Institutions

Can an institution be moral?

I think this is an important question for several reasons. First, institutional morality requires an assignment of responsibility. Secondly, If institutions cannot be moral then they by default need to tone down efforts to promote morality.

Let me be clear there is a difference between the people who work at an institution and the institution itself. I think that that distinction is the first necessary point. Simply because individuals make up an organization and try to move it in a moral direction does not mean that the organization is moral. The ability to be moral requires free will. For anything to be moral it must first be a decision derived from free will. Once a choice has been made there are many methods of determining the direct morality of it, and undoubtedly I will at some point write about my understanding of moral decision. For now the important part of the equation is that morality derives from free will.

So, does free will exist, and can an organization possess it? I have, at various points, discussed the proposition that free will does not exist. Benedict Spinoza  attempted to wrest free will from the lives of men in Ethics. He contended that creation existed in a state of perfection, and that the perception of a disorderly world plagued by misfortune, pain, good and evil exited only insofar as humans cannot grasp the infinitely complex chain of cause and effect governing creation. The universe took place as an on going series of stimuli and response. If this proposition is to be believed then free will is by definition impossible. The difficulty I find with this argument is that if it is true I have no control over the world in any fashion including my own thoughts, opinions, attitudes, or actions. I cease to be anything more than a part of an imperceptible whole. If it is false then I am a moral agent capable of determining the nature of the world around me and interacting with it independently of cause and effect. Just because a stimuli has occurred I am not bound to any one given set of responses. Creativity can exist.  With creativity new solutions to chronic problems can be found. This happens regularly. So this paragraph is in the way of saying you cannot take my free will away dammit!

So to the crux of the matter can an institution possess free will, and thus be moral?

It cannot. Free will requires the ability to make an independent choice that is impossible for an institution. Starbucks cannot choose to pay its employees higher than minimum wage. The CEO of Starbucks can make that choice. Starbucks is an inanimate human construction. Likewise the organized church, government, corporations of all kinds an non-profit philanthropic organizations are by there nature amoral. They cannot possess morality. This also means they cannot be immoral. An organization can do no more then to express the will of its constituent parts in as close to a coherent whole as possible. Morality is, always has been, and always will be an individual choice.