Economic theories of team reasoning build on the assumption that agents can sometimes behave according to beliefs or preferences attributed to a group or a team. In this paper, I propose a different framework to introduce collective intentionality into game theory. I build on John Searle’s account, which makes collective intentionality constitutive of institutional facts. I show that as soon as one accepts that institutions are required to solve indetermination problems in a game, it is (...) necessary to assume a form of collective intentionality that comes from what I call a common understanding of the situation among the players. This common understanding embodies the epistemic requirements for an institution to be a correlated equilibrium in a game. As a consequence, I question recent claims made by some economists according to which game-theoretic accounts of institutions do not need to assume collective intentionality. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 207-234, July 2022. According to Searle’s theory of collective intentionality, the fundamental structure of any society can be accounted for in terms of cooperative mechanisms that create deontic relations. This paper criticizes Searle’s standpoint on the ground that, while his social ontology can make sense of simple systems of interaction like symphony orchestras and football teams, the whole coordinative structure of the modern market society cannot be explained solely (...) in terms of we-intentional collaboration and deontic relations. As clarified by Hayek, because of its complexity, this society is a self-organizing system. It results not only from micro-level agreed constraints, but also from an unintended cybernetic mechanism that affects and shapes both its micro and macro dynamics via a circular causality. Searle ignores the coordination problem posed by complexity and provides strawman arguments against the theory of action underpinning the invisible hand explanation of social phenomena. (shrink)

This essay some first steps toward the naturalization of what I call rational intentionality or alternatively type II intentionality. By rational or type II intentionality, I mean that full combination of rational powers and content-bearing states that is paradigmatically enjoyed by mature intact human beings. The problem I set myself is to determine the extent to which the only currently extant approach to the naturalization of the intentional that has the singular virtue of not being a non-starter (...) can be aggregated up into an account of rational intentionality. I have in mind a broadly defined family of accounts whose main members are the indicator/information-theoretic approach of Dretske (1988), the asymmetric dependence theory of Jerry Fodor (1987, 1990, 1994) and the teleo-semantics of Ruth Millikan (1984, 1993). Somewhat inaccurately, I will call this family of approaches the information-theoretic family. To be sure, there is only a rough family resemblance among the members of the information-theoretic family. Indeed, several intense quarrels divide the members of that family one from another, but the precise outcome of those internecine struggles is not directly relevant to the aims of this essay. ² Taken collectively, the information-theoretic family yields a compelling picture of the place of at least a crude form of intentionality -- what I call frog-like or type I intentionality -- in the natural order. Though frog-like or type I intentionality is, I think, a genuine species of intentionality, it may subsist in the absence of rational powers. It is that species of intentionality enjoyed by irritable creatures who, following Brandom (1994). (shrink)

The kind of collective improvisation attained by free jazz at the beginning of the sixties appears interesting from the perspective of contemporary debates on collective intentionality for several reasons. The most notable of these, is that it holds a mirror up to what analytical philosophers of action identify as “the complexly interwoven sets of collective intentions” that make a group more than the sum of its parts. But at the same time, free jazz poses a challenge (...) to these philosophical theories of collective intentionality, because what happens is not planned in advance but arises from spontaneous interactions in the group. The second and no less decisive reason is that jazz musicians act together in a very distinctive way, which casts into clear relief the interplay between togetherness and agonism, individual freedom and group commitment, which is contained in every human interaction. In other words, in free jazz we find what Hannah Arendt calls the “paradoxical” or “twofold” character of “human plurality.” Starting with the analysis of two paradigmatic case studies—Charles Mingus’s Folk Forms No. 1 and Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation—my main concern in this paper is to provide a phenomenological account of the individual-yet-plural intentionality that emerges and runs through the improvisatory process in the free jazz case. After having made the negative point that this phenomenon represents a challenge to the analytical theories of collective intentionality, I shall argue that it can be accounted for from a phenomenological perspective. My basic thesis is that the overall cohesiveness of the improvisatory process must be regarded as a meaningful realization of an overall feeling, shared and shaped together by musicians over time—and not as the execution of an advanced plan. (shrink)

The theory of collective agency and intentionality is a flourishing field of research, and our understanding of these phenomena has arguably increased greatly in recent years. Extant theories, however, are still ill-equipped to explain certain aspects of collective intentionality. In this article we draw attention to two such underappreciated aspects: the failure of the intentional states of collectives to supervene on the intentional states of their members, and the role of non-human factors in collective (...) agency and intentionality. We propose a theory of collective intentionality which builds on the ‘interpretationist’ tradition in metasemantics and the philosophy of mind as initiated by David Lewis and recently developed further by Robbie Williams. The collective-level analogue of interpretationism turns out to look different in some ways from the individual-level theory, but is well-suited to accommodating phenomena such as hybrid collective intentionality. Complemented with Kit Fine’s theory of variable embodiment, such a theory also provides a diachronic account of intentional collectives. (shrink)

This book develops a novel approach to distributed cognition and collective intentionality. It is argued that collective mentality should be only be posited where specialized subroutines are integrated in a way that yields skillful, goal-directed behavior that is sensitive to concerns that are relevant to a group as such.

Many of the things we do, we do together with other people. Think of carpooling and playing tennis. In the past two or three decades it has become increasingly popular to analyze such collective actions in terms of collective intentions. This volume brings together ten new philosophical essays that address issues such as how individuals succeed in maintaining coordination throughout the performance of a collective action, whether groups can actually believe propositions or whether they merely accept them, (...) and what kind of evidence, if any, disciplines such as cognitive science and semantics provide in support of irreducibly collective states.The theories of the Big Four of collective intentionality -- Michael Bratman, Raimo Tuomela, John Searle, and Margaret Gilbert -- and the Big Five of Social Ontology -- which in addition to the Big Four includes Philip Pettit -- play a central role in almost all of these essays. Drawing on insights from a wide range of disciplines including dynamical systems theory, economics, and psychology, the contributors develop existing theories, criticize them, or provide alternatives to them.Several essays challenge the idea that there is a straightforward dichotomy between individual and collective level rationality, and explore the interplay between these levels in order to shed new light on the alleged discontinuities between them. These contributions make abundantly clear that it is no longer an option simply to juxtapose analyses of individual and collective level phenomena and maintain that there is a discrepancy. Some go as far as arguing that on closer inspection the alleged discontinuities dissolve. (shrink)

Bryce Huebner’s Macrocognition is a book with a double mission. The first and main mission is “to show that there are cases of collective mentality in our world” . Cases of collective mentality are cases where groups, teams, mobs, firms, colonies or some other collectivities possess cognitive capacities or mental states in the same sense that we individually do. To accomplish this mission, Huebner develops an account of macrocognition, where “the term ‘macrocognition’ is intended as shorthand for the (...) claim that system-level cognition is implemented by an integrated network of specialized computational mechanisms” .The second mission of Huebner’s book is to elaborate an account of cognitive architecture that could set the groundwork for identifying under what conditions groups, and individuals indeed, are fruitfully and justifiably said to be minded. To this end, Huebner tackles several foundational issues in cognitive science, including traditional philosophical questions a .. (shrink)

Abstract: Collective Intentionality is essential to the understanding of how we act as a "team". We will offer an overview on the contemporary debate on the sense of acting together. There are some theories which focus on unconscious processes and on the capabilities we share with animals (Tomasello, Walther, Hudin) and others which concentrate on the voluntary, conscious processes of acting together (Searle, Tuomela, Bratman, Gilbert). Collective intentionality represents also a relevant issue for economic (...) class='Hi'>theories. The theories of team reasoning move from the assumption that agents can sometimes behave according to beliefs and preferences attributed to a group or a team. We will point out the role of institutions as created by collective intentionality (Searle) for understanding coordination and cooperation. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify and scrutinize Searle"s somewhat puzzling statement that collective intentionality is a biologically primitive phenomenon. It is argued that the statement is not only meant to bring out that "collective intentionality" is not further analyzable in terms of individual intentionality. It also is meant to convey that we have a biologically evolved innate capacity for collective intentionality.The paper points out that Searle"s dedication to a strong notion of collective (...) intentionality considerably delimits the scope of his endeavor. Furthermore, evolutionary theory does not vindicate that an innate capacity for collective intentionality is a necessary precondition for cooperative behavior. 1. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss a certain philosophical and conceptual program -- that I have called philosophy of social action writ large -- and also show in detail how parts of the program have been, and is currently being carried out. In current philosophical research the philosophy of social action can be understood in a broad sense to encompass such central research topics as action occurring in a social context (this includes multi-agent action); shared we-attitudes (such as we-intention, mutual (...) belief) and other social attitudes expressing collective intentionality and needed for the explication and explanation of social action; social macro-notions, such as actions performed by social groups and properties of social groups such as their goals and beliefs; social practices, and institutions (see e.g. Tuomela, 1995, 2000a, 2001). The theory of social action understood analogously in a broad sense would then involve not only philosophical but all other relevant theorizing about social action. Thus, in this sense, such fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as Distributed AI (DAI) and the theory of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) fall within the scope of the theory of social action. DAI studies the social side of computer systems and includes various well-known areas ranging from human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, organizational processing, and distributed problem solving to the simulation of social systems. (shrink)

