ESPF colloquium: Groups as Duty-bearers 

Groups as Duty-bearers, Niels de Haan

What kind of groups can have moral duties in their own right? Procedural collectivists hold that groups with an organizational structure and a decision-making procedure, such as states, corporations, and universities, qualify as collective agents with their own representational and goal- seeking states that can robustly satisfy desiderata of rationality. I argue that many organized groups qualify as duty-bearers, because they have moral competence: they can understand and process moral reasons and act accordingly in light of their moral understanding. The group-level duties of organized groups are ontically and analytically irreducible to members’ individual duties. According to plural subject- and we-mode-collectivists, purposive groups that lack decision-making procedures such as riot mobs, friends walking together, or the pro-life lobby can be morally responsible and have moral duties as well. I argue that purposive groups do not qualify as duty-bearers even if they qualify as group agents on either view. I develop the Update Argument. An agent is morally competent only if the agent has sufficient positive and negative control over updating their goal- seeking states. Positive control involves the general ability to update one’s goal-seeking states, whereas negative control involves the absence of other agents with the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with updating one’s goal-seeking states. I argue that purposive groups necessarily lack negative control over updating their goal-seeking states. This creates a cut-off point for groups as duty-bearers: Organized groups may qualify as duty-bearers, whereas purposive groups cannot qualify as duty-bearers.

Information: Frank Hindriks