Do group agents have free will?

Abstract

ABSTRACT It is common to ascribe agency to some organized collectives, such as corporations, courts, and states, and to treat them as loci of responsibility, over and above their individual members. But since responsibility is often assumed to require free will, should we also think that group agents have free will? Surprisingly, the literature contains very few in-depth discussions of this question. The most extensive defence of corporate free will that I am aware of (Hess [2014], “The Free Will of Corporations (and Other Collectives)”, Philosophical Studies 168 (1): 241–260) rests on a compatibilist understanding which takes reasons-responsiveness and acting from one’s own ‘actional springs’ as key conditions for free will but says little about a condition that free-will libertarians emphasize: the possibility of doing otherwise. In this paper, I will argue that group agents can have free will not only in a (less demanding) compatibilist sense, but also in a recognizably libertarian sense, which includes the possibility of doing otherwise. In developing this account of corporate free will, I will bring together recent work on group agency and recent work on free will.