Weeding Out Flawed Versions of Shareholder Primacy: A Reflection on the Moral Obligations That Carry Over from Principals to Agents

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (04) ◽  
pp. 519-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago Mejia
Keyword(s):  
Principal Agent ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Shareholder Primacy ◽  
Imperfect Duties ◽  
Shareholder Theory ◽  
Carry Over

ABSTRACT:The distinction between what I call nonelective obligations and discretionary obligations, a distinction that focuses on one particular thread of the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, helps us to identify the obligations that carry over from principals to agents. Clarity on this issue is necessary to identify the moral obligations within “shareholder primacy” (i.e., “shareholder theory”), which conceives of managers as agents of shareholders. My main claim is that the principal-agent relation requires agents to fulfill nonelective obligations, but it does not always require (and sometimes actually prohibits) discharging discretionary obligations. I show that the requirement to fulfill nonelective obligations is more far-reaching than has been acknowledged by most defenders and critics of shareholder primacy. But I also show that managers are not bound by certain discretionary obligations like charity, showing that their moral obligations are more circumscribed than the obligations that apply to human beings in general.

scholarly journals Do Androids Dream of Electric Shocks?  Utilitarian Machine Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brendan Vize
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Machine Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Electric Shocks ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The One

<p>Consider Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the droid C3PO from Star Wars, or the Replicants that appear in Bladerunner: They can use language (or many languages), they are rational, they form relationships, they use language that suggests that they have a concept of self, and even language that suggests that they have “feelings” or emotional experience. In the films and TV shows that they appear, they are depicted as having frequent social interaction with human beings; but would we have any moral obligations to such a being if they really existed? What would we be permitted to do or not to do to them? On the one hand, a robot like Data has many of the attributes that we currently associate with a person. On the other hand, he has many of the attributes of the machines that we currently use as tools. He (and other science-fiction machines like him) closely resembles one of the things we value the most (a person), and at the same time, one of the things we value the least (an artefact), leading to an apparent ethical paradox. What is its solution?</p>

scholarly journals Do Androids Dream of Electric Shocks?  Utilitarian Machine Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brendan Vize
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Machine Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Electric Shocks ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The One

<p>Consider Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the droid C3PO from Star Wars, or the Replicants that appear in Bladerunner: They can use language (or many languages), they are rational, they form relationships, they use language that suggests that they have a concept of self, and even language that suggests that they have “feelings” or emotional experience. In the films and TV shows that they appear, they are depicted as having frequent social interaction with human beings; but would we have any moral obligations to such a being if they really existed? What would we be permitted to do or not to do to them? On the one hand, a robot like Data has many of the attributes that we currently associate with a person. On the other hand, he has many of the attributes of the machines that we currently use as tools. He (and other science-fiction machines like him) closely resembles one of the things we value the most (a person), and at the same time, one of the things we value the least (an artefact), leading to an apparent ethical paradox. What is its solution?</p>

scholarly journals Can Citizens Affect the Performance of Their Elected Representatives? A Principal–Agent Model of Strategic Interaction in Democratic Systems

Mathematics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 1194
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Lanza ◽  
Dario Maimone Ansaldo Patti ◽  
Pietro Navarra
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of The Firm ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Agent Model ◽  
Principal Agent Model ◽  
Motivation Crowding ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Elected Representatives ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Monitoring Devices

According to standard economic theory, human beings are expected to work more and better when benefits in the form of lower costs or higher reward increase. Principal–agent theory applied to the theory of the firm relies on this relationship and states that employees should be paid according to how well they perform their tasks. In this framework, monitoring devices are introduced to control employees’ performance and determine salaries. In this paper we construct a principal–agent model to describe the relationship between citizens/voters and elected representatives in which monitoring devices are introduced to control the performance of the latter. We demonstrate that tighter controls may produce better performance but also may produce a reduction in the intrinsic motivations of elected representatives, resulting in a reduction of their work effort. These results are interpreted in the light of the motivation crowding theory.

The Case for Animal Rights

Dialogue ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Lehman
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Toxicity Tests ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Tom Regan

In his previous papers written on the topic of animal rights, Tom Regan argued that on the assumption that certain human beings have moral rights then so do certain animals. Here the argument is carried a stage further; Regan argues that some animals have certain moral rights. For the most part the book is taken up with criticizing alternative views concerning our moral obligations to animals and explaining and defending “The Rights View”. In the final chapter, Regan draws out the implications ofthe rights view. These include arguing for an obligation to be a vegetarian, moral condemnation of hunting and trapping of wild animals as well as of most of the uses of animals for scientific purposes. Animals are not to be used for toxicity tests, in education contexts or in scientific research even though this may produce beneficial consequences for humans and other animals. The book is very clearly written and well argued. It covers all important positions and arguments related t o the question of our moral obligations to animals. It is, I believe, the best book to appear on this subject to date.

scholarly journals The educational aspects of ethics

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 167-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota Probucka
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Individual Development ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
The Third ◽  
First Case

Abstract The purpose of my article is to show the importance of normative ethics for the education of young people in three areas: individual, social and natural. In the first case, ethics answers the question how we should treat ourselves. Thus, it teaches responsibility for oneself, for one’s life and individual development. In the second case, ethics answers the question how we should treat other people in order to minimize the risk of harming them. Thus, it teaches responsibility to other members of society. In the third case, normative ethics reminds us of moral obligations towards non-human beings, stressing that suffering has an interspecies character, and doesn’t pertain only to representatives of Homo sapiens.

