II. COLLECTIVE ACTIONS AND SECONDARY ACTIONS

Abstract

I CONTEND that collectives can and do per? form actions. Nation-states wage wars, corpo? rations change their price schedules, and charitable organizations solicit funds. Even relatively unorga? nized and impermanent collectives perform actions. The Paris mob stormed Bastille, for example. The large body of recent work in action theory contains little on subject of collective action, despite recent interest in issues connected with attribution of moral responsibility and obli? gations to collectives. In what follows I attempt to provide an account of collective action, to relate this account to theories of actions of persons, and to make suggestions for further study of issues in moral philosophy. It is plain that collectives do not act independently of actions of persons.1 Under certain circum? stances, action of a person, or actions of a number of persons, are the basis for an action to a collective. For example, certain actions of a head of state may be basis for attributing to his country action of declaring war. In this paper, I consider following question : What is relation between action of a person, or actions of a number of persons, and action of a collective when former is basis for attributing latter action to collective? Below, I define a relation which I call the con? stitution relation, and I claim that this relation holds between action of collective and action of person in these cases. The action of collective is constituted by action of person or actions of persons in question.2 I will also suggest that one can give a systematic account of relations between many sorts of actions in terms of constitution relation. If I am right, this relation is of general interest in theory of action. I. Secondary Actions

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