Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical Fictions

Erkenntnis 79 (S9):1641-1662 (2014)
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Abstract

Group agents have been represented as expressive fictions by those who treat ascriptions of agency to groups as metaphorical; as pragmatic fictions by those who think that the agency ascribed to groups belongs in the first place to a distinct individual or set of individuals; and as theoretical fictions by those who think that postulating group agents serves no indispensable role in our theory of the social world. This paper identifies, criticizes and rejects each of these views, defending a strong realist position

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10.1007/s10670-014-9633-x

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Philip Pettit
Australian National University

Citations of this work

Cultural appropriation and the intimacy of groups.C. Thi Nguyen & Matthew Strohl - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (4):981-1002.
Groups as fictional agents.Lars J. K. Moen - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
Individuality, subjectivity, and minimal cognition.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (6):775-796.
Consciousness Incorporated.Philip Pettit - 2018 - Journal of Social Philosophy 49 (1):12-37.

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References found in this work

Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 1651 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by C. B. Macpherson.
Convention: A Philosophical Study.David Kellogg Lewis - 1969 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.

View all 43 references / Add more references