Are We All to Blame?

May 14, 2023

First Aired: November 15, 2020

Listen

It’s easy to identify the pressing issues facing our world today, but it’s much more difficult to assign responsibility for them. Often the blame is placed on collectives — on entire governments, nations, and societies. But does the responsibility truly all fall to them? How can we identify precisely whose fault it is, for example, that we are experiencing climate change, or that hate crimes occur, or that there is a gender wage gap? Or do we as individuals hold a certain amount of responsibility for such pervasive, systemic issues? Josh and Ray point no fingers with Marion Smiley from Brandeis University, author of Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community.

Ray and Josh wonder whether groups can be held morally responsible. They explore whether individuals or collectives are to blame for structural problems, Who should be considered responsible for things like climate change and systemic racism?

Roving Philosopher (Seek to 5.40): Holly J McDede explores why environmental lawsuits against corporations, like energy companies, do not succeed very often.
The hosts welcome Marion Smiley, professor of philosophy at Brandeis University, to discuss whether we can ever be responsible for anything except ourselves. Smiley argues that we can. The hosts probe into what makes a group responsible and when exactly an individual member is responsible for the actions of a group they belong to.

They explore the proposition that responsibility exists on a scale, with some group members being more or less responsible than others. Marion notes that individuals who actively oppose their group’s wrong behavior—for example citizens protesting their government’s violence—are not to blame for those groups’ harms, though passive bystanders are. The hosts explore how this criterion might apply to different scenarios and the possibility that individual rights clash with collective responsibilities.

Finally, Smiley and the hosts explore whether the purpose or actions of organizations are what are bad. Smiley then fields questions about whether reparations are owed to Black Americans, and distinguishes between forward-looking and backward-looking collective responsibility in doing. The trio conclude by discussing whether a theory of collective action is needed before we ascribe and debate collective responsibility.

60-Second Philosopher (47.00) Ian Shoales ponders the complexity of who is to blame, concluding everybody and nobody is to blame and that effects have many causes.