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Marginal Participation, Complicity, and Agnotology: What Climate Change Can Teach Us About Individual and Collective Responsibility

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Marginal Participation, Complicity, and Agnotology: What Climate Change Can Teach Us About Individual and Collective Responsibility Social and Moral Philosophy Faculty of Social Sciences University of Helsinki Finland Marginal participation, complicity, and agnotology: What climate change can teach us about individual and collective responsibility Säde Hormio ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki, for public examination in Auditorium XII, University main building, on 16 December 2017, at 10 am. Helsinki 2017 Arundhati Roy quote reprinted with the kind permission of Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 978-951-51-3873-6 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-51-3874-3 (PDF) Unigrafia 2017 Abstract Although the basic mechanism is simple ― we burn too much fossil fuels ― the result, climate change, is a very complex phenomenon. The science is complex, the implications are complex, and the number of agents involved in creating the harm is simply vast. I argue that climate change is not a problem just for states and international bodies, but also for individuals as they are members and constituents of collectives and groups of different types. Despite the complexity of the situation, there are three different possible sources of moral responsibility for individuals in relation to climate change harms: direct responsibility (individuals qua individuals), shared responsibility as members (individuals qua members of collective agents), and shared responsibility as constituents (individuals qua constituents of unorganised collectives). No individual will be responsible for climate change as such, but they can be responsible for increasing the risk of serious harm to others, for example. Accounts that deny individual responsibility fail to either take our interdependent reality seriously or fail to understand marginal participation (or in the case direct responsibility, fail to appreciate the nature of the climate change phenomenon). I argue that we must take complicity into account to understand climate change as an ethical problem. Complicity is a form of liability, but not necessarily culpability: it can be blameworthy or partially blameworthy, sometimes coming under just agent-regret. Most of our emissions take place within certain structures. Individual responsibility cannot be discussed in isolation from the collective settings that we are all embedded in. Individuals can be complicit in climate change harms, either as members of collective agents (e.g. as citizens of states or employees of a corporation) or as constituents of unorganised collectives (e.g. as consumers or polluters). With collective agents the link between the individual and the collective outcome is a participatory intention, and in unorganised collectives it is a quasi- participatory intention. The potential of individual actions to help bring about an outcome gives an additional reason to take action in cases of marginal participation. I deny that you can place obligations, putative or actual, on unorganised collectives, although you can hold the constituents of unorganised collectives blameworthy in the backward-looking sense under certain conditions. However, I grant that it can be useful to discuss unorganised collectives in some cases, as it can help us to appreciate the different structures and systems that we are part of, and how we are complicit in upholding and recreating these. Although I focus on individual complicity, I do not deny the obligations of collective agents. However, nation-states, governments, and international bodies are not the only relevant collective agents in climate ethics: other collective agents, such as corporations, matter also and can have obligations concerning making sure that their activities are as carbon-neutral as possible. Climate change presents a challenge to our moral psychology and information processing capacities. Institutional collective agents with the capacity to process a lot of information have greater obligations to know about climate change than individuals. Institutions can affect the information and knowledge that we have, which in turn affects our control and our options, and thus can act as an excusing condition for blame. An example of the above, manufacturing doubt, is an important issue and some corporations are implicated in this. The corporations that have engaged in lobbying against climate regulation through creating and disseminating misleading information have acquired themselves additional obligations to mitigate climate change and compensate for the harm they have caused. Even so, the ethical claims can only be understood by individual members of these collective agents because only they can feel the pull of moral claims. In cases involving collective agents we could distinguish between what one must possess in order to be capable of making moral claims (i.e. moral agency conditions), and what it means to have the ability to exhibit such claims through one’s conduct. I argue that while only individual moral agents can do