Stephanie Collins (Australian Catholic University)

Duty and Blameworthiness in Non-agent Groups

Preceded by a pre-talk for graduate students, 1:30PM Benjamin Library

This talk addresses the moral-agential status of non-agent groups: groups like ‘carbon emitters’, ‘the international community’, and ‘misogynists.’ I argue that non-agent groups cannot have duties, but that they can be blameworthy. This unlikely pair of conclusions arises because of the different functions that duties and blameworthiness play in moral and political practice. Duties function as inputs into the practical reasoning of the entity that bears the obligation. Non-agent groups, I argue, cannot reason in the relevant way. By contrast, blameworthiness functions as a reflection of the esteem or disesteem with which others should hold the blameworthy entity. Non-agent groups are sometimes the appropriate and irreducible objects of esteem or disesteem. I give conditions under which non-agent groups are irreducibly blameworthy.

3:30-5:30PM Thursday 6 Sept 2018

Room 3.02 Sir Roland Wilson Building, ANU

Please let me know if you'd like to come to the dinner following the talk.