Conclusion

I began this chapter by introducing a view about the point of morality and a normative theory that this view supports. On this theory — the society-centered theory — the issue whether institutional entities have moral obligations or bear moral responsibility is the issue whether the ideal moral code contains rules that directly regulate the actions of institutional entities, if there are any such actions.

In the middle section of the chapter, I argued that institutional actional events are actions, properly so-called, and that institutional doers are agents, properly so-called. I offered a minimal characterization of agency, which I then adjusted in order to accommodate a variety of claims about moral agents. In each case, I tried to explain how it can be that an institutional entity meets the conditions required for agency, especially moral agency. I concluded that there is no conceptual barrier to the view that institutional doers are moral agents and that institutional actional events are actions, properly and strictly speaking. I further concluded that there is no conceptual barrier to the thesis that institutional entities can have moral obligations and can bear moral responsibility. For if institutional entities are moral agents and can perform actions, then they are relevantly like individual persons in that they are in the scope of obligations, such as the obligation not to torture anyone.

I hope that these arguments eliminate the worry that attributions of blameworthiness and obligations to groups are “metaphysically or ethically suspect” (Bjornsson 2020: 127). In my view, as I have attempted to explain, facts about the obligations or responsibility of collective entities obtain in virtue of the same kinds of facts about the content of the ideal moral code as do the obligations or responsibility of relevant individuals.

The actions of collective entities are constituted by the actions of individual persons. Because of this, a fully satisfying theory of collective moral obligation and responsibility must explain how the obligations and responsibility of collective entities give relevant indi­vidual persons moral reason to act appropriately — reason to bring it about that collectives fulfill their obligations and respond appropriately to their responsibility (Ludwig 2020: 78). The society-centered theory provides an explanation of this reason. For it is plausible that the ideal moral code contains a transitional rule according to which, roughly, agents are required to do their part to bring it about that collectives they belong to, or to which they are otherwise relevantly related, fulfill their obligations and respond appropriately to their responsibility. Beyond this, I doubt that there is an exceptionless formula that takes us from the obligations and responsibility of collective entities to the obligations and responsibility of individual persons.

This chapter has focused on institutional entities, a kind of collective that has an organ­izational structure and a collective decision procedure grounded in laws, regulations, insti­tutional practices, norms, or the like. Entities of this kind are distinguished from groups that lack an organizational structure and collective decision procedure, but these groups can be organized to various degrees. Some unorganized and even “random” groups seem to be cap­able of a relevant kind of involvement in actional events.

Acknowledgments

For helpful comments and suggestions, I am grateful to Saba Barzagan-Forward, Frank Hindriks, Deborah Tollefsen, and members of the Davis Ethics Discussion Group: Rohan French, Justin Morton, Hermes Rocha, Tina Rulli, Ramiel Tamras, Khang That Vinh Ton, and Jacob Velasquez.

Notes

1 People can stand in a variety of relevant relations to institutional entities. They can be shareholders, citizens, officers, employees, directors, members, and so on. I use the term “member” as a generic term to refer to relations of these kinds.

2 I use the term “constituted” here without meaning to commit myself to the precise nature of the rela­tion in question. Perhaps the relation is that of metaphysical grounding (see Rosen 2010; 2018). Baker (2006) proposes a technical notion of constitution. See also Hindriks 2013. I return to this issue.

3 The moral culture of a society is the moral code that has been internalized by the bulk of the society's members or that is subscribed to by them. I explain this more fully in what follows.

4 In another essay (Copp forthcoming), I provide a model of what I have in mind, roughly as follows. (I assume something like Stalnaker's (1968) and Lewis's (1973) approach to counter-factuals.) Construct a set of possible worlds “accessible” from the actual world, holding constant human psychology and the basic facts of our social lives. These worlds are like the actual one in most ways, including how people would learn about morality, how people would teach new generations about morality, and the various ways in which human intelligence is limited. These “stage-one” worlds differ from the actual world in that people in these worlds have no “external preferences” and no moral beliefs or attitudes.

