Individual Responsibility
- work in progress*
Consequentialism based exclusively on individual behaviors can become murky when we deal with behaviors that require group effort to have results, particularly when we assume it as a given that the group either will or will not do something.
Take, for example, the execution with ten gunmen firing on a target:
If we assume that nine gunshots would be just as lethal as ten, and that every gunman will certainly fire if he has no moral reason not to, then all of the gunmen will fire and nobody is at all culpable for the murder.
This can be shown by looking at it from the perspective of any one gunman: if the others fire then the target will certainly die either way, so there's no reason not to fire. Since we know the other gunmen are in the same situation and equally without moral reason to fire, we know they will fire.
Thus, the gunman fires and is free of blame in the murder. The exact same reasoning is equally viable for every single gunman, each having nine others who would fire if he did not leaving him blameless. Thus, following that reasoning, in the end nobody is culpable for the murder and it is without moral significance to individual action.
Obviously that should raise some serious red flags.
This is similar to the unexpected execution paradox:
A prisoner is told that he will be executed some time in the next week, and the execution day will come as a surprise. He reasons it could not happen on the last day, Friday, because then he would know it was coming and it would NOT be a surprise. And once Friday is ruled out, he knows it can't happen on Thursday because then it wouldn't be a surprise. Then he reasons it could happen on Wednesday when Thursday and Friday are ruled out, and so on it couldn't happen on Tuesday, Monday, or Sunday.Thus the prisoner reasons he will not be executed because there's no day on which the execution could occur.
The punchline is the the executioner comes for him on Wednesday, and the prisoner is taken completely by surprise.
The first and most obvious problem with ignoring individual culpability is metaphysical: this absolute determinist view of the situation (e.g. that nine gunshots will certainly be as lethal as ten, or that the other gunmen are completely predictable) is actually a mistunderstanding of statistics, and even physics as a whole, see Small Chance of a Big Difference below for more discussion on this.
However, even in the context of this implausible world-view, we can understand a notion of shared culpability for group actions.
If ten people, collectively, commit murder we don't have to call them all innocent, but can equally call them all guilty or understand that they all have a share of guilt (all 1/10th guilty of the act).
This essentially reflects the consumer situation in animal agriculture, where large groups of consumers have a very significant net effect together, and share the burden of blame between them for being part of that. Likewise, large groups of vegetarians or vegans have a significant net effect of reducing demand for meat (and harm to animals), and as innovators as increasing demand for alternatives which facilitates early adopters, which facilitate majority adopters, etc. Each person in that group shares the credit for being part of something good and reducing harm.
In cases of asymmetry, distribution of guilt becomes less clear.
For example, in the Mob Boss and Hitman scenario.
If the Mob Boss did not order the hit, it wouldn't happen period. If the Hitman refuses the job, there's likely another after him, and so on, so it will still happen.
And yet both are required for the murder to occur -- if there were no Hitmen period, Mob Bosses would be left powerless to murder people.
It's clear that the Mob Boss is more responsible, because he makes up 100% of his end, but it's not clear what share of the responsibility the Hitman has. It's plausible that every person willing to kill somebody for money (whether or not they ever actually do it) in fact shares that burden, because it's the pool of potential Hitmen that provides the guarantee for that side of the equation. Since that pool is probably very large, the Hitman is significantly less culpable (if there are a hundred willing would-be Hitmen in line, we can say he's 1% of his end).
Here the asymmetry reflects that in the consumer:producer relationship.
If the consumers (buying and eating the meat) do not demand it, it will not be produced; farmers will farm something else, the industry is not going to waste time and money making meat nobody wants (unless the government is paying for it, but that's another issue). Consumers as a group share 100% of their end, with roughly a 1:1 ratio of individual share of guilt for each animal eaten. However, if the farmer or slaughterhouse worker refuses to produce it, there's likely another after him, and so on who will do it and fill the demand. Due to the increased mechanization of animal agriculture and the small number required to carry it out, and the large number of potential people who would do it, individual culpability on that end is very low.
With a system of culpability that understands that morality is an artifact of choice, the ratio of culpability can be shifted even more when we understand that consumers choose to eat meat, but that those participating in the industry may have to do their jobs in order to earn enough money to live. When there is no choice for one of those involved, they are relieved of culpability to that extent and it's shifted to the other side just as if it were an automated process doing the act.
In the Mob Boss example, if the Hitman is under duress and he or his family will be killed if he doesn't do the job, the Mob Boss holds virtually ALL of the responsibility, because he's the one with the choice and has made an offer the Hitman can't refuse.
So here we understand that consumers are almost entirely responsible for the harm being done, and they share it among themselves with none of them being blameless.
There is one factor providing some relief to that culpability, but few people would admit to it: advertising. To the extent that any individual consumer is a mindless drone, obedient to the commercials which have commanded animal product consumption, his or her choice may be limited. Pretty much the only argument against individual culpability is if a consumer admits to having no free will due to being manipulated and controlled by advertising and forced to purchase and eat these things... in which case, the blame falls upon the psychopathic advertising firms that are pushing these things (like those that did the same with Cigarettes in the past).
However, this is not only an uncommon argument (since most people don't want to dismiss their own free will), but also an empirically weak one given the number of people who have shunned those products and gone reducetarian, vegetarian, or vegan -- including people who struggle with obesity and overeating (which is not an excuse to overeat on animal products).
Rule Consequentialism
People are extremely bad at making consequential analyses, not only because we are terrible at risk assessment (e.g. people who don't want an airbag because despite the overwhelming likelihood of it being life saving in an accident they're worried about the minute chance of it misfiring and hurting them), but because we're incredibly good at rationalizing and tend to succumb to cognitive bias in favor of doing what we wanted to do.
It's very easy to inflate or deflate risks of imprecisely known consequences, and appeal to ignorance to confuse consequential calculus.
As such, the best form of consequentialism in practice for human beings is probably a rule consequentialism which helps avoid these issues of individual bias and rationalization by evaluation action relative to adherence to general rules rather than individual assessment.
Here Rule Consequentialism avoids the pitfalls of ignoring individual responsibility, as in the execution example in the previous section, and without having to assess shared culpability. It asks what people should do generally.
One important rule is generalizability
"You must be the change you want to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi
