The Collective Fallacy: The Possibility of Irreducibly Collective Action Without Corresponding Collective Moral Responsibility

Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (3):283-300 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The common assumption is that if a group comprising moral agents can act intentionally, as a group, then the group itself can also be properly regarded as a moral agent with respect to that action. I argue, however, that this common assumption is the result of a problematic line of reasoning I refer to as “the collective fallacy.” Recognizing the collective fallacy as a fallacy allows us to see that if there are, in fact, irreducibly joint actors, then some of them will lack the full-fledged moral agency of their members. The descriptivist question of whether a group can perform irreducibly joint intentional action need not rise and fall with the normative question of whether a group can be a moral agent

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-08-01

Downloads
201 (#91,574)

6 months
3 (#445,838)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Marcus Hedahl
United States Naval Academy

Citations of this work

Add more citations

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.
Two Faces of Responsibility.Gary Watson - 1996 - Philosophical Topics 24 (2):227-248.

View all 17 references / Add more references