Christopher Woodard

Group-based reasons for action

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 ones part unilaterally in that group action. This seems implausible only because we tend wrongly to accept a second doctrine, monism about the unit of agency. Monism claims that, for any given deliberative problem, there is only one unit of agency to which reasons attach. If we are monists who believe in group-based reasons, the willingness requirement will seem necessary in order to avoid recklessness. We should reject monism, and if we do so we can recognise genuine conflict between individual-based and group-based reasons, and in doing so we can explain, without endorsing the willingness requirement, why we should not act recklessly.

The Common Structure of Kantianism and Act-Utilitarianism

This article proposes a way of understanding Kantianism, act-utilitarianism and some other important ethical theories according to which they are all versions of the same kind of theory, sharing a common structure. I argue that this is a profitable way to understand the theories discussed. It is charitable to the theories concerned; it emphasizes the common ground between them; it gives us insights into the differences between them; and it provides a method for generating new ethical theories worth studying. The article briefly discusses the relationship between these ideas and some other recent proposals that emphasize the common ground between Kantianism and versions of consequentialism.

Three conceptions of group-based reasons

Abstract Group-based reasons are reasons to play one’s part in some pattern of action that the members of some group could perform, because of the good features of the pattern. This paper discusses three broad conceptions of such reasons. According to the agency-first conception, there are no group-based reasons in cases where the relevant group is not or would not be itself an agent. According to the behaviour-first conception, what matters is that the other members of the group would play their parts in the relevant pattern, not whether they would have the cooperative intentional states constitutive of group agency in doing so. This paper argues against these conceptions and in favour of the powers-first conception, according to which what matters is that the members of the group have practically relevant powers.

The Concept of Acquiescence

Suppose a police car gives chase to some violent criminals, putting innocent bystanders at risk. The criminals have not threatened the police in any way; so we would not normally say that the police have been coerced into chasing. Nor are the police merely responding to natural circumstances, so they are not acting under necessity, in the usual sense. The case is different from one in which an ambulance speeds to hospital, putting innocent bystanders at risk, because the reason for the police speeding has to do with the unreasonable behaviour of others. Yet that unreasonable behaviour does not constitute threatening behaviour. How then should we describe what happened?