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Essay A333 TMA 03
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Are there group agents ?
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Enrique Sarabia Sánchez - personal identifier : G6533073A333 - TMA 03 – 2000 words limit
Part1 - Are there group agents ?
In this essay, I’m going to study the affirmation of the existence of group agents. Is it
real or in opposition, there aren’t arguments solid enough to sustain such affirmation?
The concept of the existence of group actors is relatively widespread. Examples include
multinationals, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and even
countries. However, do we have to recognize the possibility of group behaviour?, It is
now more or less widely accepted that properly structured groups have the power to
become intellectual agents, over and above the individuals within them. But what is a
group agent?
When we have adequate knowledge of what an individual agent is, it may be attractive
for us to determine what a collective agent is special, specifying, for example, how
several subjects should intervene together to constitute a group agent. But a simpler
approach is to start with a general explanation of the term "agent" and then use it for
groups. From this point of view, a group agent consists of a collective that can be
identified as an agent. The specific problem of how a collective can achieve this status
on an organic, functional or behavioural level is distinct from the definition of the
concept of group agent. So, what is meant by an agent?
If we think as an individual agent and what is needed to act, we can think that there is a
need of having some mental processes involved in the very simple act of taking a
decision (cited in Barber 2014), for example, is needed an intention that is necessarily
supported by a believes and then the act itself has to be desired to happen by the
individual. Now we can extend these processes to a group agent and check if those same
processes happen in a collective that are sharing common purposes.
Based on this reasoning, we can sustain the existence of group agents. Examples of
group actors are corporations, courts of law and even states. Like an individual, group
agents pursue goals and interests in their actions. Thus, they can be as efficient as an
independent agent, if we consider logic in the sense in which it is interpreted by
decision-makers. A company's market behaviour can often be understood as a rational
profit-maximizing model, and corporations often respond to the model better and to a
greater degree than most individuals. Now, if we admit that there are group agents, do
we also have to admit the possibility of a collective conscience?
Then, we could set that a group agent is a group of individuals that act together and that
have or share common goals. We can make a difference between the collective and the
individuals that compose that collective (cited in Barber 2014). We should pay attention
to two different key points when we are analyzing the group agents. In the first term the
study of its nature (that are the metaphysics) and in the second term the ethics and
through them we can debate about the responsibility of the acts of the group agents
(cited in Barber 2014). I’m going to focus on the second topic to see if we can attribute
blame to the collective for the failure of one or more members of the collective. Such a
position postulates that all individuals in the group must take responsibility because
they have collaborative ties or common interests, for example, in an army, a
congregation, a political party or a family. Even if the fault is only of one or a few
members within the collective, the fault is shared because of a character fault that all
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