Lloyd P. Gerson - Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 539-540 Book Review Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality Dominik Perler, editor. Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. x + 347. Cloth $107.00. This collection of fifteen essays originated in a conference on ancient and medieval theories of intentionality at Basel in 1999. Part (...) I: Ancient Theories contains the following papers: Victor Caston, "Connecting Traditions: Augustine and the Greeks on Intentionality"; Richard Sorabji, "Aristotle on Sensory Processes and Intentionality. A Reply to Myles Burnyeat"; Christoff Rapp, "Intentionalität und phantasia bei Aristoteles"; Hermann Weidemann, "War Aristoteles ein Repräsentationalist?"; Richard Sorabji, "Why the.. (shrink)

I argue that joint attention solves the “base problem” as it arises for Schiffer’s and Lewis’s theories of common knowledge. The problem is that an account is needed of the perceptual base of some forms of common knowledge that gets by without itself invoking common knowledge. The paper solves the problem by developing a theory of joint attention as consisting in the exercise of joint know-how involving particular and sometimes distal targets and arguing that certain joint perceivers can always (...) have a minimal form of propositional common knowledge about the location of these targets. On such a view, perceptual common knowledge is based on the experience of a process that is maintained by way of perceivers’ exercise of an object-involving form of joint know-how. Some reductive theories of collective intentionality require that agents’ intentions and subplans are common knowledge (or “out in the open”) between them. For these theories the base problem arises again. The enacted theory of joint attention can solve the problem. The argument is exactly parallel to the common knowledge case. The openness of joint agents’ intentions and meshing subplans is explained by appeal to their practical knowledge of how to maintain the process by way of which they pursue the collective intention. They can then make this knowledge explicit by linguistic communication. When they succeed in communicating knowledge of their meshing subplans as pursued in a joint action context, they necessarily have this knowledge in common. For theories of collective intentionality that include a common knowledge condition, the experience of participating in a perceptually constituted joint action provides the base that renders harmless the regress that otherwise threatens reductive analyses. (shrink)

This paper approaches questions of collective intentionality by drawing inspiration from theories of recognition (e.g. Honneth 1995, Ricoeur 2005, Brandom 2007). After some remarks about recognition and groups, the paper examines whether the kind of dependence on recognition that holds of individual agents is equally true of group agents. In the debates on collective intentionality it is often stressed that the identity, existence, ethos, and membership-issues of the group are up to the group to decide (...) (e.g. Tuomela 2007). The members collectively accept (recognize) status functions, goals and beliefs for the group. This paper asks whether this thesis of "forgroupness" should be re-evaluated: could the status functions, goals and beliefs be in some significant sense "for others" as well? Can the group be dependent on others’ takes? -/- . (shrink)

Collective intentionality is of central importance in social ontology. In this paper, we will discuss its role in Searle’s understanding of social ontology and institutional reality. The first section of the paper will reconstruct Searle’s understanding of social ontology and his identification of necessary elements for constructing institutional reality. In this section, we will discuss the notions of imposition of function, of collective intentionality, and of constitutional rule. The second section will critically re-examine the notion of (...) collective intentionality. The third section will contrast Searle’s understanding of institutional reality with the one based on evolutionary game theory. Taking into account that Searle describes his position as naturalistic, the main task of this section will be to examine to what extent the alternative theory, also naturalistic in its character, can address certain problems, which remain insolvable in the framework of Searle’s theory. (shrink)

This volume presents a systematic philosophical theory related to the collectivism-versus-individualism debate in the social sciences. A weak version of collectivism (the "we-mode" approach) that depends on group-based collective intentionality is developed in the book. The we-mode approach is used to account for collective intention and action, cooperation, group attitudes, social practices and institutions as well as group solidarity.

