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Gormo • yesterday at 5:46 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

There seems to be a very serious ontological muddle-up at the core of your argument.

On the one hand, you're referring to "companies" in a way that rejects them as concrete entities that possess moral agency: excluding them from "everyone", calling them "amoral" etc.

On the other hand, you're referring to them in a way that attributes purposeful, intentional action to them, in a way that requires them to be concrete entities possessing moral agency: you're describing them as entities that do things in pursuit of desired goals, respond to incentives, etc.

These are contradictory concepts, yet you seem to be using the first as the rationale to formulate opinions about the second! How do you reconcile this?


Replies

ryandrake • yesterday at 5:58 PM

A thing can have limited agency and the ability to act, but still not consider morality as an input guiding those actions. An autonomous robot, or a wind-up toy, for examples.

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