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Affectivity, Moral Agency, and Corporate-Human Relations

Deborah Tollefsen
University of Memphis

More than a quarter of a century ago Peter French published an article in which he argued that corporations are moral persons (1974). The concept of personhood is one that draws controversy in a number of philosophical, political, and legal arenas. It is no surprise that French’s position garnered a good deal of criticism; much of it charging anthropomorphism. In his more recent work French has tempered his metaphysical claims (1995, 1996, and 2003). According to the more “moderate” French, corporations are not moral persons but moral actors. To be an actor is to exhibit the following functional capacities: (a.) the ability to act intentionally, (b.) the ability to make rational decisions, and (c.) the ability to respond to events and criticisms by altering intentions and behavior that is harmful to others or detrimental to their own interests (French 1995, 12). The decision-making structure of a corporation provides a way of synthesizing the actions and attitudes of individuals into the actions and intentions of the corporation. It also provides mechanisms for self-reflection required by (c.) and rational decision-making processes involved in (b.). French has conceded that corporations are not persons, but most would agree that personhood isn’t necessary nor is it sufficient for moral agency. Young children are presumably persons but not moral actors. Corporations are not persons, according to French, but they are moral actors.

One of the most interesting aspects of French’s recent work is his discussion of “corporate-human interactions (1995, 56)” and the asymmetries found in these relations. One of the major differences between human beings and corporations, according to French, is the fact that the former suffers from weakness of will. Corporations, according to French, have a structure which allows them to pursue their goals without being taken off course. Humans, because of their affectivity and desires, can be easily led astray and often become the prey of corporations. Advertising is one way in which the corporation takes advantage of our weakness of will.

Having conceded that corporations are not persons and having highlighted the asymmetries between human beings and corporations, French seems to have avoided much of the earlier criticisms of his work that focus on his extension of the term “person” to corporations. There is a line of criticism, however, that retains its force. Indeed, it is a criticism I have struggled with in my own attempt to defend corporate moral responsibility (2003). Rather than focus on the notion of personhood or on the concept of intentional agency, this criticism focuses on moral agency and identifies an aspect of moral agency that the corporation prima facie lacks; emotion or affectivity.

In this paper I begin with a discussion of two ways in which affectivity is thought to be constitutive of moral agency and the ways in which this causes problems for the idea of corporate moral agency and corporate moral responsibility. In section II, I consider several strategies for responding to this criticism and find them all inadequate. In section III, I turn to a discussion of, what I have called elsewhere, “collective emotion” (2006). Collective emotions are not had by corporations, they are emotions realized by human beings. But the conditions under which they are realized and the conditions under which they are deemed appropriate are uniquely collective. I think such emotions are the only way to make sense of corporate affect and thus the only way to salvage corporate moral agency. Admittedly I am not sure that this will allow one to maintain the view that the corporation itself is a moral actor. But I invite French to consider the criticism and my attempted response. Perhaps he has an easy response to what I have found to be a very difficult problem for corporate moral agency.

I. Why emotion matters to moral agency

Here is the basic argument against corporate moral agency based on affectivity. Call it: the argument from affectivity.

1. Moral agency essentially involves affectivity.[1]
2. Corporations lack affectivity.
3. Therefore, corporations cannot engage in moral agency. That is, they

cannot be moral agents (or, in French’s terminology, moral actors).
This argument shares some affinity with earlier criticisms of French’s work. In “Corporations and Morality” (1986, 59-95), for instance, Richard T. De George sites a lack of affectivity as a reason for excluding corporations from the realm of moral personhood. He writes:

The fourth reason for denying moral personhood to corporations is that corporations do not have emotive or affective capacities comparable to human beings and so are not comparable candidates for moral personhood. Human beings have emotions and can suffer pangs of conscience, accept and feel moral blame and shame, and empathize with others whom they affect by their actions. Corporations have human beings within in them; but to call the emotions of those human beings the emotions of the corporation stretches our normal use of language beyond recognition. (1986, 62)[2]

