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0 pointstim3339y ago0 comments

If a tobacco company say starts giving cigarettes to 5 year olds to get them hooked you don't think that's evil? What difference does it make that a company is a bunch of people rather than one?

I'll give you that it's trickier to deal with bad stuff done by a corporation. With an individual you can jail them but less so with a corp unless you can pin it on an individual.

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brudgers9y ago

No. Tobacco companies are not moral agents.

Such a scenario might well involve individuals engaged in banal evil and because individuals are moral agents, that's where blame and praise may accrue.

Anthropomorphizing a tobacco company muddies our thinking. A trade agreement is a document. The consequences of following the ideas in that document may be detrimental. But it is not a moral agent.

josinalvo9y ago

Your definition of moral agent is not very useful.

For me, a moral agent is not one that can 'feel responsible', but one that I can affect, by changing my own behavior, when it does 'something bad'.

The discussion of internal states is less useful. Also, the discussion of morality of people I can't affect is less useful.

brudgers9y ago

Not very useful definitions are by definition more useful than useless definitions.

If a person lobs avalanche prevention ordinance upon an unstable mountain slope thereby preventing the demise of the hikers I invented earlier, that person's actions might be said to have affected the behavior of the mountain.

If the person lobs ordinance after the invented hikers have met their fate, that person may well change the mountain slope geometry in such a manner that unique unstable accumulations are no longer physically possible [while others may be].

Clearly neither seems like a case where there is moral agency in the mountain. We get moral agency when the person lobbing ordinance onto the mountain slope is doing or forgoing the activity in the presence of hikers.

tim333OP9y ago

Things don't need to be moral agents to be good bad or evil. I had a good bath and a bad haircut but neither of those are moral agents.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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brudgers9y ago

No. Tobacco companies are not moral agents.

Such a scenario might well involve individuals engaged in banal evil and because individuals are moral agents, that's where blame and praise may accrue.

Anthropomorphizing a tobacco company muddies our thinking. A trade agreement is a document. The consequences of following the ideas in that document may be detrimental. But it is not a moral agent.

josinalvo9y ago

Your definition of moral agent is not very useful.

For me, a moral agent is not one that can 'feel responsible', but one that I can affect, by changing my own behavior, when it does 'something bad'.

The discussion of internal states is less useful. Also, the discussion of morality of people I can't affect is less useful.

brudgers9y ago

Not very useful definitions are by definition more useful than useless definitions.

tim333OP9y ago

Things don't need to be moral agents to be good bad or evil. I had a good bath and a bad haircut but neither of those are moral agents.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse