Collective Contributions

PHIL 247C Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Some of the most vexing puzzles in philosophy involve several elements working together in order to collectively contribute toward some end, or in order to jointly make up some whole. How do reasons play off each other in the determination of what one all things considered ought to do (or believe, or feel)? Can we sometimes aggregate values without aggregation overrunning our ethical theory and turning it into a version of consequentialism? How do the specific features of an artwork contribute toward its overall aesthetic merit? How do a plurality of grounds together make something the case? Can we measure the degree to which one cause is more responsible for a given effect than another? Do individual votes make a difference to an electoral outcome when the margin of victory is greater than one? Do our one-off actions as individual agents make us responsible for the effects of climate change or the harms of factory farming? What does it take for my agency to be entangled with yours so that we together constitute a group agent or jointly perform a collective action? We will explore some of these issues and see if progress can be made by investigating them side by side.