What Does Complicity Explain?

When I buy clothes from the fast fashion industry, I am complicit in wrongdoing––for example, I'm complicit in the exploitation of garment workers. Although I'm not the immediate cause of the exploitation, my actions play some part in the realization of the wrongdoing. It is widely believed that an agent can be guilty of wrongdoing or bear some responsibility for a wrongdoing merely by being complicit in it. I'll set aside the exact meaning of "complicity." 😶😛

Why think that "complicity implies wrongdoing"? Some argue that this view can explain certain of our intuitive judgments about factory farms, sweatshops, or climate change (call this the "explanatory claim"). To wit, "complicity implies wrongdoing" explains why (1) we we have reason to refrain from being complicit in those harms and/or (2) why we bear prima facie remedial obligations for being complicit in those things. A good explanation for why complicity seems to yield those kinds of reasons/obligations is that complicity implies wrongdoing. Were complicity in a wrongdoing itself a wrongdoing, then we could understand why a person has a reason to refrain from being complicit in a wrongdoings like garment worker exploitation and factory farms, and, moreover, we could understand why she has prima facie remedial obligations for being complicit in such wrongdoings (she engaged in wrongdoing in virtue of being complicit in wrongdoings!). 

Now, I'm at the Central APA (American Philosophical Association) and I just listened to a talk by Tristram McPherson challenging the explanatory power of "complicity implies wrongdoing." Here's one of his clever arguments against that alleged explanatory connection. Consider two worlds:

• Case-1 (the actual world): I'm pumping gas into my car. This means that I'm complicit in an industry that seriously harms the environment. Moreover, I'm using my car instead of biking to work (which I could do without incurring any serious moral or non-moral costs). 
• Case-2: I'm pumping gas into my car. This time, however, there is no gas industry. Through some unknown naturalistic mechanism, gas is created underground and organic "spigots" connected to the gas reservoirs deliver gas to the earth's surface. 

Here's what's true about me in Case-1: I'm complicit with the gas industry in its environmental harms + I'm responsible for my own (unjustified) carbon emissions. In Case-2, I'm not complicit in the environment-harming gas industry though I am responsible for (unjustified) carbon emissions. Both me (in the actual world) and my "spigot twin" in Case-2 have moral reasons to refrain from using gas. However, if complicity-implies-wrongdoing, McPherson claims, I should have stronger reasons to refrain from pumping gas than my spigot twin (since there are two grounds for such reasons: the wrongness of unjustified carbon emissions + the wrongness of being complicit). But I seemingly lack stronger reasons to refrain from pumping gas in Case-1 than in Case-2. "Complicity implies wrongness" seems incapable of explaining these sorts of cases, McPherson seems to imply. At least, things aren't as we would expect if "complicity implies wrongdoing" were true.

I don't have the seeming that we lack stronger reasons in Case-1 than in Case-2. Nor do I have the seeming that we possess stronger reasons in Case-1. I suspect the cases are too tricky to generate robust seemings either way. Nevertheless, we can gain some traction on the matter by taking a different route. Simplify the cases:

• Case-3: I am the only person using gas and am pumping gas into my car. The gas industry is happy to keep running for my sake (hence, their environmental impact persists). 
• Case-4: just like Case-2 except that I am the only person using gas from the gas spigots. 

What's crucial about Case-3 is that I make a unique and significant difference to the gas industry's existence. You might say that my complicity strongly makes a difference. Nothing like that exists in Case-4 where no industry exists. Clearly, I have far stronger reasons to refrain from pumping gas in Case-3 than in Case-4. The same is true if you add another person to the Case who joins me in pumping gas. I still have stronger reasons to refrain from pumping gas in Case-3 than in Case-4 though my reasons are slightly weaker than when I was the only one pumping gas (the difference I make to the industry is still so great). Plausibly, as more people are added to Case-3 (and a corresponding number are added to Case-4), the strength of my reason to stop pumping gas in Case-3 diminishes. But why should we expect that the comparative strength of my reasons (the strength of my reasons in Case-3 vs. in Case-4) will change? Why would my reason to refrain from pumping in Case-3 be stronger than my reason to refrain in Case-4 but my reason to refrain in each case is equally strong once there are a few million people joining me in pumping gas (like the real world)? The gap between my reasons in each case might continue to diminish, but it seems odd that there is some number of gas pumpers at which the strength of my reason in Case-3 becomes identical to the strength of my reason in Case-4. This suggests that the reasons to refrain are stronger in Case-1 than in Case-2 (though perhaps only slight stronger), our fuzzy intuitions notwithstanding. But even if there is some point at which those reasons become equally strong, there are clear cases where the strength of those reasons diverge (like Case-3 vs. Case-4). And those cases are explained well by "complicity implies wrongness."