Abstract

In his Generalization in Ethics, Marcus Singer distinguishes between individual and collective consequences. According to Singer, the collective consequences of everyone's acting in a certain way is for certain kinds of acts not the sum of—or, more exactly, is greater than the sum of—the individual consequences of each individual act. The point is put more straightforwardly by Sir Roy Harrod:There are certain acts which when performed on n similar occasions have consequences more than n times as great as those resulting from one performance.... For example, it may well happen that the loss of confidence due to a million lies uttered within certain limits of time and space is much more than a million times as great as the loss due to any one in particular.