But this argument and others like it focus on the notion of personhood and its relation to emotion. Since French has conceded that corporations are not persons, this line of argument needs to be reformulated to emphasize the ways in which affectivity is constitutive of moral agency. The argument from affectivity also shares some similarities with those that emphasize consciousness as the distinguishing mark of intentional agency or personhood. On some theories of emotion, affective states essentially involve a form of phenomenal consciousness—a “what it’s likeness.” But since it isn’t clear that phenomenal consciousness is essential to intentional agency, I’ve never found this line of criticism convincing. And the fact that consciousness may be required for personhood is of no consequence for French’s mature view since he concedes that corporations are not persons.

A substantive challenge to French’s mature view requires a detailed discussion of the ways in which affectivity is constitutive of the moral realm. Such a discussion can be found in Mitch Haney’s “Corporate Loss of Innocence for the Sake of Accountability” (2004). Haney argues that French’s own theory of moral agency and responsibility excludes corporations from being moral actors. Moral agency requires, according to French (1992), that agents lose their innocence regarding their own actions. They must be able to view themselves as capable of doing evil. In part, this involves coming to see that unintended actions can cause harm. It also requires that individuals accept responsibility for actions that cause harm but which they may not have intended. Haney links this capacity for recognizing our capacity for doing evil to our capacity to care about the moral quality of our actions. “For French, it appears that the experience (whether cataclysmic or incremental) of coming to be acquainted with the capacity to do evil permanently changes a person’s attitudes or about what or how much she cares, in the Frankfurtian sense, about the moral quality of her actions” (Haney 2004, 396). From there it is a small step to associating care with a capacity for self-reflective attitudes or emotions. Care is expressed in the emotional reaction we have to our own actions. Haney writes:

Self-reactive attitudes include such things as guilt, remorse, and regret (or such positive attitudes as pride, self-esteem, etc.). How we care and how much we care about our actions becomes amplified such that we find it of increased importance to who we are and what we do to engage in closer scrutiny of the moral value of our actions. (2004, 396-97)

Although Haney acknowledges that corporations might have the formal elements necessary for an acknowledgement of their actions as subject to moral assessment (the capacity for intentional agency and for reflective assessment of their actions), it is the informal loss of innocence involving care which the corporation seems to lack. Referencing an earlier criticism of French, Haney writes:

Danley (1980) detects how it is that individual persons differ from corporations. He identifies some attitudinal characteristics of humans, e.g., lust and malice. There are obviously many other attitudes humans can experience, but Danley is correct to notice that humans experience unique affective attitudinal states. And, human attitudes ultimately reflect what it is that individuals most deeply care about or embrace as important in their lives. And, we previously identified self-reactive attitudes as affective states essential to French’s view of the human loss of innocence. Thus, what distinguishes corporations in the moral community is that although they can be formally mature, they cannot be informally mature…there is nothing it is like for a corporation to be in a state of a self-reactive attitude; thus, nothing that it is like for a corporation to intrinsically care about the moral value of its actions. In short, humans really can care; corporations cannot. (Haney 2004, 401)

The strength of Haney’s criticism is that he uses French’s own view against him. Rather than simply citing the differences between corporations and humans, differences which French can acknowledge, Haney identifies an aspect of French’s view of moral agency which he believes is essentially tied to affectivity. If corporations lack affectivity then by French’s own lights they lack the capacity for a loss of innocence and so fall outside the realm of moral agency and moral responsibility.

In the next section I consider several ways that French might respond to Haney’s criticism, but before doing so I want to raise another problem that is linked to a corporation’s putative lack of affectivity. As I mentioned above I think one of the most interesting elements of French’s mature views is his discussion of corporate-human social relations and the ways in which they differ from human-human social interactions. French argues that certain moral theories concerning human-human relations will be ill-suited for extension to corporate-human relations. But both types of social relations, according to French, are ethical. But ethical relations of any kind are built upon a more basic relation of trust. Ethical relations are those relationships governed by moral norms. When we hold someone to ethical norms we expect them to behave in certain ways. If we had no expectation that a person was able to meet the demands of morality, we would not hold her accountable. But we know there is always a chance that others will violate ethical standards and let us down.[3] To engage in ethical relations, then, involves a risk.[4] One must at some level trust others to do what they ought to do. When I lie or harm another person (physically or psychologically) I fail to meet her expectations. I violate her trust and undermine her ability to trust me in the future. I take advantage of her vulnerability. Repairing that relation involves essentially a repair of the relation of trust. But what is trust?

