The Question of Moral Agency

The question of moral agency is that of how agents can be understood to be implicitly or explicitly, informed by considerations of right and wrong in making choices and taking actions. This question has two aspects. The first is how moral agency works. While the second is if moral considerations are wider than just the community of moral agents. In this Chapter I examine Collier’s account of moral Agency that is found in Being and Worth (1998). Collier’s theory has three separate aspects: intrinsic value(worth); the variation of intrinsic value; and the recognition of intrinsic value and its variation by human agents. Through a consideration of these aspects within the overall ontology of transcendental realism - with specific emphasis on the application of the concept of emergence (Archer,1995) - the conclusion that Collier’s theory provides a strong explanatory account of moral agency, but that its acceptance is problematic due to difficulties with aligning his conception of intrinsic value with the ontology of transcendental realism, is drawn.