Moral responsibility and obligation

 

 

Why do humans strive to uphold moral principles?  

We identify two contexts that generate a sense of responsibility and obligation to uphold moral norms:

 

We may call these, collaborative responsibility and deontological responsibility respectively.  

These contexts are linked, because cooperation is the birth-place of moral principles themselves, since moral principles are ideal ways to cooperate (Tomasello, 2016).  

As a human being, among other motivations, I feel a voluntary responsibility to do good; I am obliged to do good by some kind of binding force; and I will help others because I care about them.  

 

 

Collaborative responsibility

 

You're responsible to be a good citizen.  

Judge Judy

 

What does the word “responsibility” mean?  It seems to have a number of forms which share a collaborative context.  Together, the claim is that these definitions constitute “what we owe to others” (Scanlon, 1998), and equivalently, what it means to be an ideal collaborative partner.

 

 

Forms of cooperation

 

 

from “A Mutualistic Approach to Morality: The Evolution of Fairness by Partner Choice” (2013:61) – Nicolas Baumard, Jean-Baptiste André, and Dan Sperber

 

Cooperation comes in two forms: altruism and mutualism, depending on who benefits: “you”, or “us”.  Altruism is defined as one-way helping; mutualism as two-way helping (Tomasello, 2016).  These correspond to the real-world behaviours of sharing and collaboration.  

Michael Tomasello (2016) identifies two kinds of mutualistic cooperation: joint, and collective; between individuals, or large-scale; interpersonal, and cultural/collective.  This corresponds to two phases in human social history – small and large moral communities: living in small nomadic bands, followed by large tribal cultures (split into small bands) and then large mixed city-states (Tomasello et al., 2012; Tomasello, 2016).  

The idea that we are responsible to collaborative partners implies that we are not responsible in the same way to people outside the group, team, or partnership.  We may feel empathic concern for outsiders.  

 

 

Dual-level structure of mutualistic cooperation

 

“Bird's eye view” and self-other equivalence

Self-other equivalence is a key concept in moral responsibility and obligation.  

In the minds of its partners, mutualistic cooperation has a dual-level psychological structure (Tomasello, 2016): on one level are the individual agents you and I; and on another, the joint agent “we” that is formed when you and I agree to join our thinking, intentions and goals and make a commitment to cooperate together for mutual benefit.  This joint agent legitimately directs you and I in the direction of ideal cooperation, in a “we > me” relationship.  

Self-other equivalence is a morally neutral fact of collaboration that nevertheless gives rise to moral psychology and behaviour.  From the “bird's eye view” of the governing joint agent “we”, you and I are interchangeable within our roles, since anyone with the right abilities can do those roles.  

What is more, you and I are equally bound by the instrumental demands, to perform ideally the duties of our roles, and this has the effect of constraining our egos impartially, levelling our status.  

You and I are equally causative agents in the collaboration, and therefore equally necessary.  

If I recognise that you are equivalent to me in all important ways, with respect to the collaboration, then this leads me to respect you because you are “just like me”.  Whereas the universe of the great ape individual is relatively self-centred, humans also think of themselves as “one among many”, because of cooperation and self-other equivalence.  

Fairness, as distributive justice, is simply the responsibility to share the rewards of collaboration with one’s partners on the basis of self-other equivalence, i.e., impartially and on an equal basis.  

 

 

Mutual risk and strategic trust

For me to collaborate with another person is an inherently risky way to achieve my goals, since people are fallible and may let me down, as I may do them.  However, I have no choice but to trust them, at least for as long as it makes rational sense, i.e., that it is in my own interests to continue to trust them.  If they show themselves to be unworthy of trust, it is no longer self-interestedly rational for me to trust them.  

Mutual risk implies the need for me to mitigate my risk through partner control, trying to make my partner behave as ideally as possible.  Strategic trust implies the possibility of partner choice, as I might decide to ship out and find another partner if this one lets me down.  

 

 

Partner choice

When initially looking for a partner to collaborate with, all I have to go on is their track record: their publicly known reputation, or my personal experience of them, as a skilled or poor collaborator and worker.  

