The phrase "a collective agent" is correct and can be used in written English.
It refers to a group of individuals or entities working together to achieve a common goal or purpose. Example: The government is considered a collective agent responsible for creating and enforcing laws for the betterment of society.
If one believes that a collective agent is also collectively autonomous, one apparently subscribes to at least two normatively relevant beliefs ([ 26]: 292–295): first, this autonomous collective agent is not only able to hold attitudes that are partly independent of the attitudes of its members, but it is also justified in overriding dissenting opinions of its members.
The first and second condition can certainly be met, and one can believe that the organizers of the PIA collectively recognize the public they involved as a collective agent.
People, for example, a small sociological research group, would just need to organize a PIA and collectively recognize the participants as a group forming a collective agent in order to satisfy one of three conditions for the creation of such a collective agent.
But as Nietzsche understood, the idea of "humanity" as a collective agent with universal goals that it pursues in the course of history is a secular residue of a religious faith in providence.
This process-based wrong is at the level of a specific agent, albeit a collective agent.
When the pod creatures act together, and pull off the deception, they make themselves into a collective agent.
There are two reasons why we believe that the collective recognition by the organizers alone is likely to be insufficient to create a genuine collective agent during a PIA.
We discuss the general concept and architecture of a Hierarchical Collective Agent Network (HCAN) and its functional components for learning and adaptive control of the NDS.
However, assuming that the organizers were successful in meeting the third condition, one can regard their PIA as featuring a genuine collective agent.
A discursively representative collective agent might not stand in a noteworthy relation to a larger population itself, but at least to the discourses within a larger population.
A qualitatively representative collective agent would be remarkable because it would demonstrate that it is possible to unite people with very diverse backgrounds in one collective entity.
