Monsters and Their Makers: Group Agency Without Moral Agency

Abstract

Private business corporations and other organizations are often treated as objects of moral blame in public discourse. According to Peter French such talk of a group’s moral responsibility is to be taken literally: groups can constitute group agents that are appropriate subjects of moral responsibility. I agree with French that some groups exhibit intentionality, rationality, and the capacity to alter their behavior in light of reasons. Such groups should be understood as agents in their own right. French’s model of a CID Structure helps to explain how groups can come to function as agents. However, I will argue, contra French, that although groups can form intentional, rational agents, they fail to be appropriate subjects of moral responsibility. Following Kant, I will show that group agents lack the kind of autonomy that is constitutive of moral agency. Group agents are created for specific purposes and these purposes determine their CID Structure, which, in turn, determines their actions, plans and policies. Like non-human animals, group agents fail to be autonomous because they lack the ability to choose the principles that are definitive of their will. This conclusion does not need to lead to a deficit in moral responsibility. I argue that it can be appropriate to assign individual group members retrospective as well as prospective moral responsibility for the actions and character of group agents. If group agents spiral out of control and become “monsters” we are morally responsible for the harm they cause and, if necessary, to reform or extinguish them.

The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

(Steinbeck 2000, 35–36)

The title is based on Peter French’s article, “Monsters and Their Makers”. (French 1972).