Group membership problem

One may be familiar with the terrorist attacks that occurred today. One might also be aware of possible reactions to the attack in blaming a particular religion and / or their followers. There's often a reaction movement against the claim that this is the fault of the religion itself, or the fault of the individuals of the religion. It is argued that the religion itself is not at fault because despite self identification of the perpetrator, 'real' members would not commit such an act. This type of argument (call it SIP), if successful, would also absolve responsibility from the other members of the religion.

I think this type of argument has certain merits and directs us towards asking some really important questions:

1) Given a group of individuals, how can I tell whether a given individual belongs to the group? I call this the Group Identification Problem (GIP)

2) Suppose that an individual belongs to a group, to what extent are the other members of the group responsible for the actions of the individual? I call this the Group Responsibility Problem. (GRP)

Let's abstract some details from our original problem. We have an agent $A$ who commits a extremely bad action (I don't think many will dispute that terrorist acts are bad) $Y$. Agent $X$ claims that action $Y$ is on behalf of (and is motivated by) group $G$ (or its corresponding beliefs $B_G$), which they also claim to be a member of.

Now the SIP argument which is presented obviously wants to distance the action of agent $A$ from the group $G$. Let's consider the case sensitive responses to GIP and GRP. Broadly speaking, the claim is that any agent who happens to commit an action like $Y$ can not be a member of $G$. Plausibly it might also be argued that
even if agent was genuinely a member of group $G$, it was not on behalf of the Group (or not motivated correctly by $B_G$. Further, even if it was on behalf of the group this would not (or might not) place blame on the other members of the group who did not act in this way.

Now in the case specific sense, these arguments might well be correct. Yet remember that we would like to understand why this may the case; we would like to develop a universal theory for resolving GPI and GRP. Let's focus first on GIP.

What does it mean to belong to a group? In certain groups there are formal membership criterion's (for example you'd have to pay for membership to a Gym ) whilst others are less discrete, relying on the endorsement of certain beliefs or actions (e.g. A vegetarian or a Christian).

Now with regards to the formal membership criterion case, it seems rather easy to respond to GIP. The group basically has a reductive characteristic function, where we can easily verify if a member is of the group or not. In this case, we can avoid the subjectivity (or at least in the vast majority of cases).

The second type of case is much harder because it experiences what we might call Membership vagueness. It is vague with regards to whether a member belongs to the group. For example, suppose that we have a person who claims to be a Labour supporter. Plausibly, we think it is possible to support labour without having to be a member of the Labour party. In fact being a member seems to be neither a necessary nor sufficient condition. Now, suppose that this individual claims to like all of the current Labour policies except one of them. Is it true that this person is actually a labour supporter?

Or another example, is it possible for someone to be a Christian but not believe everything in the Bible literally? Presumably it is, unless one really wishes to an extremely strict belief system that also holds that the universe was created in 7 days. So it seems that plausibly someone could be Christian and not believe everything from the Bible. Now, what if someone claims to be a Christian but does not believe that Jesus was the Son of God (or is holy in some sense), although is willing to accept the different ethical lessons. In this case it seems that it would wrong to say that said person was a Christian. I think this example captures something rather important. We might think that Christianity and its associated group has certain critically important parts of it, that one must adopt if they are to be part of the group. We can call this the Group Essence.

So plausibly it can be argued that one can not be a Christian without in some way endorsing Jesus or believing his existence. Is this enough? Possibly, although some would argue that you would also need to accept a number of his teachings. What seems reasonable however is to think that in order to be part of a group, one must minimally satisfy the Group essence (whatever this is); it is a necessary condition (and possibly sufficient).

Another important thing we should ask is whether self identification is even relevant. Does it make a difference whether I self identify to being a member of a group, or is GIP entirely solved by external factors (including Group Essence). Consider the following example: suppose I endorse gender equality but I feel that the entire feminist movement is destructive because they go about achieving gender equality incorrectly. Instead I identify as Egalitarian. It might be reasonably claimed that anyone who agrees with gender equality is in virtue of this, feminist. That is, the Group Essence of being a feminist is believing in gender equality and in this instance it is also a sufficient condition.

Intuitively, there seems to be something rather harsh about such forceful membership. Plausibly we might think that certain branches of men's rights movements are fundamentally motivated by achieving gender equality (resolving instances when men are discriminated against on the basis of gender), does this mean that anyone who is feminist is also committed to being a member of this Group?

A final factor that affects GIP is a question of sincerity (conscious or unconscious). Suppose I claim that I satisfy the conditions of being in the group, and then I go about and do something that lies in contrary to the Group Essence. Does this mean that I would be excluded from the group on that basis? Or am I still a member, just a bad one at that? I think most people would believe the former; that if I go against the group essence that I'm not part of the group. Unfortunately however there are difficulties when we allow for human interpretation to dictate what goes against Group Essence. If I a feminist and I organise a woman's networking event on the grounds of gender equality (but don't allow men to participate) am I going against the Group essence? Presumably not, but there certainly seems to be argument. How about if I am a Christian but I commit different sins? Does that strip me away from my Group membership? Or are such sins irrelevant to the Christian Group essence?

I've discussed some very difficult issues in resolving GIP. What is the Group essence? Does self identification matter? If I go against Group principals do I lose group membership? It is important to consider such problems, although unfortunately they do make a resolution to GIP rather difficult.

Let's return back to our SIP argument and see if we can make any headway. The first thing is we need to ask is what is the Group essence of a given religion? (Note if there is formal membership criterion then this could just be the group essence and it would be necessary and sufficient). If a member commits an action on behalf of Group beliefs as well as self identifies, does this grant them group membership? Does interpretation matter here; i.e. If they interpret the group beliefs in a certain destructive manner, would this affect whether they belong to the Group? I think in response to this final question, we are probably forced into a 'reasonability' criterion, where the interpretation must be reasonable. Note that I am in general skeptical about questions about interpretation; it seems to me that it is often used (in connection with context dependence) as a universal defence of problems with certain ideas that are historically based (but still referred to). There seems to be a certain common sense required where we are to take 'obvious' interpretations as also 'reasonable'. (I.e. If a book told me that killing was wrong, then it is a reasonable interpretation to understand this in the literal sense.)

Because I don't intend to write a 10000 word essay, I'm going to discuss the remaining issues, including all of GRP in another post. In terms of what I think though, group membership should be rather relaxed in our specific case. Given that it is so simple to become a member of a religion, it seems incorrect to exclude such members who commit destructive acts from the group. I do accept that this depends on the Group essence, although I am skeptical whether they betray it, given reasonability constraints of interpretation.

What I do think however is that even if such individuals belong to a specific Group (in this case religion), this need not necessarily mean that the group itself is at fault, or the other members of the group. What it does suggest to me however is that the beliefs that motivate the members may be problematic.