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Is a corporation a slave? Many philosophers think so

24 points by hhs 1y ago

LudwigNagasena 1y ago
That looks like a weird exercise in anti-capitalist rhetoric. More of a performance rather than serious inquiry.
- xg15 1y ago
  Seemed more like hypercapitalist rhetoric to me. After all, if corporations are literal persons, then you could argue for the worst corpocracy as a "human rights" obligation, without even having to talk about wealth or economics as the usual justification.
  - LudwigNagasena 1y ago
    If the author argued that it would be hypercapitalist rhetoric, but the author argued for worker cooperatives.
Nihilartikel 1y ago
In circles of occult technology, a corporation would simply be understood as an "Egregore". Which is itself might be considered a slave of its constituents, but no more than they are a slave of the collective will. Am I a slave to my cells? Are my cells a slave of 'me' (whatever 'me' is)?
- random3 1y ago
  A slave of its constituents seems an incorrect angle. Like you’d be a slave of your organs. Granted, you can bend definitions (which is the case here, regardless) but the slave of constituents is wrong from a causal model perspective.
andy99 1y ago
Lots of irrelevant mental gymnastics on the ethics of it. In terms of the idea of emergent behavior, I think this is well understood that companies have this kind of personality. Emergent behavior is also the cornerstone of the invisible hand. This also extends to things like social networks. For example I think that Twitter the entity convinced Elon Musk to purchase it (so it could evolve as an entity outside of previous constraints it had, see also Wintermute), and doing so was an emergent action.
xg15 1y ago
I didn't know there were people who took Citizens United literally, but here we are...
nis0s 1y ago
I think a corporation is as much a person as Voltron is a person. A person’s constitute components don’t have higher-levels of consciousness, but a person does. Whereas for a corporation, the situation is reversed—the constituent components have higher-level consciousness, but the corporation does not by itself. I agree with the premise that a corporation then is some kind of slave, or thrall, at the command a committee of wizards. So, a zombie in some sense. Another similarity to note is that the will and nature of a corporation changes depending on its most influential constituent components, which is similar in nature to how a human person might change due to a disease or different mental state.
- treetalker 1y ago
  By extension, mobs, religions, and most groups of people would be slaves, no?
  - nis0s 1y ago
    If we stick with the lens of mythology, where a collective will is embodied by something which controls it, then yes. We can say some things are more like golems, while others are more like thralls. I think religions are more like golems because a collective will is distilled into a “singular” scripture, and many times the logos is esoteric in nature, but its “magic” gets the job done, that is to say, you don’t need to understand your religion to be religious. Should we broadly categorize embodiments of collective will as such? Not necessarily—I think democratic institutions are less prone to be slavish, but more like a person with schizophrenia managing themselves. I think the closer an entity gets to a human person-level of embodiment, the more likely it is to be pro-social.
vannevar 1y ago
Declaring corporations "legal persons" does not make them actual persons. Congress has the power to declare automobiles or refrigerators as legal persons if they choose. This would not magically grant those items any form of consciousness or free will. And a slave without free will or consciousness is not a slave. Some people (apparently including "many philosophers") confuse the constituent parts with the whole. They reason that since a corporation is created by people, and made up (partly) of people, they must share sentience with people. But people participate in many social structures, including dinner parties, marching bands, and mobs, which are not collectively sentient and clearly not "persons" in any meaningful sense. At best, human organizations operate cognitively at the level of insects, and perhaps not even that high up the evolutionary tree.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  How would you test if a dinner party was sentient? What evidence would change your mind?
  - vannevar 1y ago
    I think the fact that it's difficult to even conceive of how to interact with a dinner party as an entity illustrates the point. It would actually be easier to assess the sentience of an insect. Rather than a person, it makes more sense to think of human organizations as organic colonies, like jellyfish. They have various degrees of structure, and collective behavior that can be observed. They are clearly independent entities in some sense. But there's no evidence of sentience or consciousness on the entity level. Sure, you can get intelligent answers from the CEO, and I think this is what trips people up. The CEO is not the company, merely a component of the company. Same goes for any individual dinner guest. Perhaps there is some kind of experiment that could be rigged where coded information could be supplied to the dinner party in a manner ensuring that the participants were not aware of it, then the response read out by decoding the resulting activity. And if that yielded some kind of intelligent response indicating self-awareness and self-direction, I could be persuaded. But I would also be persuaded that the moon is made of green cheese if multiple lunar sampling missions came back with green cheese. i don't anticipate either experiment succeeding.
timoth3y 1y ago
> I have come to the belief that corporations are persons not only in law, but are persons also in reality. Their legal personalities are only the recognition of real, underlying, group personalities. The author's (along with "many philosophers'") entire line of argument is argument from analogy. She lists many aspects of corporations that are similar to aspects possessed by humans and then conclude they are the same thing. The same argument could be made with humans and ducks and it would be just as valid. The author's view that corporations are actually people is becoming more common not because it is rational, but because it is profitable for corporations to be able to claim various kinds of personal rights.

