: Climate Change and the Argument from Inconsequentialism.Joakim Sandberg - 2011 - Environmental Ethics 33 (3):229-48.
    “Since the actions I perform as an individual only have an inconsequential effect on the threat of climate change,” a common argument goes, “it cannot be morally wrong for me to take my car to work everyday or refuse to recycle.” This argument has received a lot of scorn from philosophers over the years, but has actually been defended in some recent articles. A more systematic treatment of a central set of related issues shows how maneuvering around these issues is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • Strict Finitism and the Happy Sorites.Ofra Magidor - 2012 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 41 (2):471-491.
    Call an argument a ‘happy sorites’ if it is a sorites argument with true premises and a false conclusion. It is a striking fact that although most philosophers working on the sorites paradox find it at prima facie highly compelling that the premises of the sorites paradox are true and its conclusion false, few (if any) of the standard theories on the issue ultimately allow for happy sorites arguments. There is one philosophical view, however, that appears to allow for at (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Do I Make a Difference?Shelly Kagan - 2011 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (2):105-141.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   175 citations  
  • (1 other version)It Makes no Difference Whether or Not I Do It.Jonathan Glover & M. Scott-Taggart - 1975 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 49 (1):171 - 209.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 citations  
  • Climate Change and Individual Responsibility.Avram Hiller - 2011 - The Monist 94 (3):349-368.
    Several philosophers claim that the greenhouse gas emissions from actions like a Sunday drive are so miniscule that they will make no difference whatsoever with regard to anthropogenic global climate change (AGCC) and its expected harms. This paper argues that this claim of individual causal inefficacy is false. First, if AGCC is not reducible at least in part to ordinary actions, then the cause would have to be a metaphysically odd emergent entity. Second, a plausible (dis-)utility calculation reveals that such (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   80 citations  
  • (1 other version)Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age.Larry May - 2002 - Philosophical Review 111 (3):483-486.
    Christopher Kutz has written an excellent book: part metaphysics, part ethical theory, and part legal philosophy. The aim of the book, as is clear from the title, is to examine and defend the idea of complicity, that is, the responsibility of individuals for their participation in collective harms. While there has not been a lot of philosophical work on this topic, there has been some good work, and Kutz is responsive to most of it. But basically, this book strikes out (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   81 citations  
  • The paradox of voting and the ethics of political representation.Alexander A. Guerrero - 2010 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 38 (3):272-306.
    This paper connects the question of the rationality of voting to the question of what it is morally permissible for elected representatives to do. In particular, the paper argues that it is rational to vote to increase the strength of the manifest normative mandate of one's favored candidate. I argue that, due to norms of political legitimacy, how representatives ought to act while in office is tied to how much support they have from their constituents, where a representative’s “support” is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Negative duties, positive duties, and the “new harms”.Judith Lichtenberg - 2010 - Ethics 120 (3):557-578.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   72 citations  
  • Polluting the Polls: When Citizens Should Not Vote.Jason Brennan - 2009 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (4):535-549.
    Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many democratic theorists agree that we (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   38 citations  
  • Ethical Obligations in a Tragedy of the Commons.Baylor L. Johnson - 2003 - Environmental Values 12 (3):271-287.
    When people use a resource without a co-ordinated plan the result is often a tragedy of the commons in which the resource is depleted. Many environmental resources display the characteristics of a developing tragedy of the commons. Many believe that each person is ethically obligated to reduce use of the commons to the sustainable level. I argue that this is mistaken. In a tragedy of the commons there is no reasonable expectation that individual, voluntary action will succeed. Our obligation is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 citations  
  • (1 other version)What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
    In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2526 citations  
  • Group morality.Frank Jackson - 1987 - In John Jamieson Carswell Smart, Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan & Jean Norman (eds.), Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart. New York, NY, USA: Blackwell.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • (1 other version)Justifiability to each person.Derek Parfit - 2003 - Ratio 16 (4):368–390.
    sonable, in this sense, if we ignore, or give too little weight to, some other people's well-being or moral claims.' Some critics have suggested that, because Scanlon appeals to this sense of 'reasonable', his formula is empty. On this objection, whenever we believe that some act is wrong, we shall believe that people have moral claims not to be treated in this way. We could therefore argue that such acts are disallowed by some principle which no one could reasonably reject, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   73 citations  
  • When Utilitarians Should Be Virtue Theorists.Dale Jamieson - 2007 - Utilitas 19 (2):160.
