Silence sometimes constitutes moral complicity. We see this when protestors take to the streets against racial injustice. Think of signs with the words: “Silence is complicity.” We see this in instances of sexual harassment, when we learn that many knew and said nothing. We see this in cases of wrongdoing within a company or organization, when it becomes clear that many were aware of the negligent or criminal activity and stayed silent. In cases like this we consider agents morally complicit in virtue of their silence. Flagrant injustices cry out for action, and sometimes remaining silent amounts to complicity in those injustices. What philosophy owes us is an account of how it could be that silence constitutes complicity. In this paper I argue that one possibility is an account grounded in problematic deliberative contribution. The core idea of “deliberative complicity,” as I call it, is that agents have moral duties concerning the moral deliberation of other agents, and failures in these duties can amount to moral complicity. For example, an agent aware that a colleague is sexually harassing his students has a deliberative obligation to report the misconduct, and their silence in failing to report constitutes a failure to fulfill their deliberative obligation, a failure that grounds their moral complicity in the harassment. If my argument is successful, it provides a distinctive reason to prefer a deliberative account of moral complicity: it can capture cases of silent complicity that other views of moral complicity cannot. And further, by turning our attention toward our interpersonal deliberative obligations, a deliberative account of complicity can incorporate helpful resources from recent work in social epistemology and speech act theory as we set out to determine when and why silence amounts to complicity. And when it does, we cannot stay silent. We must speak.

沉默有时构成道德上的共谋。当抗议者走上街头反对种族不公正时，我们看到了这一点。想想标语中的字样：“沉默就是共谋。我们在性骚扰的情况下看到了这一点，当我们了解到许多人知道但什么也没说时。我们在公司或组织内部的不当行为案件中看到了这一点，当很明显许多人意识到疏忽或犯罪活动并保持沉默时。在这样的情况下，我们认为代理人由于保持沉默而在道德上是同谋。公然的不公正行为需要采取行动，有时保持沉默等同于这些不公正的同谋。哲学欠我们的是关于沉默如何构成共谋的解释。在本文中，我认为一种可能性是建立在有问题的审慎贡献基础上的解释。我所说的“深思熟虑的共谋”的核心思想是，代理人对其他代理人的道德审议负有道德义务，而这些义务的失败可能构成道德共谋。例如，一名代理人知道同事正在对他的学生进行性骚扰，有深思熟虑的义务报告不当行为，而他们没有报告的沉默构成了他们未能履行深思熟虑的义务，这种失败使他们在骚扰中成为道德共谋。如果我的论点成功了，它就提供了一个独特的理由，使我更喜欢对道德共谋的深思熟虑的描述：它可以捕捉到其他道德共谋观点所不能捕捉到的无声共谋的例子。 此外，通过将我们的注意力转向我们的人际深思熟虑义务，对共谋的深思熟虑的描述可以结合社会认识论和言语行为理论的最新工作中的有用资源，因为我们着手确定何时以及为什么沉默等同谋。当它发生时，我们不能保持沉默。我们必须说话。