Recent literature suggests that it is more than mere reliance.[5] One relies on a computer to start up or a car to start on a cold morning. When these mechanisms fail we do not feel violated or betrayed. Rather, we feel inconvenienced or angry. It is the capacity for betrayal (to betray and be betrayed) that seems unique to the relation of trust. Can corporations betray us and can they be betrayed? This depends a great deal on the nature of trust.

In order to capture the distinction between trust and reliance philosophers have appealed to the notion of good will and the motivation to act out of it.[6] According to “will-based” accounts a trustee who is trustworthy will act out of good will toward the truster. In others words, in order for an agent to be trustworthy the agent must care about the truster, or care about what they are entrusted to do. Karen Jones (1996) develops this further by identifying two conditions the truster must meet in order to be said to trust another. The truster must have an attitude of optimism about the trustee’s good will and further she must have a confident expectation that the trustee will be moved by the thought that the truster is counting on her. The attitude of optimism is not, according to Jones, a mere belief, but an affective attitude. The introduction of an affective aspect to trust helps to explain why we often trust others in the face of evidence that suggests that they should not be trusted.

If ethical relations essentially involve trust and corporate-human relations are ethical relations then we need a way to make sense of how corporations trust and can be trusted. It is difficult to see, however, how a corporation could enter into a relation of trust on the dominant construal of trust and trustworthiness. If I were to fail to make my used car payment this month I do not think that my bank would feel violated or betrayed. And when I bring in my car to be repaired, I don’t have any confident expectation that the car company (or the repair company) is going to be moved by the thought that I am counting on them to fix it. I may have a confident expectation that the repair person at the dealership will be moved (though even that is debatable) by the thought that I am counting on her. I may even have a confident expectation that the repair company knows that I am counting on it in the sense that the right corporate informational channels have been activated. But I don’t think that Firestone Car Care will be “moved” by this information. And the point here isn’t just that I doubt that Firestone Car Care cares about me. Rather, I doubt it has the capacity to care at all about any being or any thing. I doubt it can be moved in principle, where the sense of “moving” here is cashed out in terms of affect of some sort. Nor can I make sense of the notion of good will at the level of corporations. To express good will is to care about the well being of another. Although as a mother of four I sometimes go through the routine of caring for my children without affect (Is exhaustion an affective attitude?), my ongoing or standing emotional attachments to my children are, at least in part, what moves me to go through the behavioral routine. Though it may not be present in every token action, emotion seems definitive of care.

If trusting a corporation is merely relying on them the way that one relies on one’s car then there is no reason to view such a relation as essentially ethical. There is no violating this sort of trust and so no reason to hold the corporation responsible. We can be upset that the corporation did not function correctly to bring about a desired state of affairs but holding a corporation morally responsible would be futile if it cannot be trusted in a more robust manner. The claim isn’t that corporations can’t be trusted because they are inveterate liars. They cannot be trusted because trust is something they cannot do given their nature. It is a conceptual claim. Trust is constitutive of the moral realm. If a being cannot, in principle, engage in relations of trust that being is not a moral actor.

To sum up: both trust and moral reflection (losing one’s innocence) seem to require affectivity and both trust and moral reflection are constitutive of moral agency.[7] Corporations, prima facie, lack affectivity. Therefore, they cannot be moral agents.

II. Some possible responses

There are at least three strategies one might take to respond to the argument from affectivity.

