ECT Talk – Jessica Brown (St Andrews)

Title: ‘Group Motivation’

Abstract: We routinely treat groups, including governments and corporations, as agents with beliefs and aims who are morally responsible for their actions. For instance, we might blame an oil company for an oil spill pointing out that they knew the risk of their profits-first policies. In this paper I discuss a key issue for group moral responsibility, namely whether we can make sense of a group acting for one reason rather than another. The notion of acting for one reason rather than another is central to standard accounts of individual agency and responsibility; and also determines whether an individual is blameworthy or praiseworthy for an action. For instance, whether a grandson is praiseworthy for looking after his dying grandmother may depend on whether he does it out of love or for the inheritance. Thus if we model group responsibility on individual responsibility, we need to be able to make sense of a group acting for one reason rather than another. Despite the importance of the notion of acting for a reason, most of the literature on group responsibility has focused on other issues such as what it is for a group to have a mental state and to act. Here, I offer a new account of how to understand group motivation for action.