New Avenues for Collective Ethics

Workshop New Avenues for Collective Ethics

September 23-24, 2024, University of Gothenburg

Collective ethics pertains to questions concerning moral agency, action, abilities, duties, responsibility, and knowledge in collective contexts. For example, one important question is how to make sense of moral judgments about groups within ethical theory. Can groups be morally responsible or have moral duties in their own right? Collective ethics is a significant intra-interdisciplinary field at the intersection of, among others, individual normative ethics, collective intentionality, general ontology, philosophy of agency and responsibility, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and metaethics. The aim of this workshop is to explore new topics and avenues for collective ethics. What relevant connections to other fields/disciplines have not yet been made? Are there crucial insights from other fields/disciplines missing in the current debates? With this workshop, we hope to explore groundbreaking topics in collective ethics, and set the stage for future debates.

We will have two keynote speakers:

Prof. Antje du Bois-Pedain (University of Cambridge)

Prof. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (University of Aarhus).

Program: 

Monday September 23
 
9.15-10.10 Gunnar Björnsson (Stockholm University) - ”What makes it our problem?”
10.30-11.25 Bronagh Dunne (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) – "No I in team? Is Kantian optimisation a kind of team reasoning?"
11.45-12.40 Niels de Haan (University of Vienna) - ”Moral Collectivism and the Methodology of Ethical Theory”

Lunch

14.00-14.55 Nathan Biebel (Jagiellonian University) – "The role of forgiveness in group moral agency"
15.15-16.10 Bill Wringe (Bilkent University)– "Group apology – Against the Agency Thesis"
16.30-17.45 Keynote: Antje du Bois-Pedain (University of Cambridge) - “Responsibility without control? Individual responsibility for group agency”
 
19:00 Workshop dinner 
 
Tuesday September 24
 
9.15-10.10 Olle Blomberg (University of Gothenburg) - "Circumstantial moral luck and collective blameworthiness”
10.30-11.25 Kathleen Wallace (Hofstra University) - "A Duty to Live Sustainably:  Perfect or Imperfect Duty?"
11.45-12.40 Andras Szigeti (Linköping University)– "Irreducible and Non-Distributive Obligations to Collectives"

Lunch

14.00-14.55 Lubomira Radoilska (University of Kent) – "Responsibility for shared habits"
15.15-16.10 Felix Lambrecht (University of Toronto) – "Being Wronged Collectively and Collective Moral Claims"
16.30-17.45 Keynote: Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (University of Aarhus) - ”When States Blame States: On Political Hypocrisy”

The workshop will take place at the University of Gothenburg on September 23-24, 2024. If you are interested in attending the workshop, please email Olle Blomberg ([email protected]) before September 1st, 2024.

The workshop is sponsored by the International Social Ontology Society (https://isosonline.org/) and the Lund Gothenburg Responsibility Project (https://www.lgrp.lu.se/). The workshop is organized by Gunnar Björnsson, Olle Blomberg, and Niels de Haan.