How to Tell if a Group Is an Agent

I take a human group to be a collection of individual human beings whose identity as a group over time, or over counterfactual possibilities, need not require sameness of membership. The typical group can remain the same group even as its membership changes, with some members leaving or dying, others joining or being born into the group. As we envisage the possibility of changes in the membership of such a group, even ones that are never going to materialize, we think of them as changes in one and the same, continuing entity.1 This conception of a group distinguishes it from a set or collection, where a change of members necessarily entails a change of set. But it still encompasses a generous range of social bodies, since it says nothing about the basis on which we individuate a group over time or possibility. It allows us to take almost any property, whether of origin or ethnicity, belief or commitment, career or hobby, even height or weight, to fix the identity of a group. The Irish, the Catholics, the lawyers, the stamp collectors and the obese can constitute groups. Thus while groups may vary in how important their individuating property is, and in how far it is socially significant for members or non-members, the information that a collection constitutes a group is no big news. Among groups in this common, downbeat sense, however, some stand out from the crowd. These are groups that perform as agents, incorporating in a way that enables them to mimic the performance of individual human beings. They make judgments, form commitments, plan initiatives and, relying