If my partner lets me down, I may be forced to exercise partner choice and find a new partner.  The threat of partner choice is thereby an enforcer of good behaviour in partners.  

 

 

Partner control

Partner control is where I attempt to turn a failing or disrespectful partner into a good one, through such means as respectful protest, punishment, or the threat of exercising partner choice and finding a new partner.  If I have cause, then while assuming an attitude of respect because you are ostensibly a good-faith cooperative partner, I will make a respectful protest to you and press your accountability.  

The claim is that the individual partners internalise this process of universal partner control, through self-other equivalence, so that they partner-control themselves as well as each other.  The aim of the self-regulation, i.e., responsibility, is directed by the respect and deservingness due to the partners.  

Partner control is thereby a fundamental part of the architecture of mutualistic cooperation, that shapes the personal and interpersonal psychology of the individual partners.  It is the basis of moral regulation itself: as partners regulate each other and themselves on behalf of their joint agent “we”, in the direction of collaborating ideally to fulfil instrumental duties and moral norms.  

 

 

Legitimacy of partner control

Partner control is seen as legitimate by partners, as they voluntarily entered into an agreement to collaborate.  This legitimacy makes it permissible for “us” to use partner control on the self and other partners.  

 

 

Moral identity

 

… an obligation always takes the form of a reaction against the threat of a loss of identity.  

Christine Korsgaard (1996:102) – “The sources of normativity”

 

My personal moral identity is my opinion of my own moral state – my own judgement of myself as a moral person.  We say things like, “I don't want to be the kind of person who [e.g.] breaks promises, that's not me.”  

My public moral identity is my reputation: the judgement of others of me as a moral person.  

 

 

Mutual respect and deservingness

Mutual respect and deservingness are at the heart of mutual responsibility and obligation.  They are based in turn on mutual value and self-other equivalence, and these are a consequence of the structure of collaboration itself.  

Partners are valuable to each other as partners, which breeds mutual respect.  Partners are equivalent to each other in important ways.  If someone is equivalent to me, and a valuable partner, then they must (I feel) be equally as deserving of respect as myself, with regards to the collaboration.  

 

 

Bipolar claims and responsibilities

Between partners there is a “bipolar” arrangement of rights and responsibilities, where each defines the other.  I have:

As partners, all regulation between you and me is seen as legitimate by “us”, because we willingly agreed to collaborate.  

Tomasello (2020) proposes that mutual partner control shapes the interactions between partners, in that while I am legitimately partner-controlling you, you are partner-controlling yourself in the same direction, and your sense of responsibility towards me to be an ideal partner is an internalisation of the team's internal dynamic of partner control.  This is justified by the respect and deservingness you feel is due to me as a valuable and equivalent partner.  

In a legitimate act of partner control, therefore, I need to be able to make claims on you, to be able to press your accountability.  For different reasons, you feel a sense of responsibility towards me, with exactly the same end: for you to be an ideal collaborative partner (Darwall, 2006 > Tomasello, 2020).  These claims and responsibilities thereby define each other: I want you to do the same behaviour that you feel you should do.  

 

 

Reciprocity of deserving and owing

If I am deserving, that implies I am deserving of something, that I should be given something, that I am owed something.  But why?  

Reciprocity, as a norm, may be a feature of primates in general and many other kinds of animals as well.  When someone gives us something, the urge to give them something in return is treated as an obligation.  The binding strength of this norm suggests a strong selection pressure for its evolution.  

For me to reciprocate with someone else, is because they have done something for me, and because they have done something for me, I feel they are deserving.  Evolutionary ethics assumes that a psychological orientation must have evolved because generally in the past it supported adaptive behaviour.  Is there a plausible self-interested monkey reason for paying things back to the deserving?  

Reciprocity in primate social life takes the form of trading grooming and other favours (e.g., a mother letting another female hold her baby for a while) for valuable social resources such as more grooming, reproductive privileges, and/or allyship and support in fights and coalitional disputes (Schino and Aureli, 2007; Testard et al., 2024).  

Non-human primates are “social but not very cooperative” (Tomasello, 2016); in fact, their social life is competitive and governed by hierarchical dominance relations.  As a monkey or ape living in a social group, when a fellow creature helps me, it is because they are strategically expecting something back in order to build some kind of supportive affiliation or alliance with me (unless it is done out of affection between friends, for example).  I am therefore socially expected to pay them back in some form, to keep a tit-for-tat exchange going indefinitely.  If I do not, I will violate their expectation, and they will not want to help me any more.  I will lose out, ultimately in evolutionary fitness.  

Hence, as a primate, it is adaptive, psychologically and behaviourally, for me to see as deserving and want to pay back those group-mates who have chosen to do me a favour.  

 

 

External sources of obligation

Obligation is a binding force to do something.  We may note several kinds of obligation, such as moral obligation, legal obligation, and instrumental obligation.  Of these, only instrumental obligation (ultimately grounded in bodily welfare) is forceful enough to bind itself.  Moral and legal obligations are formed, at least sometimes, out of respect for morality and the legal system, which is optional.  They too may be subject ultimately to instrumental obligation, for example the threat of being sent to prison.  

External sources of moral obligation are generally considerations of personal welfare, what will happen if I am not moral.  Common sources include:  

 

 

Conscience and personal moral identity

The conscience is defined as the internal motive to follow moral norms (Dill and Darwall, 2014).  The individual is motivated to see themselves in a good light (Kaufmann, 2018).  

I am therefore motivated to maintain a good personal moral identity.   This motivation may ultimately stem from my need to not get thrown out of my group; in which case, it would be adaptive.  

In the case of collaborative responsibility, my sense of responsibility is deontological, in that it is voluntary – I strive to be an ideal partner for you for its own sake, and place myself under this obligation, as well as being obliged by instrumental reasons.    

 

 

Group-wide “universal” morality

The claim is that within a large moral community, where most people are strangers to each other, individuals feel responsible to each other to be good citizens.  

Moral responsibility within a large collaborative moral community is based on a universalised and scaled-up version of small-scale face-to-face interactive morality (Tomasello, 2016, 2020).  

Partner control in the direction of upholding moral norms, face-to-face, becomes a group-wide system of social norms in large groups.  At the same time, coordination of activities is required on a large scale and this is achieved through similarity of the ways group members do things.  

Where face-to-face cooperation begins with a commitment or agreement between people, in a large collaborative community, the agreement is with the whole group, in the sense that the individual buys in to the legitimacy of the group's morality as a kind of co-author, when they are born into it and learn its venerable ways.  Hence, individual agreement, face-to-face, corresponds to the social contract in large groups.  

Self-other equivalence causes a feeling of impartiality among partners as each is exactly equivalent to “one person” and each is treated the same.  On a large scale, self-other equivalence becomes agent independence as division of labour increases, and people are known for their role rather than their personality.  Social norms are “three-way general”: enforced on any member of the group, by any member, on the “representative authority” of all members, the group as a whole (Tomasello, 2016).  Hence, there is psychological standardisation across the group as people are in principle interchangeable within roles and all subscribing to the same social norms.  

Therefore, when one stranger encounters another from the same moral community, e.g., in the neighbourhood where they live, there is a sense of responsibility to treat one another with the respect and deservingness due to a valued and respected collaborative partner.  

 

 

Deontological responsibility

The idea is that when I voluntarily do the right thing, i.e., voluntarily uphold a moral principle P, it is because I endorse P as a course of action; I think that P is a permissible way of doing good.  

In evolutionary ethics, a moral principle is an ideal method of cooperation towards mutualistic or altruistic benefit (Tomasello, 2016).  Alternatively, it is a solution to recurring problems in cooperation (Curry, 2016).  As such, it is an abstract behavioural formula or schema aimed at doing good in the world.  

The claim is that human beings value and respect particular moral principles in the abstract, for the good they are capable of doing, and this value and respect leads people to uphold moral principles for their own sakes.  

We will take promise-keeping as an example.  

 

 

Example: promise-keeping

Promise-keeping is both an ideal method of cooperation, and a solution to recurring problems in cooperation, so under the present scheme, it counts as a moral principle.  Kiesewetter (2022) cites an example of a promise that produces no value in the world: e.g., I can promise my children that “I will tie my right shoelaces before my left shoelaces on alternate days of the week if they will do their homework without fuss” (p. 33).  Kiesewetter proposes that any promise, no matter how useless, generates reasons to keep it, simply by virtue of being a promise.  

We may ask, what are these reasons, and why are they generated?  

Kiesewetter claims that normativity is generated by reasons: that only reasons are always sufficient to provide shouldness or normative pressure.  Perry (2026) claims that reasons are generated by value: that having a goal generates reasons to act.  

Accordingly, in the present account, it is the value and respect placed in moral principles as abstract entities that generates reasons to, say, keep a promise.  I keep my useless promise because I value and respect promise-keeping in general, in the abstract, for the good it is capable of doing.  Promise-keeping is a fine thing, like a beautiful Rolls Royce car that is valued and respected even when it is sitting in your garage doing nothing.  I am not going to abuse the idea of promise-keeping by not keeping even a useless promise. To do so would damage and pollute my view of myself, my personal moral identity.   

In keeping with the collaborative context of moral principles, a promise is an arrangement between people for the purpose of achieving some good.  Hence, I fail to keep a promise, I am letting my partners down, who don't deserve it, and it is disrespectful.  It would be irresponsible.  This model applies to any moral principles squarely aimed at mutualistic and altruistic benefit: for example, fairness and reciprocity.  

 

 

Deontological obligation

I may endorse a moral principle so much that it becomes a self-imposed obligation to uphold it.  I may endorse a principle so much that its value becomes infinite for me and I see it as sacred.  A puritan may place a particular value or good above all others in importance, including the sanctity of human welfare.  

 

 

References

Bar-On, Kati Kish (2020) – “Obligations to Whom, Obligations to What? A Philosophical Perspective on the Objects of Our Obligations”; Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, E58; https://www.katikish.com/_files/ugd/682ba9_e2faa72ff983462e837c5019abfd1e90.pdf

Curry, Oliver Scott (2016) – “Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach” in book: “The Evolution of Morality” (pp.27-51); Chapter: 2; Springer International Publishing; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281585949_Morality_as_Cooperation_A_Proble m-Centred_Approach  

Darwall, S (2006) – “The second-person standpoint: Morality, respect, and accountability”; Harvard University Press

Dill, Brendan; and Stephen Darwall (2014) – “Moral Psychology as Accountability”; in Justin D’Arms & Daniel Jacobson (eds.), “Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics” (pp. 40-83). Oxford University Press

Kaufman, Scott Barry (2018) – “The Pressing Need for Everyone to Quiet Their Egos – Why quieting the ego strengthens your best self”; Scientific American online, 21 May 2018, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-pressing-need-for-everyone-to-quiet-their-egos/

Kiesewetter, Benjamin (2022) – “Are All Practical Reasons Based on Value?”; Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 17; Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.);  https://philarchive.org/archive/KIEAAP-4

Perry, Simon (2026) – “Understanding morality and ethics”; https://orangebud.co.uk/web_book_2.html

Scanlon, T M (1998) – “What We Owe to Each Other”; Harvard University Press

Schino, Gabriele; and Filippo Aureli (2007) – “Grooming reciprocation among female primates: a meta-analysis”; Biology Letters (2008) 4, 9-11

Testard, Camille; Sébastien Tremblay; Felipe Parodi; Ron W DiTullio; Arianna Acevedo-Ithier; Kristin L Gardiner; Konrad Kording; and Michael L. Platt (2024) – “Neural signatures of natural behaviour in socializing macaques”. Nature 628, 381-390. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07178-6  

Tomasello, Michael (2016) – “A Natural History of Human Morality”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA

Tomasello, Michael (2020) – “The moral psychology of obligation”; Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, e56: 1-58

Tomasello, Michael; Alicia P Melis; Claudio Tennie; Emily Wyman; Esther Herrmann (2012) – “Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation – The Interdependence Hypothesis” – Current Anthropology, vol. 53, no. 6, Dec 2012