[vhawk01]

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You are showing one thing, that components don't act, and using that to conclude the other thing, that collectives don't. Thats just bait and switch, the two suppositions are entirely unrelated. The fact that lungs aren't moral agents says absolutely nothing about whether groups act.

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I already argued that collectives can't act, and frankly this seems self-evident. I wasn't the one that brought up components (my points were a repsonse to the idea that a human being itself was a collective of acting components, which is false), and my argument against collectives acting is, as you pointed out, totally unrelated.

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Well, the point is, human beings ARE a collective, and they act. They just aren't a collective of parts that act, they are a collective of parts that don't. The ability to act appears to be some sort of emergent property. So, now you add together a bunch of parts that CAN act, and it lends intuitive creedence to the argument that groups of people can in fact act. That some emergent sort of consciousness exists.

It by no means proves or demonstrates this. It just lends intuitive support. The fact that my lungs aren't actors is BAD for your argument, not good for it.