Strategy one: although trust and moral reflection are required for human moral agency, there is no reason to believe they are required for corporate moral agency. This move denies that trust and moral reflection are constitutive of moral agency, in general. In “Personal and Corporate Responsibility” (1986) Virginia Held argues that rather than trying to figure out if our conception of moral personhood can extend to corporations, we need to devise criteria appropriate for corporate moral responsibility: “…instead of accepting or rejecting the analogy between corporations and individual persons, we need to recognize the characteristic features of both” (1986, 169). Perhaps corporate moral responsibility doesn’t require trust and moral reflection.

Although French’s mature work has emphasized the asymmetries between corporations and human persons and how the moral theories governing human-human interactions are not easily extended to corporate-human relations, this is not a response to which he can avail himself. Moral reflection, the ability to respond to moral criticism and alter one’s behavior in light of it, is constitutive of moral agency for French. Further, it is difficult to see how an agent that lacked the ability to enter into relations of trust could count as a moral agent. Trustworthiness seems definitive of moral agency, be it corporate or individual. To say that corporate morality does not involve trust risks putting the corporation outside the realm of the ethical all together.

Strategy two: one might reject premise one of the argument (affectivity is essential to moral agency). The arguments presented in this paper are in need of further development and it is open to French to reject Haney’s emphasis on the informal aspect of a loss of innocence (the affective component involving care) and an affective theory of trust. There are other theories of trust that do not appeal to an affective component.[8] But the force of the argument from affectivity is simply this: Imagine an entity that lacked all affect, specifically the capacity for reactive attitudes; the emotions we have in response to the actions of others and to our own actions. This entity would not feel remorse or guilt in response to its own actions. It could not sympathize with others. It would have no capacity for moral indignation, no capacity to feel pride; a being unable to register an emotive response to the actions of others or itself. To be clear I am not describing a “cold-hearted killer”; a person who lacks affective responses to her victims. Such people often exhibit reactive attitudes in other domains of action and often have positive reactive attitudes in response to their own actions—pride, for instance. I am describing a being that, in principle, lacks affect. It is difficult to see how such an entity could be a member of the moral community.

Strategy three: one might reject premise two of the argument from affectivity (corporations lack affect). One way to do this is to adopt a cognitive theory of emotion. French might argue that there is a way in which emotion can be understood purely in cognitive terms and need not involve a phenomenological “what it is likeness.” If the phenomenology of emotion—its felt quality—is not necessary for a state to be an emotion then corporations could have emotions. More specifically, Haney’s objection and my objection concerning self-reflection and trust rest on a phenomenological reading of care. Caring involves a special feel—a felt quality. To care is to be “moved” in a certain manner. Care ethicists have recently criticized this reading and have developed a notion of care along Kantian lines which downplays the role of affectivity (Miller 2005). If one subscribed to a purely cognitive theory of emotion (specifically, a more cognitive theory of trust and care) corporations might meet the functional requirements for affectivity.[9]

I have tried this line of response myself (2003) but for a variety of reasons I no longer find it appealing. Although one need not “feel” caring during every act of care, care without affect would be mere maintenance. Moral relationships are not those we merely “maintain.” Further, I think it is clear that corporate-human relations are not purely cognitive. They involve emotion in significant ways. Humans take corporations as the target of reactive attitudes such as resentment and, putting aside the issue of whether a corporation itself can feel emotion, it seems clear that humans exhibit unique emotions qua corporate employees. That is, there are emotions expressed as members of corporations which are unique to these social relations. As an employee I express emotions which are judged to be appropriate to the employee/employer relation and to the employee/consumer relation. I’ll say more about this in section three. In brief, I think this strategy ignores the fact that corporate-human relations are deeply emotional. Suggesting that corporations are, in effect, “zombies” risks eliminating this altogether. Regarding the issue of trust, if corporate-human relations are marked by a mere reliance rather than affective trust, this places corporations on par with computers and I think it is clear that we don’t have moral relationships with computers. Again, eliminating affectivity from care and trust runs the risk of characterizing corporations in terms that would exclude them from the moral community.

