Abstract

Many morally significant outcomes can be brought about only if several individuals contribute to them. However, individual contributions to collective outcomes often fail to have morally significant effects on their own. Some have concluded from this that it is permissible to do nothing. What I call ‘the problem of insignificant hands’ is the challenge of determining whether and when people are obligated to contribute. For this to be the case, I argue, the prospect of helping to bring about the outcome has to be good enough. Furthermore, the individual must be in a position to increase the probability of its being brought about to an appropriate extent. Finally, I argue that when too few are willing to contribute, people may have a duty to increase their number. Thus, someone can be obligated to contribute or to get others to contribute. This prospect account is consistent with Kantianism, contractualism and rule consequentialism but inconsistent with act consequentialism.

Highlights

  • A single individual contribution to the outcome—an individual ‘hand’—is morally insignificant in the exact same sense in which the overall outcome is morally significant: it does not generate any of the relevant benefits or prevent any of the harms at issue

  • The prospect account provides a coherent outlook on collective significance and individual insignificance, the two defining features of the problem of insignificant hands

  • The prospect account solves the problem of insignificant hands, or so I have argued

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Summary

Introduction

A single individual contribution to the outcome—an individual ‘hand’—is morally insignificant in the exact same sense in which the overall outcome is morally significant: it does not generate any of the relevant benefits or prevent any of the harms at issue This makes it difficult to see how contributing could be required. Kagan (2011) defends ‘the maximal solution’ when he argues that the expected utility of the outcome will (usually) be larger than the costs of contributing to it, for instance by refraining from joyguzzling. He proposes that everybody for whom this holds should contribute. Before I get to this, I introduce the problem more fully

The problem
A reconciliation
The solution
The efficacy argument
Too few hands
Robust and provisional unwillingness
Too many hands
Consequentialism and deontology
PRO-DEO
PRO-CON?
Conclusion
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