Re: Corporations as persons

Well, we can certainly use intentional vocabulary to describe corporations but I'm not sure if this proves anything. I use intentional words to talk about genes all the time (e.g. your genes want to increase their chances of appearing in the next generation), but all this is metaphor and is understood to be so. 'Person' is a tricky word, and we should probably give a stipulative definition if we want it to do any philosophical work, since whatever results we get from analysis of how the word is used in natural language will probably come up with a whole tangled web of diverse concepts. We are of course free to define 'person' however we want (although it will probably be useful if it approaches how we ordinarily use it). If you want to mean 'person' to be described of anything that can have intentional vocab applied to it, but we just need to be aware what 'a corporation is a person' means. Given the meaning of 'person' here, it would obviously wrong to conclude that a corporation was conscious or had any moral rights or duties: these things not seeming to follow from being able to be spoken about intentionally (where such intentional talk can be (and often is only supposed to be) metaphorical).

On 09/02/06, N Tasker <pia03nt@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote:

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A corporation can sue and be sued, own property and borrow money, and can be
held legally responsible. These are privileges normally withheld for people,
but a corporation is a very unusual entity. Under the law, a corporation is a
person. In the documentary 'The Corporation', Joel Bakan takes this as a cue to
begin psychoanalysis, coming to the conclusion that a corporation is a
psychopath.

Talking about corporations in the vocabulary of personhood can be an instructive
metaphor: if a corporation can be a psychopath then it ought to be possible to
model corporations after some other personality, the 'corporate benefactor', or
'saint'. Whether or not you think it is realistic to talk of actually
re-modelling corporations, it seems clear that this metaphor will at least
enable us to discuss corporations in an informative way. The word 'corporation'
has gathered too many negative connotations to facilitate an unbiased
discussion.

Perhaps it is possible to strengthen the metaphor. Are there other ways in which
a corporation resembles a person? One influential conception of what it is to
be a person holds it to be an entity which is capable of being described in
mental as well as bodily terms. We could say that the body of a corporation is
made up of offices, factories and employees. The mind of a corporation is
perhaps its communications infrastructure, made up of computers, phone lines
and fax machines.

Another important feature of a person is their will or agency. A corporation is
structured in such a way that it is legally bound to "place the financial
interests of their owners above competing interests…even the public good." (The
Corporation) This means that no matter how opposed the employees – all the
employees – may be to some course of action, that action may nevertheless be
performed in pursuit of profit. Might we say that this is the will of a
corporation?

I do not mean to make any substantive claims about artificial intelligence or
about the structure of the will. However, I do think there is a good case for
including the corporation under the extension of 'person'.

One of the insights derived by Bakan from this procedure is that it is possible
to diagnose the corporation as a psychopath. He starts with a list of symptoms
for human psychopathy (deceitfulness, contempt for the law, callous unconcern
for others, etc), and then goes on to cite events from "a universe of corporate
activity" which show that the corporation satisfies sufficient conditions for
being a psychopath. The problem with this method is that it is the equivalent
of a doctor standing in front of a room full of patients who reasons 'Mr Brown
has a cough, Mrs Jones has a rash…therefore the room full of people has the
plague'. I don't doubt there are some corporations who satisfy a set of
sufficient conditions for psychopathy in their own right. My point is that a
corporation needn't necessarily be a psychopath, and corporations who more
resemble benefactors or saints might have a welcome role in our society.

It would be crazy to suggest that including the corporation under the extension
of 'person' means that human beings get squeezed out. Nevertheless, the rise of
the corporation does seem, in some cases, to limit, distort or remove the
status of human beings as persons. The will of human persons is subverted to
the will to profit; human consciousness is hijacked by advertisements, work,
commercial entertainment etc; behaviour is manipulated by media/marketing etc.
Most worryingly of all, genomic, biotech and life science companies are racing
to patent all the individual genes which make up the blueprint of the human
race. We are heading toward a scenario where a handful of companies will handle
the rights to and exercise control over our genetic heritage and future.

I suggest that if there is any plausibility in the metaphor which compares
corporations to persons, then the correct way to talk about corporate persons
is to say that deep trends prevent corporations from joining human society as
responsible and valued members. The rise of corporations as persons is to some
extent the disintegration of the human person. What is less clear is whether
this tendency is a necessary feature of all corporate persons, or whether it is
a contingent effect of the behaviour of rogue corporations.

Nick Tasker, 09/02/06

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