III. Collective emotion

I find the argument from affectivity quite convincing. Philosophical argumentation aside, our experience as moral agents suggests that emotion plays a significant role in our relationships with others. If corporations lack affectivity our relation with them will be more akin to interactions with objects rather than with moral actors. What one needs to do in order to salvage corporate moral agency from the argument from affectivity is to explain how corporations can be both the target of reactive attitudes and subject to reactive attitudes. The former, I think, is much more easily established than the latter.

In “Collective Responsibility and the Reactive Attitudes” (2003), I argued that our reactive attitudes are often directed at corporations. We resent them, feel pride for their achievements, embarrassed by their actions, we feel guilt and shame when they harm others. Because corporations are not ideas but real entities in the world, these reactive attitudes cannot be understood in the way that some philosophers have understood our emotional reactions to fiction (Walton 1978)—as “make-believe.” Further, the emotional responses we have toward corporations exhibit behavioral responses indicative of “real” emotion in a way that our responses to fiction do not. What exactly is going on in these cases deserves a more careful discussion, one I cannot hope to provide here. But the fact that corporations are often the target of our reactive attitudes suggests, at the very least, that our interactions with them are more complex than those we have with mere objects. I don’t resent my laptop computer when it fails to start properly. I do resent corporate America for attempting to turn my children into consumers. The fittingness of such attitudes suggests that they have the capacity for moral address—to consider and respond to moral criticism.

But such a capacity is, according to Haney, tied to the ability of an agent to have self-reactive attitudes. The real issue for French (and for me), therefore, is whether corporations can be subject to reactive attitudes—both self-reactive and other regarding. Can a collective have an emotion? If emotions were mere judgments, as the cognitive theory of emotion has it, corporations could be subject to emotion. But as I said above I find this line of response inadequate. So here is my attempt to meet the objection head on. Corporations do have emotions. They are realized by corporate employees. Corporate employees are conduits for corporate emotion. Collective emotions can be understood as those emotions that are expressed through the members qua group members. When corporate employees express, for instance, regret over the actions of the corporation, they are expressing not their personal emotions (though they may personally feel something as well) but the regret of the corporation.

This approach has some merit because there is a legitimate sense in which we can feel emotions for others. Watching my husband slip and land in a ridiculous position gives rise to feelings of embarrassment. I might even feel the burning sensation one often feels when embarrassed. But I am embarrassed for him. It is not a case of my being embarrassed because my husband’s lack of grace reflects poorly on me. I don’t care whether his appearance reflects badly on me. I am genuinely embarrassed for him. If we can, in some sense, have emotions for others, why not emotions for a corporation? Collective emotion, then, is a form of vicarious emotion.

Collective reactive attitudes are differentiated on this approach from individual reactive attitudes in terms of the norms governing the relevant reactions. Certain emotional responses are fitting for an individual only because of her status as an employee of the corporation. Other emotional responses will be inappropriate because they are fitting only for her status as a “personal” citizen. Public apologies may be one expression of collective guilt. Collective reactive attitudes would also be differentiated in terms of their motivational upshot. The “pangs” of remorse you feel qua employee may lead you to do actions that you would not do qua individual. Employees who feel guilt over the action of their corporation will be motivated to rethink the corporate decision-making structure or the corporate mechanisms that led to such an action.

Although this approach does not have the corporation itself feeling the emotion, it does identify a way in which emotions can be corporate; they are individuated from individual emotions in terms of the employee’s role in the corporation, they are judged fitting by appeal to the norms of corporate behavior, and they lead to changes in corporate policy and action and not necessarily changes in employees’ “personal” lives. It also makes sense of the very real phenomenon of feeling guilt or regret for the actions of one’s group, a feeling we experience even though we may not have causally contributed to the action which caused harm.

