Acting Without Me: Corporate Agency and the First Person Perspective

Abstract

This chapter provides a new argument that de se attitudes play no essential role in understanding actions. It turns on the nature of corporate agency. It gives some representative examples of corporations and their actions, with the goals of (a) making plausible that corporate entities can undertake genuine action and (b) showing some ways in which those actions can float free of the intentions and actions of individuals composing and associated with the corporate entities. The chapter discusses that several lines of thought that people have taken to show that action is impossible without de se thoughts are not only uncompelling in the corporate case, but turn out to have their grip in the individual case weakened by virtue of seeing why they fail in the corporate case.