ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the cumulative network model (CNM) of the self addresses three aspects of responsibility: (1) identification, (2) temporality, and (3) collective responsibility. (1) CNM accounts for how a single self is a target of forensic concerns through the notion of numerical unity rather than identity. CNM also has implications for how responsibility distributes across emergents in fusion and fission thought experiments. (2) Temporally, responsibility is both forward and backward looking. It is concerned with whether a self has continuity, causal, and counterfactual dependency relations with some action at a previous time. A cumulative self includes its past as a trait and thus its relation to its own prior actions is built into the very model of the self. While a self is “determinate” with respect to its past, it is also incomplete. It contributes to the shaping of its future, “taking responsibility” in a forward-looking sense. (3) CNM offers an account of why an individual should regard collective harm or wrongdoing as posing some obligation or responsibility for an individual. As constituted by its social relations a cumulative network self may share responsibility for the character and impact of the communities by which it is constituted.
