Global obligations, collective capacities, and ‘ought implies can’

Date

2020

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Source Title

Philosophical Studies

Print ISSN

0031-8116

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Springer

Volume

177

Issue

6

Pages

1523 - 1538

Language

English

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Abstract

It is sometimes argued that non-agent collectives, including what one might call the ‘global collective’ consisting of the world’s population taken as a whole, cannot be the bearers of non-distributive moral obligations on pain of violating the principle that ‘ought implies can’. I argue that one prominent line of argument for this conclusion fails because it illicitly relies on a formulation of the ‘ought implies can’ principle which is inapt for contexts which allow for the possibility of non-distributive plural predications of agency, which are precisely the contexts in which we might expect non-agents to be obligation-bearers.

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