Rutger van Oeveren

Many global problems nowadays are collective action problems. It is only because many people act in some way that certain problems arise (e.g., climate harms). But when can one be said to participate in such groups in the first place? As Derek Parfit asked, “When we appeal to what groups together do, whom should we count as members of these groups?” As Julia Nefsky has shown, this problem has proven to be notoriously tricky, and without any adequate solution. We present a solution. The proposed account not only overcomes a number of problems for participation-based views, according to which it is morally problematic to participate in such groups at all, but also helps make precise a prominent alternative view, according to which one should help bring about better outcomes.

Why act when the effects of one’s act are negligible? For example, why boycott sweatshop or animal products if doing so makes no difference for the better? According to recent proposals, one may still have a reason to boycott in order to avoid complicity or participation in harm. Julia Nefsky has argued that accounts of this kind suffer from the so-called “superfluity problem,” basically the question of why agents can be said to participate in harm if they make no difference to it. This paper develops and responds to Nefsky’s challenge.

In this journal, Vishnu Sridharan presents a novel objection to attributionism, the view according to which agents are responsible for their conduct when it reflects who they are or what they value. The key to Sridharan's objection is that agents can fulfil all attributionist conditions for responsibility while being under the control of a manipulator. In this paper, we show that Sridharan's objection falls prey to a dilemma—either his manipulator is counterfactually robust, or she is not—and that neither of its horns undermines attributionism.