Closed Research Projects

Reasons, Responsibility and the Ethics of Climate Change

By Franz Altner

The research project investigates the question whether groups, such as corporations and states, can be thought of as agents that act autonomously and can participate in moral discourse or whether we should think of them more like tools that we set up to serve certain purposes. Should we conceive of corporations, whose institutional aim is taken to be profit maximization, as moral persons that can be held accountable for their actions, and what does this mean for our fight against climate change? In answering these questions, the project develops a functionalist, narrative account about agency and draws from recent work in social choice theory.

Related to these inquiries is the more general question of the nature of our reasons. Do our reasons depend on our social circumstances and roles? If they do, then how can we reach agreement with regard to tackling global, collective action problems, like man made climate change, given the underlying plurality of values and moral standpoints?
To answer this latter set of questions, the project applies Habermas’ discourse theory and recent concepts from social ontology.