5 I have stated the theory in different ways in different places. The version presented here is closest to that found in Copp 2009. Different formulations can be found in Copp 2007b and Copp 1995. The theory raises a number of questions that are addressed elsewhere (See Copp 1995: 124—128, 192—197, 198-200,218-223;Copp 2007b:16-26).

6 If several codes are tied as best, then society-centered theory says that the truth conditions of a moral claim depend on the content of all the codes tied as best. For instance, torture is morally wrong if and only if, roughly, it is permitted by none of the moral codes tied as best. On ties, see Copp 1995, 198-199.

7 Here I follow Copp 2007b, 14-18. A “pure” moral proposition has no non-moral entailments or presuppositions (other than those given by the standard-based theory itself). A “basic” moral propos­ition ascribes a moral property to something. The proposition that theft is wrong is both pure and basic. There are complications I cannot address here.

8 Recall my caveat, in note 2, about my use of the term “constituted.”

9 For a similar argument, see Ludwig 2020: 78.

10 For this worry, see Hindriks 2014, Wringe 2014b.

11 For a useful overview and discussion of the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules, see Hindriks 2009.

12 I ignore “secondary actions,” actions that are attributed to an individual in virtue of an action performed by someone to whom she has given relevant authorization, such as an attorney or a trustee (Copp 1979). Everything done by an institutional doer is constituted by actions performed by individual agents. Note that there can be cases where a trustee acts on behalf of someone else, in a way that constitutes an action of hers, without having been authorized by her (Copp 1979).

13 One might object that this characterization makes no room for unintentional actions. But I am assuming that an unintentional action is constituted by some action over which the agent had intentional con­trol. For example, if I unintentionally frighten someone, and if this was an action, it was constituted by some event over which I did exercise intentional control, such as flipping a switch. Nothing in what follows turns on this assumption.

14 Recall my caveat, in note 2, about my use of the term “constitute.” My formulation blurs the differences between Alvin Goldman's theory of action (Goldman 1970) and Donald Davidson's (Davidson 2001).

15 John Searle contends that intentional states “can be brought to consciousness” in that they are “capable of causing subjective conscious thoughts” (Searle 1990: 588). This is his “connection principle” (Searle 1990).

16 Michael Bratman contends that intentions are planning states (Bratman 1987).

17 Perhaps this point lies behind Searle's (1990) idea that “intentions are accessible to consciousness,” at least in principle.

18 See Pettit 1993, ch. 1, esp. pp. 43—52. There are complications that I do not have the space to discuss.

19 For more detailed discussion of this idea, see Bjornsson 2020; Bjornsson and Hess 2017; Hindriks 2014; Hindriks 2018.

20 For a case study, see Bjornsson and Hess 2017.

21 Ludwig says that collectives are not “autonomous agents,” using “autonomous” here where I use “inde­pendent” (Ludwig 2020: 83). My usage allows us to distinguish conceptually between the thesis that “actions” of institutional entities are constituted by actions of individual persons and the thesis that the “actions” of institutional entities lack the autonomy characteristic of the actions of individual persons.

22 If the reductionist thesis is correct, it will be rather complex. The actions of institutional entities are not reducible to the actions of individual persons just as such. Actions of individual persons constitute an action of an institutional entity only in virtue of its organizational structure and collective decision procedure. An institution's collective decision procedure and organizational structure are grounded in laws, regulations, institutional practices, norms, and the like. To be sure, facts about the organizational structures and collective decision procedures of institutional entities are grounded in facts about indi­vidual persons and about the circumstances and institutional environment. But they are not grounded exclusively in facts about the actions of persons. Other properties of persons as well as facts about circumstances and the institutional environment are presumably aspects of the grounding.

23 Gunnar Bjornsson seems to accept a kind of moral individualism, at least regarding unorganized groups (Bjornsson 2020). He suggests that what looks like an attribution of an obligation to a group “is in fact” an attribution of relevantly corresponding obligations to members of the group (Bjornsson 2020: 134). In characterizing his position, however, Bjornsson says that, on the account he recommends, the obligations of groups are grounded in the obligations of their members (Bjornsson 2020: 128, 134). And as we have seen, when one fact grounds another, the grounded fact is a further fact (Rosen 2018). So Bjornsson is not committed to moral individualism. See also Bjornsson 2014.

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