Artificial persons and attributed actions: How to interpret action-sentences about states ...

• Main Author: Fleming, Sean
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository 2017
• Subjects: agent–structure problem; corporate agency; Hobbes; metaphor; ontology; state personhood; Canada; Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.6755; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/261559

Action-sentences about states, such as ‘North Korea conducted a nuclear test’, are ubiquitous in discourse about international relations. Although there has been a great deal of debate in International Relations about whether states are agents or actors, the question of how to interpret action-sentences about states has been treated as secondary or epiphenomenal. This article focuses on our practices of speaking and writing about the state rather than the ontology of the state. It uses Hobbes’ theory of attributed action to develop a typology of action-sentences and to analyse action-sentences about states. These sentences are not shorthand for action-sentences about individuals, as proponents of the metaphorical interpretation suggest. Nor do they describe the actions of singular agents, as proponents of the literal interpretation suggest. The central argument is that action-sentences about states are ‘attributive’, much like sentences about principals who act vicariously through agents: they identify the ... : This research was funded by a Doctoral Fellowship (752-2015-0050) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; a Rothermere Fellowship from the Rothermere Foundation; and a J.W. Pickersgill Fellowship from the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. ...