Abstract

Stephanie Collins (2019) and Bill Wringe (2016) disagree on how groups bear collective duties. For Collins, in order to bear a collective duty, a group should have a decision-making procedure and only agential groups have such procedures. On this view, social movements cannot bear collective duties if they lack decision-making procedures. Contra Collins, Wringe argues that groups without decision-making procedures can bear collective duties when they share the moral phenomenology that we have a duty together. So on Wringe’s view, social movements can bear collective duties even if they lack decision-making procedures. I agree with Wringe that the decision-making procedure criterion should not be a requirement for collective duties. However, I argue that collective duties are best explained by basic moral certainties because we can explain how group individuals can unite and act autonomously. And I argue that the paradigmatic case of collective duties as basic moral certainties can be found in social movements.