distributed responsibility

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Distributed responsibility allocates answerability across agents and institutions according to their differing knowledge, roles, control and capacity to respond. It requires identifiable powers and duties where recognition, repair or redesign can actually occur, rather than assigning everyone equal responsibility. Past fault and present capacity to repair are distinct grounds of obligation; neither removes the other.

Explanation

AB refuses both the search for a single culprit as a complete answer and the dissolution of responsibility into an anonymous system. Unequal leverage matters. An injured patient’s capacity to challenge a refusal does not make that patient responsible for redesigning the institution that failed.

PB applies this distinction to technical mediation, keeping answerability with people and institutions according to their knowledge and control. The fact that an AI contributes causally does not, by itself, make it the moral seat of responsibility or erase the duties of builders and governors.

RB3 distinguishes screening staff, service organizers and legislators as sites with different effective powers. Its account, accompanied by Knudsen’s pluralist approach, retains individual claims within collective processes. Responsibility includes identifying who can change the relevant constraints now as well as judging earlier wrongdoing.

Scope and attribution

Retain the inherited subentry recommendation and the source’s differentiated duties.

AB — The Actual Book

Knowledge, control and role locate duties without shifting reconstruction onto the injured person.

Occurrence locators: 176, 187, 188, 198, 209; Notes: 249; Appendix: 278.

PB — The Possible Book

Technical systems distribute causal contribution while human and institutional answerability remains unequal.

Occurrence locators: 37, 38, 63, 106.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Named offices and effective capacities distinguish responsibility from blame and from equal liability.

Occurrence locators: 162, 227, 246, 274, 275, 276, 277, 279, 280, 281, 294, 309, 310, 312, 321, 324.