ABSTRACT
This chapter will develop standards to use in assessing individual moral responsibility for collective action. Structural differences between two ideal types of groups—organizations and goal-oriented collectives—largely determine the baseline moral responsibility of group members for the group’s collective action. Beyond that baseline, group members can then be more or less responsible for collective action based on personal qualities like knowledge of the intended collective outcome. In standard cases, the typical organization member is only responsible for his contributory action to the collective action, whereas the typical member of a goal-oriented collective is equally responsible with all other group members for the collective actions the group performs. A thought experiment juxtaposing actors in a military and militia unit is used to exemplify the argument.
