scholarly journals Group Agents and Moral Status: What Can We Owe to Organizations?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Adam Lovett ◽  
Stefan Riedener
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
Group Agents

Abstract Organizations have neither a right to vote nor a right to life. But we can owe them to keep our promises or show them gratitude. So we owe some things to organizations, but not everything we owe to people. What explains this? Individualistic views explain it just in terms of features of organizations’ individual members. Collectivistic views explain it just in terms of features of those organizations. Neither view works. Instead, we need to synthesize these approaches. Some individual interests are distinctively collective. Individuals have an interest in participating in successful collective action. This explains organizations’ apparently fragmented moral status.

Summary and Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Group Action ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Multiple Agents ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Collective Acceptance ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
Group Agents

This chapter summarizes in broad terms the work of the book, which focuses on how the multiple agents account of collective action can be extended to institutional and mob action. It reviews the problems raised by singular group agents. It reviews the account of logical form developed for grammatically singular group action sentences. It reviews the account of constitutive rules and constitutive agency. It reviews the analysis of status functions, collective acceptance, and conventions. It reviews the account of membership in singular group agents. It reviews the account of proxy agency. It reviews the application to corporations and nation states. It concludes with a big picture view of the territory and brief description of directions for future research.

The Moral Status of Profit

2019 ◽  
pp. 336-357
Author(s):  
Joseph Heath
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Profit Maximization ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Efficient Allocation ◽  
Collective Action Problem ◽  
Market Clearing ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Labor Resources

There is a common fallacy, among critics of capitalism, that because firms are licensed to pursue profits, the purpose of the economic system as a whole must be to facilitate the realization of such profits. This is manifestly not the case, because the design of markets, including the insistence on competition between firms, is intended to bid profits down to zero. The lure of profit is what leads firms to compete with one another, which creates an institutionally enforced collective action problem that drives prices toward the level that allows for a more efficient allocation of labor, resources, goods, and services. The achievement of these “market clearing” prices is the actual purpose of the system. This explains why many people find the profit orientation of firms to be morally counterintuitive. Most of everyday morality is aimed at getting people to act more cooperatively, whereas profit-maximization is essentially a free-rider strategy.

Moral status of the fetus and the permissibility of abortion: a contractarian response to Thomson’s violinist thought experiment

2021 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-106810
Author(s):  
Matthew John Minehan
Keyword(s):  
Pregnant Woman ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Judith Jarvis Thomson ◽  
Dependence Relationship

Judith Jarvis Thomson famously argued that abortion is permissible even if we accept that a fetus qualifies as a person and possesses a right to life. The current paper presents two arguments that undermine Thomson’s position. First, the paper sketches a contractarian argument that explores Thomson’s violinist thought experiment from behind a veil of ignorance, which suggests that if we had an equal likelihood of being an unwanted fetus and a pregnant woman, it would be rational for us to oppose abortion. Second, the paper discusses the hypothetical self-aborting fetus, a thought experiment that reverses the dependence relationship between a woman and a fetus. It is argued that in this scenario, where fetuses have agency of their own, Thomson’s position would counterintuitively prohibit a woman from temporarily curtailing the freedom of her fetus even to save her own life.

Dog Duty

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hanrahan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
The Right

AbstractBurgess-Jackson (1998) argues that the duties we have to our companion animals are similar to the duties we have to our children. Specifically, he argues that a person who takes custody of either a nonhuman animal or a child elevates the moral status of the child or animal, endowing each with rights neither had before. These rights obligate that person to provide for the well being of the creature—animal or child—in question. This paper offers two arguments against this position. First, a creature's rights rest solely on the creature's intrinsic properties. Thus, the person taking custody of a creature does not endow the creature with new rights. Rather, the custodian assumes the responsibilities associated with ensuring that the creature's rights are protected and preserved. Second, our children possess intrinsic properties and, hence, rights—most important, the right to life—that our pets lack. This difference undermines the analogy on which Burgess-Jackson's argument depends. Our pets are not like our children, as Burgess-Jackson claims. Instead, they are more akin to our slaves.

Ideas and Leaders in Contentious Politics: One Parish Priest in El Salvador's Popular Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 76-101
Author(s):  
PETER M. SANCHEZ
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Resource Mobilisation ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis paper examines the actions of one Salvadorean priest – Padre David Rodríguez – in one parish – Tecoluca – to underscore the importance of religious leadership in the rise of El Salvador's contentious political movement that began in the early 1970s, when the guerrilla organisations were only just beginning to develop. Catholic leaders became engaged in promoting contentious politics, however, only after the Church had experienced an ideological conversion, commonly referred to as liberation theology. A focus on one priest, in one parish, allows for generalisation, since scores of priests, nuns and lay workers in El Salvador followed the same injustice frame and tactics that generated extensive political mobilisation throughout the country. While structural conditions, collective action and resource mobilisation are undoubtedly necessary, the case of religious leaders in El Salvador suggests that ideas and leadership are of vital importance for the rise of contentious politics at a particular historical moment.

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