The Structure of Group Agents
This chapter builds on the previous two, looking at organizational structures by which the members of a group might aggregate their attitudes so as to enable them to act as a single agent. It shows that a group agent's attitudes will always supervene on the contributions of its members: they are determined by the members' attitudes just as the shapes on a grid are determined by the way the slots are filled in. But group attitudes can supervene on individual contributions only in a complex, holistic fashion. The group attitude towards a given proposition may depend not primarily on individual attitudes towards that proposition, but on individual attitudes towards a web of other propositions. In the limit, the group may accept a proposition that all members individually reject. The complexity of the relationship between the group's attitudes and those of its members implies that there is no easy translation between group-agency talk and talk of individuals. It supports the epistemological, though not the ontological, autonomy of group agents.
Keywords: organizational structure, supervenience, holism, autonomy, epistemology, ontology
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