Social Theory and Practice

published on January 27, 2023

Team Reasoning and Collective Moral Obligation

We propose a new account of collective moral obligation. We argue that several agents have a moral obligation together only if they each have (i) a context-specific capacity to view their situation from the group’s perspective, and (ii) at least a general capacity to deliberate about what they ought to do together. Such an obligation is irreducibly collective, in that it does not imply that the individuals have any obligations to contribute to what is required of the group. We highlight various distinctive features of our account. One such feature is that moral obligations are always relative to an agential perspective.