Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical Fictions

Philip Pettit

doi:10.1007/s10670-014-9633-x

Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical Fictions

Philip Pettit^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Group agents have been represented as expressive fictions by those who treat ascriptions of agency to groups as metaphorical; as pragmatic fictions by those who think that the agency ascribed to groups belongs in the first place to a distinct individual or set of individuals; and as theoretical fictions by those who think that postulating group agents serves no indispensable role in our theory of the social world. This paper identifies, criticizes and rejects each of these views, defending a strong realist position.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1641-1662
Number of pages	22
Journal	Erkenntnis
Volume	79
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-014-9633-x
Publication status	Published - 16 Oct 2014

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title = "Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical Fictions",

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Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical Fictions

Abstract

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