Persons, Agents, Patients – Conceptual Housekeeping in a World with Group Agents

Abstract The recognition of artificial agents such as group agents and computer AIs introduces undesirable ambiguities. With this expanded social ontology, it becomes all too easy to undergeneralize or overgeneralize when invoking concepts traditionally used to describe humans. Furthermore, prominent accounts of group agency feature criteria such that antecedent qualifying terms such as ‘individual’ and ‘group’ are irrelevant to the realization of agency itself. Yet there are obviously important moral differences between individual human beings and groups of human beings. The existence of group agents calls for a clear and explicit recognition of a distinct category: obligation-bearing social entities which lack the essential ingredient for moral worth.