The First Person in Cognition and Morality

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béatrice Longuenesse
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Abstract Reasoning ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Person Pronoun ◽  
The World ◽  
The University

The book is the revised version of two lectures presented, in the spring 2017, as the Spinoza lectures in the University of Amsterdam. Both lectures explore the contrast and collaboration between two types of standpoint on the world, each of which finds expression in a specific use of the first-person pronoun “I.” One standpoint is the particular standpoint we have on the world insofar as we are spatially and temporally located, biologically unique, socially and culturally determined individuals. The other is the universally communicable standpoint we share or can hope to share with all other human beings, whatever their particular biological, social, or cultural determination. The book explores the degree to which using the first-person pronoun “I” is the expression of one or the other standpoint. The first lecture explores this question in relation to the exercise of our mental capacities in abstract reasoning and knowledge of objective facts about the world. The second lecture explores this question in relation to what we take to be our moral obligations.

Philosophical Theology and Evolutionary Anthropology

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-369
Author(s):  
Martin Breul
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Evolutionary Anthropology ◽  
Human Ability ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Human Ontogeny

Summary Being one of most influential anthropologists of contemporary times, Michael Tomasello and his groundbreaking evolutionary approach to a natural history of human beings are still to be received by theological anthropology. This article aims at evaluating the prospects and limitations of Tomasello’s natural history of human ontogeny from a philosophical and theological perspective. The major advantages of Tomasello’s approach are a new conceptual perspective on the mind-brain problem and a possible detranscendentalization of the human mind which leads to an intersubjectively grounded anthropology. At the same time, evolutionary anthropology struggles with the binding force of moral obligations and the human ability to interpret one’s existence and the world in a religious way. This article thus offers a first theological inventory of Tomasello’s account of evolutionary anthropology which praises its prospects and detects its limitations.

A secular acceleration: Theological foundations of the sociological concept “social acceleration”

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Torres
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Considerable Time ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
Christian View ◽  
Theological Foundations ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Relationship

The term “shortening of time” is related to the Judeo-Christian tradition that announces the end of time as the moment when God, for the sake of the elect, shortens the duration of days and hours, because without this shortening no one would survive (This means that only a God's will could ended Time. The Christian perspective believes that the last days will be chaotic, and God will preclude History, ending time, to save a few men of goodwill.). While in this sense salvation is associated with divine intervention, the thesis of acceleration would reverse the above formula, making human beings responsible for the narrowing of time. But if the shortening of time in the Apocalypse is aimed at the salvation of the World: Where does acceleration, a secular idea of the shortening of time, aim? What is it that justifies the increase in the speed of completing tasks that previously took considerable time, which are today performed in just a few hours? How can we justify the frenzy to obtain what we want in the shortest time possible? In this paper we propose to address this and other questions, in order to show the relationship between a sociological understanding of acceleration with a theological-Christian view of time. In other words, the main claim exposes the transfer of teleology from a religious conception to a historical-worldly conception of time.

Joint Activities and Moral Obligation

2019 ◽  
pp. 177-194
Author(s):  
Holmer Steinfath
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Smooth Transition ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Normative Structure ◽  
Joint Activities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Normativity

This chapter explores the close connection between “dyadic” moral obligations and joint activities that are essential for the social life of human beings. Against Margaret Gilbert’s well-known claim, the chapter argues that joint activities are not inherently laden with obligations and entitlements. However, it shows that there is a smooth transition from joint activities to a form of morality. In this transition, reactive attitudes like resentment play an important role. Full-blown moral normativity presupposes a group of more than two people, but the normative structure of a moral community mirrors the way in which people relate to each other in typical joint activities.

A New Dimension of Etihcs of Global Responsibility

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Zdzisława Piątek
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Global Responsibility ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Moral Condition ◽  
Human Responsibility ◽  
The Impact

The article addresses the issue of ethics of global responsibility approached from a new and cosmocentric point of view. Philosophical considerations enriched by current natural knowledge allow us to look at the world from a cosmic perspective and at human nature from the evolutionary point of view which should be taken into account when defining the scope of our moral obligations. Questions concerning the human moral condition and the scope of human responsibility and the impact of that responsibility on human behavior in relation to the Earth and the Universe gain a distinctive meaning in the fight against various global perils and problems. The paper provides a justification of why contemporary ethics requires reformulation and such a complementing that would broaden the scope of moral responsibility so it would include not only the current and future generations and other species, but also the whole living community of the earth. Responsibility is treated here as a link that is ontic, evolutionarily shaped and characteristic for the homo sapiens species, which connects the human beings with the surrounding world. Such a conceived responsibility is the foundation of the sense of planetary solidarity and provides reasons to include the whole cosmic ecosphere into the scope of moral care.

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