Corporations have legal personhood because they are acting on behalf of their owners, and the actions taken by a corporation are actually carried out by or on b

Corporations have legal personhood because they are acting on behalf of their owners, and the actions taken by a corporation are actually carried out by or on behalf of the employees. The owners are people and the employees are people, and both groups have rights, and you can't deny those rights just because they are acting through proxies or collectively. It also doesn't just apply to corporations, but also trade unions, charities, etc, etc on the same basis. So really that's about delegation, rather than corporations as entities being in any way like people, or collective consciousness, or anything like that.