Abstract
AbstractAttributing moral responsibility to an agent requires that the agent is a capable member of a moral community. Capable members of a moral community are often thought of as moral reasoners (or moral persons) and, thus, to attribute moral responsibility to collective agents would require showing that they are capable of moral reasoning. It is argued here that those theories that understand collective reasoning and collective moral agency in terms of collective decision-making and commitment – as is arguably the case with Christian List and Philip Pettit’s theory of group agency – face the so-called “problem of the first belief” that threatens to make moral reasoning impossible for group agents. This paper introduces three possible solutions to the problem and discusses the effects that these solutions have in regard to the possibility of attributing moral responsibility to groups.
Highlights
In our everyday practices and everyday language use, it is commonplace to find groups playing all kinds of roles
To attribute moral responsibility to collective entities, we need an understanding of what constitutes moral agency or moral personhood in the first
This paper presents a thin view of moral personhood that emphasizes the capacity to reason and membership in a moral community (Section 2) – as opposed to thicker views, which would include an account of moral emotions or moral phenomenology
Summary
In our everyday practices and everyday language use, it is commonplace to find groups playing all kinds of roles. To attribute moral responsibility to collective entities, we need an understanding of what constitutes moral agency or moral personhood in the first. This paper presents a thin view of moral personhood that emphasizes the capacity to reason and membership in a moral community (Section 2) – as opposed to thicker views, which would include an account of moral emotions or moral phenomenology. After the thin view of moral personhood is set up, the paper introduces one particular philosophical problem – the problem of the first belief – that seems to threaten the possibility of taking group agents as proper moral agents or persons (Section 3). The paper finishes with a short discussion of these issues and sketches two potential philosophical routes that are available for understanding the moral standing of groups (Section 5)
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