Group agents and moral status: what can we owe to organizations?

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (3):221–238 (2021)
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Abstract

Organizations have neither a right to the vote nor a weighty right to life. We need not enfranchise Goldman Sachs. We should feel few scruples in dissolving Standard Oil. But they are not without rights altogether. We can owe it to them to keep our promises. We can owe them debts of gratitude. Thus, we can owe some things to organizations. But we cannot owe them everything we can owe to people. They seem to have a peculiar, fragmented moral status. What explains this? Individualistic views explain this in terms of individualistic notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke any distinctive features of organizations. They just invoke the features of individual members of organizations. Collectivistic views, instead, explain this in terms of collective notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke the features of individual members of organizations. They just invoke the features of those organizations. We argue that neither approach works. Instead, one needs to synthesize the two approaches. Some individual interests, we think, are distinctively collective. We, as individuals, have a distinctive interest in playing a part in successful collective action. From this, so we argue, flows the apparently peculiar, fragmented moral status of organizations.

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Author Profiles

Adam Lovett
Australian Catholic University
Stefan Riedener
University of Bergen

Citations of this work

Zombies Incorporated.Olof Leffler - 2023 - Theoria 89 (5):640-659.
Institutional Integrity: Its Meaning and Value.Nikolas Kirby - 2022 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (5):809-834.

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References found in this work

Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.
Guide to Ground.Kit Fine - 2012 - In Fabrice Correia & Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical grounding: understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 37--80.
The Morality of Freedom.Joseph Raz - 1986 - Philosophy 63 (243):119-122.

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