    The contrast typically made between utilitarianism and virtue theory is overdrawn. Utilitarianism is a universal emulator: it implies that we should lie, cheat, steal, even appropriate Aristotle, when that is what brings about the best outcomes. In some cases and in some worlds it is best for us to focus as precisely as possible on individual acts. In other cases and worlds it is best for us to be concerned with character traits. Global environmental change leads to concerns about character (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   103 citations  
  • Self torture and group beneficence.Frank Arntzenius & David McCarthy - 1997 - Erkenntnis 47 (1):129-144.
    Moral puzzles about actions which bring about very small or what are said to be imperceptible harms or benefits for each of a large number of people are well known. Less well known is an argument by Warren Quinn that standard theories of rationality can lead an agent to end up torturing himself or herself in a completely foreseeable way, and that this shows that standard theories of rationality need to be revised. We show where Quinn's argument goes wrong, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • Group-based reasons for action.Christopher Woodard - 2003 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 6 (2):215-229.
    This article endorses a familiar, albeit controversial, argument for the existence of group-based reasons for action, but then rejects two doctrines which other advocates of such reasons usually accept. One such doctrine is the willingness requirement, which says that a group-based reason exists only if (sufficient) other members of the group in question are willing to cooperate. Thus the paper argues that there is sometimes a reason, which derives from the rationality of some group action, to play one's part unilaterally (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Comments.Derek Parfit - 1986 - Ethics 96 (4):832-872.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • Puppies, pigs, and people: Eating meat and marginal cases.Alastair Norcross - 2004 - Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1):229–245.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   115 citations  
  • (1 other version)Great Harms from small benefits grow: How death can be outweighed by headaches.Alastair Norcross - 1998 - Analysis 58 (2):152–158.
    Suppose that a very large number of people, say one billion, will suffer a moderately severe headache for the next twenty-four hours. For these billion people, the next twenty-four hours will be fairly unpleasant, though by no means unbearable. However, there will be no side-effects from these headaches; no drop in productivity in the work-place, no lapses in concentration leading to accidents, no unkind words spoken to loved ones that will later fester. Nonetheless, it is clearly desirable that these billion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Utilitarianism, group actions, and coordination or, must the utilitarian be a Buridan's ass?Jan Narveson - 1976 - Noûs 10 (2):173-194.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Expected utility, contributory causation, and vegetarianism.Gaverick Matheny - 2002 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 19 (3):293–297.
    Several authors have argued that act–utilitarianism cannot provide an adequate critique of buying meat because a single meat purchase will not actually cause more farm animals to be raised or slaughtered. Thus, regardless of whether or not the production of meat is inhumane to animals, someone who buys meat is doing nothing wrong. This argument fails to show that meat purchases are morally permissible, however, because it assumes that act–utilitarians would use actual utility in their decision to buy or not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Utilitarianism revised.R. F. Harrod - 1936 - Mind 45 (178):137-156.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  • Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals.Stephanie Collins - 2019 - Oxford University Press.
    Moral duties are regularly attributed to groups. Does this make conceptual sense or is this merely political rhetoric? And what are the implications for these individuals within groups? Collins outlines a Tripartite Model of group duties that can target political demands at the right entities, in the right way and for the right reasons.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • What We Together Do.Derek Parfit - manuscript
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • Consumer Choice and Collective Impact.Julia Nefsky - 2017 - In Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson & Tyler Doggett (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Oxford University Press. pp. 267-286.
    Taken collectively, consumer food choices have a major impact on animal lives, human lives, and the environment. But it is far from clear how to move from facts about the power of collective consumer demand to conclusions about what one ought to do as an individual consumer. In particular, even if a large-scale shift in demand away from a certain product (e.g., factory-farmed meat) would prevent grave harms or injustices, it typically does not seem that it will make a difference (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • The inefficacy objection to consequentialism and the problem with the expected consequences response.Mark Bryant Budolfson - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (7):1711-1724.
