ABSTRACT
The problems of attributing responsibility are to be found, in particular, today in highly developed industrial societies shaped by technology and advanced economies. Personal action seems to disappear behind collective and group actions. The individualistic concepts of ethics and philosophy, technology and economy do not suffice to tackle these problems. They are evidently not adequate, since they usually focus almost exclusively on individual actions and not on interactional, collective and corporate forms of actions, or structural and systematic contexts. Thus far, ethical approaches have indeed been far too oriented toward individual persons, have not paid enough attention to social aspects, and are thus not adequately adjusted to socio-ethics and socio-philosophy. This paper examines some methodological questions of economic assessment with respect to the detrimental ecological encroachments on the environment, and paradoxical developments with respect to built-in dilemmas of escalating social problems, like the so-called "Tragedy of the Commons", the "Free-Rider Problem", the "Naturalists'" or "Enjoyers' Dilemma", are analysed.
