Groups As Agents
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Groups as Agents
Author: Deborah Perron Tollefsen
language: en
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Release Date: 2015-06-03
In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. Groups as Agents will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time.
Group Agency
Author: Christian List
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2011-04-07
Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? How do we explain their behaviour? Can we treat them as accountable for their actions? List and Pettit offer original arguments, grounded in cutting-edge work on social choice, economics, and philosophy, to show there really are group agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them.
Groups as Epistemic and Moral Agents
Author: Jessica Brown
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2024-06-27
Organised groups such as governments, corporations, charities and courts are an integral part of our lives. They provide services, sell goods, employ people, raise taxes, wage wars, and issue legal judgements. In our interactions with them, we routinely ascribe them mental states, speaking of what they know, want and intend. And we use these ascriptions in predicting what groups will do and assessing their responsibility for outcomes. For instance, in morally assessing the government's performance in the coronavirus pandemic, we might ask what the government knew about the virus at key decision points. And in attempting to predict Russia's response to the current war in Ukraine, we might ask what Russia believes about the West's resolve to defend Ukraine. This book takes these ordinary ways of thinking and talking seriously, assuming that at least some groups are agents with mental states on which they act. In particular, the book examines groups both as epistemic and moral agents providing non-summative accounts of group evidence, group belief, group justified belief, group knowledge, what it is for a group to act or believe for one reason rather than another, and when a group has an excuse for wrongdoing from blameless ignorance. These phenomena are crucial to the evaluation of the beliefs and actions of groups. Whether a group's belief is justified depends on its evidence and the reason for which it believes; whether it's praiseworthy or blameworthy for its actions depends on the reason for which it acted, as well as whether it is blamelessly ignorant of any wrongdoing. By providing a clearer view of central group phenomena, the book will help us assess the beliefs and actions of the powerful groups at work in our lives, whether governments, corporations, public sector bodies or third sector actors.