    Collective action problems lie behind many core issues in ethics and social philosophy—for example, whether an individual is required to vote, whether it is wrong to consume products that are produced in morally objectionable ways, and many others. In these cases, it matters greatly what we together do, but yet a single individual’s ‘non-cooperative’ choice seems to make no difference to the outcome and also seems to involve no violation of anyone’s rights. Here it is argued that—contrary to influential arguments (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • What’s Wrong with Joyguzzling?Ewan Kingston & Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1):169-186.
    Our thesis is that there is no moral requirement to refrain from emitting reasonable amounts of greenhouse gases solely in order to enjoy oneself. Joyriding in a gas guzzler provides our paradigm example. We first distinguish this claim that there is no moral requirement to refrain from joyguzzling from other more radical claims. We then review several different proposed objections to our view. These include: the claim that joyguzzling exemplifies a vice, causes or contributes to harm, has negative expected value, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   48 citations  
  • What We Together Ought to Do.Alexander Dietz - 2016 - Ethics 126 (4):955-982.
    I argue that we have not only individual reasons for action but also collective reasons for action: reasons which apply to us as a group. I next argue that if we together have a reason to act, then I may have a reason to do my part, but only when others will do theirs. Finally, I argue that collective reasons to do good can never make a difference to what individuals ought to do, but that other kinds of collective reasons (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Reasons and Persons.Joseph Margolis - 1986 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (2):311-327.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1638 citations  
  • Why Citizens Should Vote: A Causal Responsibility Approach.Alvin I. Goldman - 1999 - Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (2):201-217.
    Why should a citizen vote? There are two ways to interpret this question: in a prudential sense, and in a moral sense. Under the first interpretation, the question asks why—or under what circumstances—it is in a citizen's self-interest to vote. Under the second interpretation, it asks what moral reasons citizens have for voting. I shall mainly try to answer the moral version of the question, but my answer may also, in some circumstances, bear on the prudential question. Before proceeding to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • Review of Donald Regan: Utilitarianism and co-operation[REVIEW]William Nelson - 1982 - Ethics 92 (4):751-753.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • How you can help, without making a difference.Julia Nefsky - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (11):2743-2767.
    There are many cases in which people collectively cause some morally significant outcome (such as a harmful or beneficial outcome) but no individual act seems to make a difference. The problem in such cases is that it seems each person can argue, ‘it makes no difference whether or not I do X, so I have no reason to do it.’ The challenge is to say where this argument goes wrong. My approach begins from the observation that underlying the problem and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   62 citations  
  • Fairness, Participation, and the Real Problem of Collective Harm.Julia Nefsky - 2015 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 5:245-271.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   20 citations  
  • (1 other version)Great harms from small benefits grow: how death can be outweighed by headaches.A. Norcross - 1998 - Analysis 58 (2):152-158.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • Environmental Damage and the Puzzle of the Self-Torturer.Chrisoula Andreou - 2005 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 34 (1):95-108.
    I show, building on Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer, that destructive conduct with respect to the environment can flourish even in the absence of interpersonal conflicts. As Quinn's puzzle makes apparent, in cases where individually negligible effects are involved, an agent, whether it be an individual or a unified collective, can be led down a course of destruction simply as a result of following its informed and perfectly understandable but intransitive preferences. This is relevant with respect to environmental ethics, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • It's Not My Fault: Global Warming and Individual Moral Obligations.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2005 - In Walter Sinnott-Armstrong & Richard B. Howarth (eds.), Perspectives on Climate Change. Elsevier. pp. 221–253.
    A survey of various candidates shows that there is no defensible moral principle that shows that individuals have an obligation to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   117 citations  
  • Pooled beneficence.Garrett Cullity - 2000 - In Mike Almeida (ed.), Imperceptible Harms and Benefits. Springer. pp. 9-42.
