The Ethics of Individually Acting Together

Many of us hold the following set of conflicting beliefs:

1. We ought to do our part in worthwhile collective actions.

2. If my contribution to a worthwhile collective action is insignificant, then there's no point in doing it. 

For example, there appeara to be no point in me voting in a national election since the important outcome will not turn on my indvidual ballot. Yet it still seems that many people ought to vote given that it would terrilbe for the nation's democracy if nobody voted. 

A conflict can thus arise between what we think we together ought to do and what we think we indvidually ought to do. This project tries to make sense of this conflict. 

The output consists in a series of academic articles which together comprise my PhD dissertation. I explore the problem from the perspective of different moral theories. I agure that, in some cases, the problem can be resolved through collective agency. In other cases, I defend the view that we have reasons to 'do our bit' in patterns of action that have good conseqecunes. Along the way a raise a series of issues that the literature is yet to consider.

(These articles are currently under confidential peer review.  I will update this page as the process continues.)