Search results for "philip pettit"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Measuring autonomy freedom
2006
In the measurement of autonomy freedom, the admissible potential preference relations are elicited by means of the concept of ‘reasonableness’. In this paper we argue for an alternative criterion based on information about the decision maker’s ‘awareness’ of his available opportunities. We argue that such an inter- pretation of autonomy fares better than that based on reasonableness. We then introduce some axioms that capture this intuition and study their logical impli- cations. In the process, a new measure of autonomy freedom is characterized, which generalizes some of the measures so far constructed in the literature.
The Problem of the First Belief: Group Agents and Responsibility
2020
Abstract Attributing moral responsibility to an agent requires that the agent is a capable member of a moral community. Capable members of a moral community are often thought of as moral reasoners (or moral persons) and, thus, to attribute moral responsibility to collective agents would require showing that they are capable of moral reasoning. It is argued here that those theories that understand collective reasoning and collective moral agency in terms of collective decision-making and commitment – as is arguably the case with Christian List and Philip Pettit’s theory of group agency – face the so-called “problem of the first belief” that threatens to make moral reasoning impossible for gr…
Groups as Persons? A Suggestion for a Hegelian Turn
2017
AbstractChristian List and Philip Pettit have recently argued for a performative theory of personhood in which all agents who manage to perform in the space of obligations are taken as persons. Based on this account they claim that group agents are also persons. This theory has been challenged on the grounds of its historical accuracy, lack of political relevance, and contestability of the concept of personhood. This paper aims to take a new perspective on the debate by approaching it through the Hegelian idea of recognition. The claim is that recognition theory provides a multi-dimensional view of personhood that gives a clearer account of what is at stake with collective personhood.