Saba Bazargan-Forward, "Authority, Cooperation, and Accountability" (Oxford UP, 2022)
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What is the central problem of collective responsibility that the episode introduces?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello and thanks for joining me for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise, I am professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, and I co host the program with Carrie Figter, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. My guest today is Saba Barzargan Foward. Saba is a associate professor of philosophy at UC San Diego. His research focuses on normative ethics with a fix I'm sorry, uh focuses on normative ethics with special interest on questions of individual and collective responsibility. His new book, which has just been published by Oxford University Press, is titled Authority, Cooperation and Accountability. We often find ourselves acting in concert with others.
Where what we do together goes beyond the causal contribution of any single participant. When a collection of individuals works together in a way that results in a wrongful harm. It seems intuitive to think that each of the participants should be held accountable for that harm. But this intuition needs to be squared with the fact that no single individual's contribution was causally necessary for the harm to have occurred. Hence is a range of views about collective responsibility. Most of which posit group agents and collective intentions and things like that. Sometimes these things are very hard to make sense of. Now, in authority cooperation and accountability, Sabah Bazargan Forward develops a different approach.
On his view, ordinary features of human agency can be dispersed across individuals in ways that can form a division of agential labor. When that kind of division of labor is established. Many of the puzzles about collective responsibility and accountability. can be resolved in a novel way. Now, as usual, there's a lot to talk about, but we will begin as we normally do, with our guest. Hello, Saba. Hello. Thanks for inviting me. Uh it's w wonderful to be talking to you. Uh how are you today? Oh good. Good, and you? I'm doing okay. How are things in San Diego? As if I should have to ask. Yeah, sunny as usual. Sunny in seventy two? Yeah. Actually, yeah. Just about. Well, fantastic. Um, you know, we start these interviews uh with uh me asking the author to say a few things about uh about himself.
So um tell us a bit about yourself.
Well, uh I was actually born in Iran in Tehran and came to the US uh when I was less than a year old, and I've lived in the US since, although I visited Iran uh quite a few times uh since then. And uh like many immigrants or uh at least, you know, the the the child or children of immigrants, I was especially from that region. I was expecting expected to be a doctor or an engineer or something of that ilk. But you
are a doctor.
But you know, the right kind of doctor I was expected to be. Yeah, medical doctor. And uh when I revealed to my parents that I was in fact chose that in fact chose philosophy as a major in college, you know, they were sort of stunned, like we came to this country to give you a good education and you choose philosophy. And uh Yeah, but I got lucky and it has uh turned out pretty well for me since then and they've come to they quickly came to accept and support this decision. Uh I uh yeah, so I did uh my undergraduate education at UCLA where I spent all too many hours in the philosophy department there and uh did my graduate education at Rutgers under uh Jeff McMahon. And uh then eventually found my way to a professorship at uh UC San Diego.
So it was a pretty straight shot. Uh you know, like I said, this is a large a large amount of it was uh doodle luck as well as well whatever other elements that usually go into professional uh success. And Uh yeah, so here I am uh now.
Fantastic. When um w when I had told my parents that I was gonna major in philosophy when I was in college, um my father who uh was not uh who thought it was important for me to have a college degree, I I m wasn't clear Um why it might be important other than just you know c credentialing for for m you know something some other or other career.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central problem of collective responsibility that the episode introduces?
0:01–7:52
2
How does Saba Bazargan‑Forward describe his “division of agential labor” approach?
7:52–17:43
3
What is the Olympic sabotage toy example and how does it illustrate authority‑based accountability?
17:43–28:01
4
How does the “bandits and beans” scenario extend the analysis of collective harms?
28:01–38:12
5
What role do “protected reasons” play in establishing authority and accountability?
38:12–48:49
6
How do coercion, forced participation, and threats affect authority‑based accountability?
48:49–58:50
7
In what ways can ignorance or deception by executors or deliberators impact accountability?
58:50–1:09:22
8
How does the theory apply to real‑world contexts like war, corporate wrongdoing, and personal integrity?
1:09:22–1:10:16
Speakers
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