Jessica Brown, Arché Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, has been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship worth £118,764 to investigate the moral responsibility of groups such as companies and governments.
Her starting point will be that society standardly treats such entities as morally responsible, blaming and praising them for their actions, even though they don’t seem to be moral agents in the way that individual people are.
She will ask whether we should change our concept of agency to accommodate groups, or alternatively attempt to provide an explanation of moral responsibility without agency.
This award is for a 24-month period starting September 2021.