When to fill responsibility gaps: a proposal

Abstract

Responsibility gaps appear where there is a mismatch between the amount of responsibility attributable to any set of entities (individuals, collectives, etc.) on standard models of responsibility and the amount one would otherwise desire to attribute somewhere. Claimed gaps appear in many ongoing debates, including those concerning government, corporate, and other forms of group agency and those concerning new technologies. They raise intuitively plausible calls to ‘fill’ gaps to address corresponding deficits in fundamental interests in someone to blame, compensate, or otherwise account for harms. This work aims to contribute to developing scholarship on whether and when to fill responsibility gaps and the reasons why gap-filling is appropriate in certain cases. It accordingly articulates and defends six related conditions for when it is morally appropriate to fill responsibility gaps. It argues that gaps should be filled where they (1) arise in circumstances posing a threat of non-de minimus harm but (2) are unavoidable or there are reasons to permit the gap to arise; (3) the harm is addressable and (4) addressing it would fulfill a responsibility-relevant good; and (5) there are reasons a specifiable person can be called upon to address the harm but (6) no other means of achieving the relevant good.

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ORCID for Michael Da Silva: orcid.org/0000-0002-7021-9847

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