both, collective agents can do the latter. The moral claims collective agents can exhibit through their conduct is an emergent property of the moral claims that the (key) members of the collective make in their roles, combined with the ethos of the organisation. Individual direct responsibility is limited to relatively wealthy individuals and their luxury emissions. This individual direct responsibility or duty is to not to increase the probable risk of serious harm – deprivation of fundamental capabilities – to other people, at least as long as we can do so at a less than significant cost to ourselves. Offsetting is not a reliable way to meet this duty, but rather we need to look at the emissions from our lifestyle choices (within the available infrastructure), in contrast to questioning each individual purchase and consumer choice. Individual direct duties related to avoiding climate change harms are not prior to our shared duties, i.e. the duties we have as members or constituents of collectives. Solutions aimed purely at the individual level will be both insufficient and inefficient. Climate change cannot be solved without collective entities stepping up to their obligations, and collective entities will not do so unless enough of their members push for it (or another collective entity makes them comply through legislation, for example). Shared responsibility qua members of collective agents is thus the key individual responsibility, and it presses especially on those occupying key positions within key collective agents. Saying that, our shared responsibility qua constituents of unorganised collectives has the potential to be decisive in whether some action is taken or not, either through a set of actions that can signal certain acceptance or support, or as a form of political support from the grass roots. Acknowledgements My supervisors, Arto Laitinen and Pekka Mäkelä, have not only supported me, but also more importantly believed in me, and I owe my gratitude to them. I have had many enlightening conversations with both, and feel very lucky to have them to test my ideas on. Writing a monograph is solitary work and the comments by Arto and Pekka were essential in helping me pull all the strands together. They are not only terrific philosophers, but also generous with their time. Thank you for not letting me off easily. I would also like to thank Caterina Marchionni for being a dream Custos, efficiently guiding me towards the public defence, and for being a friend. She sets an example of how to combine philosophical excellence with a humble attitude and a curious mind. The arguments in the thesis benefited from the detailed and insightful comments by the pre- examiners Holly Lawford-Smith and Bill Wringe. I am very grateful for the time they have spent pouring over the pages of my monograph. I also would like to thank John Broome for agreeing to act as my Opponent in the public defence, for which I feel very honoured. I would like to thank Olli Loukola and Arto Siitonen for helping me to get started on my PhD journey. I owe special thanks to the Emil Aaltonen Foundation for giving me my first grant, and the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Kone Foundation for subsequent grants. I have also had the pleasure of working in two projects, one with Olli and Simo Kyllönen; the other with Aki Lehtinen, Simo, and Alessandra Basso. When I began my postgrad studies - and knew next to nothing about working in the academic world - I was lucky to have Pilvi Toppinen as my first roommate at Metsätalo. She kindly explained to me how things work, as well being an excellent person to discuss books, music, and everything else with. I have since had the pleasure of sharing a room with Johanna Ahola-Launonen, Simo, Cate, Emrah Aydinonat, Tomi Kokkonen, and Samuli Reijula, all congenial and enjoyable colleagues. In general, the best part about working at the University of Helsinki are the wonderful colleagues. For excellent peer support and fun lunchtimes, in addition to the colleagues already mentioned, I would like to thank especially Marion Godman, Tarna Kannisto, Anssi Korhonen, Jaakko Kuorikoski, Aino Lahdenranta, Juhana Lemetti, Michiru Nagatsu, Ville Paukkonen, Päivi Seppälä, Ninni Suni, Teemu Toppinen, Sanna Tirkkonen, Susanne Uusitalo, and Vilma Venesmaa. I would also like to thank Timo Airaksinen, Heta Gylling, Ilpo Halonen, Kristian Klockars, Uskali Mäki, and Raimo Tuomela. Furthermore, I would like to thank all my colleagues and all other philosophers that I have had enjoyable discussions and debates at seminars, reading groups, workshops, and conferences with, both in Finland and abroad. There are simply too many names to mention, but you know who you are and I appreciate you all. I first encountered philosophy in high school. Without the enthusiastic and inventive teaching of Juha Eerolainen at Etu-Töölön lukio, I would have probably ended up studying something else altogether. I am glad that my introduction to philosophy was so imaginative and I dedicate this thesis to his memory. I would also like to thank the excellent teachers that I had during my undergraduate years at the University of Stirling, especially Duncan Pritchard, Peter Sullivan, Michael Brady, and Matthew Elton.
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