Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 50, 2008

Social and Political Philosophy

Jeffrey Benjamin White
Pages 845-851

Why Believe in Collective Agents? Because You Did Something Wrong!

The focus of the following paper is the phenomenon of the collective agent; what constitutes the appearance of a collective agent? I begin by investigating one simple argument for the existence of collective agents. Two critical issues emerge: does it make sense to hold a collective agent blameworthy, and, what is the motivation for doing so, one way or the other? I then dissolve these issues with a distinction, that between blameworthiness and responsibility. In light of this distinction, there appears to be no use for the introduction of collectives as agents in their own right, outside of expedience of reference and deference of blame.