Collective Responsibility

Greetings Citizen Philosophers,

My apologies for the long delay in posting the podcast from our latest philosophical discussion. We had a number of technical difficulties during our recording session which required some editing to clean up. I usually refrain from editing our recordings (except for adding music at the beginning and end) so as to preserve the authentic "reality-radio" quality of our Thinking Out Loud episodes. (Besides, audio editing is just really tedious work.) However, this time, because of numerous dropped Skype "phone" connections and noisy attempts to call back in ("Ring, ring...Hello, hello?") I did go back in and edited out several of the more annoying and distracting incidents. The lesser annoyances were left in ("boink, boink"- calls dropping / "burrrt, burrrt" - host calling lost cyber guests).

Whew, anyway, that's done and I am pleased to report that, technical difficulties notwithstanding, the quality of the content of our conversation was excellent as usual. Many perceptive insights were shared, thanks to veteran participants, Billie Lagerwerff, David Rood, Deborah Martin, John Tytus, Steven Stokes, and Uriah J. Fields and to our two new citizen philosophers, Betsy from Charlottesville and Stephen Whiteman from Atlanta, GA. Welcome aboard, Betsy and Stephen.

Our topic was:

"What is the nature of collective responsibility?"

Here are some of the questions we wrestled with in our discussion:

What is collective responsibility? Does an individual have a responsibility to the collective? Does the collective have a responsibility to the individual? Is there really such a thing as "the collective"? Is the whole really greater than the sum of its parts? Are there not just individuals? On the other hand, is there really such a thing as a truly separate individual? Are we not all interconnected? Does accepting the benefits of group membership automatically impose some responsibilities on the individual toward the group? Does membership impart responsibility for the decisions of the group even if a particular member disagreed with those decisions? Must one renounce membership in a group in order to be absolved of collective responsibility for the group? If you are a member of a team, what are your responsibilities toward the other team members? What is your responsibility toward the team as a whole? What is your responsibility toward the mission of the team? What if these responsibilities conflict? What role does group identity play in collective responsibility? Are we responsible for decisions of collectives that we inherit such as previous generations or previous administrations? Is there not a distinction between assuming responsibility and assigning responsibility? Can responsibility be coerced? Doesn't responsibility have to be voluntary on at least some level, for it to be true responsibility? Does collective responsibility necessarily mean sacrificing individuality? How is the welfare of the individual related to the good of the group? Does membership in a group dilute individual responsibility? What is the role of dissent in a group and how does it relate to collective responsibility? Is not the final measure of responsibility in the action that is taken? Are we not today facing problems on such a scale that collective global action will be required for our very survival? Are we capable of exercising such collective responsibility?

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If you don't have iTunes or other podcast software and just want to download the mp3 file directly, use this link:

Listen to the broadcast (mp3)

You are invited to add your thoughts by clicking on the "comments" link at the lower right hand corner of this post.

The next Thinking Out Loud will be Wednesday, May 7, at 7:00 pm. Send in your topic suggestions - new or recycled - all are welcome.

Cheers,

Steve