Duties of Group Agents and Group Members

Collins, Stéphanie

doi:10.1111/josp.12181

Cited by 20 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The problem of identity is not the only difficulty resulting from the application of the natural person analogy. If a group is to satisfy the requirements for being an agent, then its members must accept what Collins (2017) calls membership duties. They must see to it that their group is able to make decisions and carry them out.…”

Section: Membership Duties and Individual Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Groups as intergenerational agents: Responsibility through time and change

Thompson

2022

Journal of Social Philosophy

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Laws and political conventions impose intergenerational obligations on states and corporations. Germany finished paying reparations for World War I to Allied nations in 2010 and has been making payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust for over six decades. The corporation James Hardie continues to pay compensation to former workers and their families for its failure to protect them from dangers of exposure when it mined asbestos in Australia back in the 1950s. New Zealand is responsible for settling claims made by Maori communities in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi signed by the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840.Four assumptions play a critical role in practices that assign these obligations. The first is that states and corporations count as agents with moral as well as legal responsibilities. By paying reparations for World War I, Germany was fulfilling a requirement of international law. James Hardie was compelled to pay victims of asbestos exposure as the result of court decisions. But these legal requirements correspond to, and underwrite, the moral assumption that agents ought to keep their commitments and pay reparations to victims for the unjustified harm that they did. We may have doubts about some decisions imposed by law. Perhaps international conventions concerning war reparations are morally questionable. But the assumption that states and corporations are agents with moral obligations is basic to beliefs about what we can demand of them.The second assumption is that the moral obligations of these groups persist through changes of membership and the retirement and death of leaders and officials who bore responsibility for the existence of the obligations. Germany is paying reparation to Holocaust victims because of what the Nazis did. James Hardie is responsible for compensating victims of asbestos exposure because past company decisionmakers wrongfully failed to protect them. New Zealand continues to be responsible for fulfilling the terms of a treaty made by British officials in the 19th century.

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Section: Membership Duties and Individual Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Groups as intergenerational agents: Responsibility through time and change

Thompson

2022

Journal of Social Philosophy

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“…The precise members that have duties – and what their duties are – vary across possible scenarios in which the organisation’s duty remains constant. Second, the duties members acquire from the organisation’s duty make ineliminable reference to the organisation’s features: plausibly, when an organisation has a duty, the members have duties to act in certain ways within their roles in the organisation (Collins, 2017). Additionally, members’ duties can sometimes be justified only via the organisation’s duty (Wringe, 2016).…”

Section: Organisations’ Actions and Dutiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The Government Should Be Ashamed’: On the Possibility of Organisations’ Emotional Duties

Collins

2017

Political Studies

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When we say that ‘the government should be ashamed’, can we be taken literally? I argue that we can: organisations have duties over their emotions. Emotions have both functional and felt components. Often, emotions’ moral value derives from their functional components: from what they cause and what causes them. In these cases, organisations can have emotional duties in the same way that they can have duties to act. However, emotions’ value partly derives from their felt components. Organisations lack feelings, but can have duties to increase the likelihood that their members have relevant emotions (with the right felt components), in virtue of and in accordance with their role in the organisation. To systematise these conclusions, I provide a taxonomy of organisations’ – and individuals’ organisationally situated – emotional duties. This taxonomy will enable scholars of electoral politics, international politics and public policy to systematically integrate emotions into the study of organisations.

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“…Another significant literature considers how collective entities (typically more purposive, associational groups like states, churches, or corporations) can be moral agents, subject to blameworthiness, duties, etc. (e.g Smiley 2010;List and Pettit 2011;Collins 2017;Pettit 2018)…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Social Groups Be Units of Normative Concern?

Lyon

2022

Social Theory and Practice

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In social justice theory, it seems both important, but also potentially normatively and metaphysically suspect, to treat social groups as units of normative concern. This is also the source of much current controversy surrounding social justice politics. I argue that normative individualism is a (correct) metaethical clarification, but not necessarily a binding guide for all other (non-metaethical) normative theory or practice in the way we might assume. Supra-individual social entities can, in fact, be the irreducible subjects of concern in valid normative evaluations or prescriptions, owing to future-relevant causal properties. However, this idea is complex and requires careful elucidation. I address likely objections pertaining to group definitions, social ontology, conceptions of causation, counterfactuals, and the non-identity problem.

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Duties of Group Agents and Group Members

Cited by 20 publications

References 26 publications

Groups as intergenerational agents: Responsibility through time and change

Groups as intergenerational agents: Responsibility through time and change

‘The Government Should Be Ashamed’: On the Possibility of Organisations’ Emotional Duties

Can Social Groups Be Units of Normative Concern?

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