    There can be situations in which, if I contribute to a pool of resources for helping a large number of people, the difference that my contribution makes to any of the people helped from the pool will be imperceptible at best, and maybe even non-existent. And this can be the case where it is also true that giving the same amount directly to one of the intended beneficiaries of the pool would have made a very large difference to her. Can (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • Difference-Making and Individuals' Climate-Related Obligations.Holly Lawford-Smith - 2016 - In Clare Heyward & Dominic Roser (eds.), Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 64-82.
    Climate change appears to be a classic aggregation problem, in which billions of individuals perform actions none of which seem to be morally wrong taken in isolation, and yet which combine to drive the global concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) ever higher toward environmental (and humanitarian) catastrophe. When an individual can choose between actions that will emit differing amounts of GHGs―such as to choose a vegan rather than carnivorous meal, to ride a bike to work rather than drive a car, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World.John Broome - 2012 - W. W. Norton.
    Esteemed philosopher John Broome avoids the familiar ideological stances on climate change policy and examines the issue through an invigorating new lens. As he considers the moral dimensions of climate change, he reasons clearly through what universal standards of goodness and justice require of us, both as citizens and as governments. His conclusions—some as demanding as they are logical—will challenge and enlighten. Eco-conscious readers may be surprised to hear they have a duty to offset all their carbon emissions, while policy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   149 citations  
  • Small Impacts and Imperceptible Effects: Causing Harm with Others.Kai Spiekermann - 2014 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 38 (1):75-90.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Individual responsibility in a global age.Samuel Scheffler - 1995 - Social Philosophy and Policy 12 (1):219-236.
    As the twentieth century begins to draw to a close, Europe is undergoing a process of political transformation whose outcome cannot be predicted with confidence, in part because the process is being driven by two powerful but conflicting tendencies. The first is the movement toward greater economic and political union among the countries of Western Europe. The second is the pressure, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the countries of Eastern Europe to fragment along ethnic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Consequentialism and the Problem of Collective Harm: A Reply to Kagan.Julia Nefsky - 2011 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (4):364-395.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   79 citations  
  • Is there a Duty to Vote?Loren E. Lomasky & Geoffrey Brennan - 2000 - Social Philosophy and Policy 17 (1):62.
    The genre of public service advertisements that appear with two- and four-year cyclical regularity is familiar. Cameras pan across scenes of marines hoisting the flag on Iwo Jima, a bald eagle soaring in splendid flight, rows of grave markers at Arlington. The somber-voiced announcer remonstrates: “ They did their part; now you do yours.” Once again it is the season to fulfill one's civic duty, to vote.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Ethical Theory and the Problem of Inconsequentialism: Why Environmental Ethicists Should be Virtue-Oriented Ethicists. [REVIEW]Ronald Sandler - 2009 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (1-2):167-183.
    Many environmental problems are longitudinal collective action problems. They arise from the cumulative unintended effects of a vast amount of seemingly insignificant decisions and actions by individuals who are unknown to each other and distant from each other. Such problems are likely to be effectively addressed only by an enormous number of individuals each making a nearly insignificant contribution to resolving them. However, when a person’s making such a contribution appears to require sacrifice or costs, the problem of inconsequentialism arises: (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • The puzzle of the self-torturer.Warren S. Quinn - 1990 - Philosophical Studies 59 (1):79-90.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   80 citations  
  • The morality of collective actions.Torbjorn Tannsjo - 1989 - Philosophical Quarterly 39 (155):221-228.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  • Utilitarianism and vegetarianism.Peter Singer - 1980 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 9 (4):325-337.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   74 citations  
  • Precis of Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals.Stephanie Collins - 2020 - Journal of Social Ontology 6 (1):85-89.
    This paper provides an overview of Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • No free lunch: The significance of tiny contributions.Zach Barnett - 2018 - Analysis 78 (1):3-13.
    There is a well-known moral quandary concerning how to account for the rightness or wrongness of acts that clearly contribute to some morally significant outcome – but which each seem too small, individually, to make any meaningful difference. One consequentialist-friendly response to this problem is to deny that there could ever be a case of this type. This paper pursues this general strategy, but in an unusual way. Existing arguments for the consequentialist-friendly position are sorites-style arguments. Such arguments imagine varying (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations