Consequentialism and Collective Action

Abstract

Many consequentialists argue that you ought to do your part in collective action problems like climate change mitigation because (i) all such problems are triggering cases and (ii) doing your part in a triggering case maximizes expected value. I show that both (i) and (ii) are false: Some triggering cases cannot be solved by appeal to expected value, since they involve infinities, and some collective action problems are not triggering cases, since they involve parity. Nonetheless, consequentialism will still prohibit failure to do your part in many collective action problems where we believe that so acting would be impermissible.