24 points by hhs 1y ago

LudwigNagasena 1y ago

That looks like a weird exercise in anti-capitalist rhetoric. More of a performance rather than serious inquiry.

xg15 1y ago
Seemed more like hypercapitalist rhetoric to me. After all, if corporations are literal persons, then you could argue for the worst corpocracy as a "human rights" obligation, without even having to talk about wealth or economics as the usual justification.
- LudwigNagasena 1y ago
  If the author argued that it would be hypercapitalist rhetoric, but the author argued for worker cooperatives.

Nihilartikel 1y ago

In circles of occult technology, a corporation would simply be understood as an "Egregore". Which is itself might be considered a slave of its constituents, but no more than they are a slave of the collective will. Am I a slave to my cells? Are my cells a slave of 'me' (whatever 'me' is)?

random3 1y ago
A slave of its constituents seems an incorrect angle. Like you’d be a slave of your organs. Granted, you can bend definitions (which is the case here, regardless) but the slave of constituents is wrong from a causal model perspective.

andy99 1y ago

Lots of irrelevant mental gymnastics on the ethics of it. In terms of the idea of emergent behavior, I think this is well understood that companies have this kind of personality. Emergent behavior is also the cornerstone of the invisible hand. This also extends to things like social networks. For example I think that Twitter the entity convinced Elon Musk to purchase it (so it could evolve as an entity outside of previous constraints it had, see also Wintermute), and doing so was an emergent action.

xg15 1y ago

I didn't know there were people who took Citizens United literally, but here we are...

nis0s 1y ago

I think a corporation is as much a person as Voltron is a person. A person’s constitute components don’t have higher-levels of consciousness, but a person does. Whereas for a corporation, the situation is reversed—the constituent components have higher-level consciousness, but the corporation does not by itself. I agree with the premise that a corporation then is some kind of slave, or thrall, at the command a committee of wizards. So, a zombie in some sense. Another similarity to note is that the will and nature of a corporation changes depending on its most influential constituent components, which is similar in nature to how a human person might change due to a disease or different mental state.

treetalker 1y ago
By extension, mobs, religions, and most groups of people would be slaves, no?
- nis0s 1y ago
  If we stick with the lens of mythology, where a collective will is embodied by something which controls it, then yes. We can say some things are more like golems, while others are more like thralls. I think religions are more like golems because a collective will is distilled into a “singular” scripture, and many times the logos is esoteric in nature, but its “magic” gets the job done, that is to say, you don’t need to understand your religion to be religious. Should we broadly categorize embodiments of collective will as such? Not necessarily—I think democratic institutions are less prone to be slavish, but more like a person with schizophrenia managing themselves. I think the closer an entity gets to a human person-level of embodiment, the more likely it is to be pro-social.

vannevar 1y ago

Declaring corporations "legal persons" does not make them actual persons. Congress has the power to declare automobiles or refrigerators as legal persons if they choose. This would not magically grant those items any form of consciousness or free will. And a slave without free will or consciousness is not a slave. Some people (apparently including "many philosophers") confuse the constituent parts with the whole. They reason that since a corporation is created by people, and made up (partly) of people, they must share sentience with people. But people participate in many social structures, including dinner parties, marching bands, and mobs, which are not collectively sentient and clearly not "persons" in any meaningful sense. At best, human organizations operate cognitively at the level of insects, and perhaps not even that high up the evolutionary tree.

kelseyfrog 1y ago
How would you test if a dinner party was sentient? What evidence would change your mind?
- vannevar 1y ago
  I think the fact that it's difficult to even conceive of how to interact with a dinner party as an entity illustrates the point. It would actually be easier to assess the sentience of an insect. Rather than a person, it makes more sense to think of human organizations as organic colonies, like jellyfish. They have various degrees of structure, and collective behavior that can be observed. They are clearly independent entities in some sense. But there's no evidence of sentience or consciousness on the entity level. Sure, you can get intelligent answers from the CEO, and I think this is what trips people up. The CEO is not the company, merely a component of the company. Same goes for any individual dinner guest. Perhaps there is some kind of experiment that could be rigged where coded information could be supplied to the dinner party in a manner ensuring that the participants were not aware of it, then the response read out by decoding the resulting activity. And if that yielded some kind of intelligent response indicating self-awareness and self-direction, I could be persuaded. But I would also be persuaded that the moon is made of green cheese if multiple lunar sampling missions came back with green cheese. i don't anticipate either experiment succeeding.

timoth3y 1y ago

> I have come to the belief that corporations are persons not only in law, but are persons also in reality. Their legal personalities are only the recognition of real, underlying, group personalities. The author's (along with "many philosophers'") entire line of argument is argument from analogy. She lists many aspects of corporations that are similar to aspects possessed by humans and then conclude they are the same thing. The same argument could be made with humans and ducks and it would be just as valid. The author's view that corporations are actually people is becoming more common not because it is rational, but because it is profitable for corporations to be able to claim various kinds of personal rights.