Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Individuals have moral agency. Corporate bodies such as governments do not. It is a category mistake to attribute agency to them. Governments are neither moral nor immoral. They are amoral.

Defense satellites are no more staplers than monads are Scottish ballads. Defense satellites do not organize documents. They are tools to facilitate the use of violence. The UAE military establishment is following the same rationales as the US's - a bigger stick better insures achieving diplomatic objectives.

View on HN

Groups are made up of individuals. Those individuals are responsible for their actions, and hiding behind a group is in my opinion an immoral act. A group made up of individuals acting immorally in that way, is itself immoral. QED, or something.

You state your opinion as facts, but forget to give an argument. The least you could do is provide a reference.

Prima facie, I don't find your view plausible at all.

How can an entity which consists of between dozens to hundreds of thousands of people, each of whom has limited agency over the aggregate actions of that entity, and can be replaced at any time while fulfilling the same function (on paper) be remotely capable of demonstrating human-like moral agency?

States have not-human-like moral codes: agree Amoral states: don't agree

I believe each group of people have their own social and moral codes that guide their behavior. I don't believe its something easy to understand, determine or represent.

That's a question, not an argument.

Here's another question: "How can a human being, which consists of many neurons, each of which has limited agency over the aggregate actions of that entity, be remotely capable of demonstrating moral agency?"

Incidentally, I noticed that you substituted 'human-like moral agency' for 'moral agency' in the OP. I never said states have human-like moral agency (nor am I making a claim to the contrary per se).

No it's a rhetorical question, turn it into one with an answer and you'd have rebutted the argument.

You might also note that the answer to your question is that they don't. It is a problem applicable at scale - and we do terrible things to single neurons all the time in the name of science.

My question wasn't whether neurons have agency. It was whether people have agency.

Also, I intended 'limited agency' to be read as 'zero or very little agency'.

Corporate bodies still have moral or immoral agenda, so it's unrealistic to define them as amoral.

There are some governments whose primary agenda is, say, to develop green energy, and some other whose primary agenda is, say, to bomb other countries to the ground.

But do they do those things because they are moral or immoral? I think you are attributing morality to actions that are made apart from morals.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com