Organisations as Wrongdoers: Volitionist, Attributivist, and Aretaic Lenses
Speaker: Stephanie Collins (Australian Catholic University)
Abstract: In this talk, I’ll argue that we can fruitfully use three different ‘lenses’ to think about organisations as wrongdoers. The volitionist lens focuses on the will, choices, or intentions of the organisation. The attributivist lens focuses on the organisation’s evaluative attitudes, over which the organisation might never have made a choice. The aretaic lens focuses not on what an organisation chooses or values, but on its character flaws or vices. Each of these lenses has received a lot of philosophical attention as ways of understanding individuals as wrongdoers, but the extension to organisations hasn't received sufficient attention (especially for the attributivist and areteic lenses).
About the Presenter: Stephanie Collins is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. Her current research focuses on social ontology, collective responsibility, and related topics. Her monographs are Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals (OUP, 2019) and The Core of Care Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). She is currently writing her third monograph, Organisations as Wrongdoers, which she is writing under the auspices of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award.