How will collective emotion (or specifically corporate emotion) allow us to address Haney’s criticism and the problem of how corporations can enter into relations of trust? Here is Haney’s description of the informal loss of innocence:

In losing innocence a basic care we have for avoiding the doing of evil—which we once innocently believed to be an easy task—becomes amplified as we become acquainted with the myriad of ways in which we can unintentionally harm or wrong others. Our care is amplified because once we become acquainted with our full capacity to do evil we are motivated to reorganize how we conceive of ourselves as responsible persons, as well as how we act in relation to others in our world. Although French does not argue the following, it may be said that the amplification of our cares is evidenced by whether or not we begin to have, what P.F. Strawson calls, “self-reactive attitudes.” (2004, 397)

If a corporation has mechanisms for evaluating its own policies and procedures, for morally assessing its actions, employees can come to realize that they are participating in a joint action which produced evil. Employees come to care in a new way for what they can do together. Individual employees then come to care about the unplanned actions of the corporation of which they are a part. I think the phenomenon of feeling shame and guilt in response to the actions of one’s group is evidence that people qua employees have come to care about the corporation’s actions in a new way. To the extent that employees recognize their collective capacity to do evil, the corporation can be said to have lost its innocence in an informal way.

Does collective emotion help us to understand the ways in which corporations can trust and be trusted? Does it, in particular, provide the affective element needed for relations of trust? Relations of trust with corporations will be built via their employees who can exhibit both good will towards another human being and risk being betrayed by others. Although I do not think my bank, itself, will feel betrayed if I default on my loan, an employee who has continually facilitated payments by appealing to corporate mechanisms for forgiving debt and with whom I have interacted on several occasions may feel betrayal or moral indignation on behalf of the company. Though admittedly the employee’s emotions may be mixed, including both feelings of personal betrayal and collective betrayal. Relations of trust between corporations and humans highlight the fact that trust is a three place relation: X trusts Y in context (or with respect to) C. The corporate context is unique and the conditions under which we trust an employee differ from the conditions under which we might trust that same person outside of the corporate setting.

Admittedly things become difficult here. Perhaps I have, as De George suggests, stretched our ordinary sense of emotion beyond recognition. A lot rests on what our ordinary sense of emotion involves. The fact that corporations are the target of reactive attitudes and the fact that sometimes employees exhibit emotions in response to actions that are directed at the corporation of which they are a member suggests that our emotional lives are a lot more complicated than De George’s comment suggests.

But critics will likely point to the fact that the corporation, itself, does not “feel” as the sticking point. To this, I have no reply. Perhaps French does. The fact that corporate affect is vicarious and “felt” by individuals suggests, perhaps, that although there is corporate agency (a form of agency engaged in by employees) there is no corporate actor. I’d like to resist this conclusion precisely because I have always found French’s arguments very convincing.

Regardless of one’s view of corporate moral agency, French’s work must be acknowledged as foundational. His work reveals the myriad ways our lives have been altered by our interactions with corporate “invaders” (1995) and he has forced philosophers and legal scholars to think more deeply about the nature of intentional agency, moral responsibility, and personhood. I hope my comments here will force French and others to think more deeply about our emotional lives and the ways in which they may be collective.

References

Baier, A. 1986. “Trust and Antitrust.” Ethics 96: 231-60.

Danley, J. 1980. “Corporate Moral Agency: The Case for Anthropological Bigotry.” In Action and Responsibility: Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy, edited by Michael Bradie and Miles Brand. Vol. 2, 172-79. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University.

De George, R. 1986. “Corporations and Morality.” In Shame, Responsibility, and the Corporation, edited by Hugh Curtler. 59-75. Haven Publications.

French, P. 1979. “The Corporation as a Moral Person.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16: 207-15.

French, P. 1992. “Losing Innocence for the Sake of Responsibility.” In Responsibility Matters. 29-43. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.

French, P. 1995. Corporate Ethics. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

French, P. 1996. “Intergrity, Intentions, and Corporations.” American Business Law Journal 34.

French, P. 2003. “Inference Gaps in Moral Assessment and the Moral Agency of Health Care Organizations.” In Institutional Integrity in Health Care, edited by Ana Smith. Kluwer.

