Does the Machine Need a Ghost? Corporate Agents as Nonconscious Kantian Moral Agents

Hess, Kendy M.

doi:10.1017/apa.2018.10

Cited by 14 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…In essence, it is the same argument as that made by List. 12 Each responsibility condition is met by some feature of a machine that performs the same kind of function as a feature of a collective. Just as, for example, French discusses "suitably-organised" collectives, to mean that a collective with the appropriate structures and operation to meet the responsibility conditions, we might also talk about "suitably-constituted" machines to mean the same thing.…”

Section: The Parallel Between Collectives and Intelligent Machinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…French's notion of a corporation as a "Davidsonian agent"[9] includes intending to act as well as intentionality as I use it here, so would meet both the control and the intentionality condition 9. Hess[12] 10. Pettit makes a similar point (Pettit, ibid., Section III) about group agents satisfying his value judgement condition for moral responsibility, and the interaction between a group's organisation and its animation by human members who satisfy the condition in their own lives.…”

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Intelligent machines, collectives, and moral responsibility

Courtenage

2023

AI Ethics

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Collectives, such as companies, are generally thought to be moral agents and hence capable of being held responsible for what they do. If collectives, being non-human, can be ascribed moral responsibility, then can we do the same for machines? Is it equally the case that machines, particularly intelligent machines, can be held morally responsible for what they choose to do? I consider the conditions required for moral responsibility, and argue that, in terms of the agency condition, artificial, non-human entities in general are excused from being responsible because, although they may choose their actions, the beliefs and desires that form the basis of their choices are predetermined by their designers, placing them in an analogous position to persons suffering covert manipulation. This creates a problem for collective responsibility, but I argue that collectives, through their supervention on human persons, represent an exception. Finally, I consider that the design of future machines may be sufficiently abstract and high-level as to fall below some threshold of influence, allowing machines enough freedom for us to hold them responsible.

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Section: The Parallel Between Collectives and Intelligent Machinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Intelligent machines, collectives, and moral responsibility

Courtenage

2023

AI Ethics

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“…Perhaps the most influential recent suggestion has, however, gone in a functionalist direction which is close to French's (1979) view (e.g. Copp, 2006;Hess, 2013Hess, , 2018List & Pettit, 2011;Tollefsen, 2015). 3 While defenders disagree on some details, in rough outline, the thought is that an agent is an entity with an internal point of view (Rovane, 1997).…”

Section: Increasingly Ambitious Corporate Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Zombies Incorporated

Leffler

2023

Theoria

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How should we understand the relation between corporate agency, corporate moral agency and corporate moral patienthood? For some time, corporations have been treated as increasingly ontologically and morally sophisticated in the literature. To explore the limits of this treatment, I start off by redeveloping and defending a reductio that historically has been aimed at accounts of corporate agency which entail that corporations count as moral patients. More specifically, I argue that standard agents are due a certain type of moral concern, but corporate agents are not due that type of concern, so they are not agents of, at least, the standard type. Diagnosis: because corporations plausibly lack qualia, they are ‘zombie agents’ that mimic real agents. This explains why they are neither standard agents nor standard moral patients: they are not standard agents because they lack mental states, and because they lack experiences, they are, at best, morally notable rather than morally respectable. However, I then argue that we nevertheless have instrumental reasons to include them in our moral responsibility practices, both because that is what notability involves and bluffingly, and both when it comes to treating them as moral agents and as moral patients. Hence, we may treat corporations as part of our moral responsibility practices to a limited extent anyway.

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“…When introducing the concept of moral standing ( French, 1979 ; Donaldson, 1982 ; Werhane, 1985 ; Velasquez, 2003 ; Blair, 2015 ; Sepinwall, 2015 ; Hess, 2018 ), it is important to distinguish moral standing from responsibility. Moral psychologists speak of moral standing as the extent to which an entity can be harmed or wronged, and is deserving of moral consideration, for instance in the form of rights and protection (cf.…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stakeholder-Oriented Firms Have Feelings and Moral Standing Too

Quintelier

2022

Front. Psychol.

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A central claim in stakeholder theory is that, if we see stakeholders as human beings, we will attribute higher moral standing or show more moral consideration to stakeholders. But would the same hold for firms? In this paper, I apply the concepts of humanization and moral standing to firms, and I predict that (1) individuals attribute higher moral standing to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms, because (2) individuals attribute more experience (such as feelings) to stakeholder-oriented than to profit-oriented firms. Five experiments support these predictions across different operationalizations of stakeholder and profit orientations. The analyses show that moral standing attributions are not fully explained by attributions of agency (such as thinking) to firms, or by attributions of experience or agency to human stakeholders (instead of firms). By unearthing the importance of experience attributions for moral standing attributions to firms, this work provides novel insights in ongoing legal, philosophical and public debates related to firms’ moral standing. The findings also bring the debate about firms’ moral standing to the heart of stakeholder theory, and lead to new normative and descriptive research questions about the interests of firms and their stakeholders.

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Does the Machine Need a Ghost? Corporate Agents as Nonconscious Kantian Moral Agents

Cited by 14 publications

References 31 publications

Intelligent machines, collectives, and moral responsibility

Intelligent machines, collectives, and moral responsibility

Zombies Incorporated

Stakeholder-Oriented Firms Have Feelings and Moral Standing Too

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