Collective Doings in Progress and the Attribution Problem

Abstract

We often encounter situations in which an undesirable outcome is brought about through a series or collection of seemingly inconsequential actions. This phenomenon, referred to as the inefficacy paradox, occurs both intrapersonally and collectively. Paradoxically, while we have good reason to avoid such patterns of action, there appears to be no compelling reason to abstain from any of the individual actions constituting such a pattern given its trivial impact. This paper scrutinizes Chrisoula Andreou's prominent endeavor to resolve the inefficacy paradox in both the intrapersonal and the collective context by utilizing their structural similarity. While her approach may prove successful in intrapersonal cases, the applicability of the proposed solution to collective cases is, I argue, ultimately limited. This is due to a fundamental dissimilarity between these two kinds of cases, which I lay out in the paper. This insight may also shed light on the transferability of other proposed solutions to the inefficacy paradox from the intrapersonal to the collective context.