Govier, T. 1997. Social Trust and Human Communities. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Haney, M. 2004. “Corporate Loss of Innocence for the Sake of Accountability.” The Journal of Social Philosophy 35: 391-412.

Hardin, R. 1996. “Trustworthiness.” Ethics 107: 26-42.

Hardin, R. 2002. Trust and Trustworthiness. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Held, V. 1986. “Corporations, Persons, and Responsibility.” In Shame, Responsibility, and the Corporation, edited by Hugh Curtler. 161-81. Haven Publications.

Holton, R. 1994. “Deciding to Trust, Coming to Believe.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72: 63-76.

Huebner, B. 2008. “A Defense of Collective Emotion.” Unpublished.

Jones, K. 1996. “Trust as an Affective Attitude.” Ethics 107: 4-25.

McLeod, C. 2002. Self-Trust and Reproductive Autonomy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Miller, S. 2005. “A Kantian Ethic of Care?” In Feminist Interventions in Ethics and Politics, edited by Barbara S. Andrew, Jean Keller, and Lisa H. Schwartsman. 111-27. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Strawson, P.F. 1974. “Freedom and Resentment.” In Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays. 1-25. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.

Tollefsen, D. 2003. “Participant Reactive Attitudes and Collective Responsibility.” Philosophical Explorations 6: 218-34.

Tollefsen, D. 2006. “The Rationality of Collective Guilt.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 30: 222-39.

Walton, K. 1978. “Fearing Fictions.” The Journal of Philosophy 75: 5-27.

Endnotes

1. By moral agency I mean the capacity to engage in intentional action for which one can be held morally responsible.

2. In the last section of the paper I suggest that it is not such a stretch of our normal use of language to call the emotions expressed by corporate employees qua employees, corporate emotions. See also Donaldson (1986) for the view that because corporations are “heartless” and lack the ability to sympathize with others, they are not persons.

3. This applies equally well to the self. We know that we often fail to do what we ought to do. Holding ourselves to ethical standards is risky business. We must trust ourselves and when we fail to meet the expectations that we set for ourselves we must learn to trust ourselves again.

4. One might worry that because corporations, according to French, are not subject to a weakness of will risk is eliminated and so trusting a corporation would be unnecessary (perhaps impossible). If a corporation were set up in a way that it produced good outcomes and continued to functioned properly, it would not be swayed off course by a weakness of will and so there would be no need for trust.

5. For a reliance view see Hardin 1996.

6. See Baier 1986 for the will based account on which much of the current literature is based.

7. I should note here that the argument from affectivity might also be developed in terms of the notion of shame and its role in French’s work on corporate responsibility. De George (1986) offers this version. He writes:

The extent that shame enters into the picture at all is the extent to which those who work for the corporation or are share holders might feel shame. If they do not feel shame, then the corporation does not feel shame. The corporation has no feelings of its own because it is not a living entity with feelings. (1986, 73)

8. There is, for instance, a theory of trust which says that when I trust someone I presume he is committed to certain moral norms and that he has moral integrity (McLeod 2002, Holton 1994). Perhaps French’s theory of corporate moral integrity (1996) can be used to understand the ways in which we can enter into relations of trust with corporations. This would allow French to reply to the trust worry by denying that trust (at least as it involves corporations) involves an affective element. Because the affective trust view has been developed specifically with interpersonal relations in mind, it wouldn’t be such a bad move to say that there must be some other notions of trust available for relations involving corporations and other social groups. Both Govier (1997) and Hardin (2002) discuss “institutional trust.” There is certainly room for French to argue that “institutional trust” does not involve an affective element, though it would still, it seems, need to be more than mere reliance. Assuming a non-affective theory of institutional trust works and my response to Haney works, there may be room for optimism. I did not have the space here to discuss the trust issue fully. I am currently working on a paper that explores several theories of trust and the ways in which they can and cannot be extended to groups such as corporations.

9. See Huebner (2008, unpublished) for a defense of collective emotion on the grounds that emotions need not be conscious and so collectives could have emotions even though they lack consciousness.

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