In this paper I will argue in favor of the so-called content account of collective intentionality by critically discussing John Searle's approach. I will raise two objections against the view: it will be argued that the approach cannot adequately explain the difference between individual and collective intentional attitudes. Moreover, it will be shown that Searle's view has problems to account for a characteristic way in which collective mental states can fail. Both objections reveal crucial advantages of (...) the content account. Finally, a modified version of this view is outlined that is able to overcome objections that have been raised against this type of theory. (shrink)

This volume features a critical evaluation of the recent work of the philosopher, Prof. Raimo Tuomela and it also offers it offers new approaches to the collectivism-versus-individualism debate. It specifically looks at Tuomela's book Social Ontology and its accounts of collective intentionality and related topics. The book contains eight essays written by expert contributors that present different perspectives on Tuomela’s investigation into the philosophy of sociality, social ontology, theory of action, and decision and game theory. In addition, Tuomela (...) himself gives a comprehensive response to each essay and defends his theory in terms of the new arguments presented here. Overall, readers will gain a deeper insight into group reasoning and the "we-mode" approach, which is used to account for collective intention and action, cooperation, group attitudes, social practices, and institutions as well as group solidarity. This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers and graduate students and researchers interested in contemporary philosophy of sociality, sociological theory, social ontology as well as the philosophy of mind, decision and game theory, and cognitive science. Tuomela’s book stands as a model of excellence in social ontology, an especially intractable field of philosophical inquiry that benefits conspicuously from the devotion of Tuomela’s keen philosophical mind. His book is must reading in social ontology. J. Angelo Corlett, Julia Lyons Strobel. (shrink)

Abstract: Focusing on early child pretend play from the perspective of developmental psychology, this article puts forward and presents evidence for two claims. First, such play constitutes an area of remarkable individual intentionality of second-order intentionality (or 'theory of mind'): in pretence with others, young children grasp the basic intentional structure of pretending as a non-serious fictional form of action. Second, early social pretend play embodies shared or collective we-intentionality. Pretending with others is one of the (...) ontogenetically primary instances of truly cooperative actions. And it is a, perhaps the, primordial form of cooperative action with rudimentary rule-governed, institutional structure: in joint pretence games, children are aware that objects collectively get assigned fictional status, 'count as' something, and that this creates a normative space of warranted moves in the game. Developmentally, pretend play might even be a cradle for institutional phenomena more generally. (shrink)

This article examines two empirical research traditions—experimental economics and the social identity approach in social psychology—that may be seen as attempts to falsify and verify the theory of collective intentionality, respectively. The article argues that both approaches fail to settle the issue. However, this is not necessarily due to the alleged immaturity of the social sciences but, possibly, to the philosophical nature of intentionality and intentional action. The article shows how broadly Davidsonian action theory, including Hacking’s notion (...) of the looping effect of the human sciences, can be developed into an argument for the view that there is no theory-independent true nature of intentional action. If the Davidsonian line of thought is correct, the theory of collective intentionality is, in a sense, true if we accept the theory. Key Words: collective intentionality • experimental economics • social identity theory • Donald Davidson • Ian Hacking • constructivism • action • agency • philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

Describing an algorithm can provide a formalization of a specific process. However, different ways of conceptualizing algorithms foreground certain issues while obscuring others. This article attempts to define an algorithm in a broad sense as a cultural activity of key importance to make sense of socio-cognitive structures. It also attempts to develop a sharper account on the interaction between humans and tools, symbols and technologies. Rather than human or machine-centered analyses, I draw upon sociological and anthropological theories that underline (...) social practices to propose expanding our understanding of an algorithm through the notion of ‘collective intentionalities’. To make this term clear, a brief historical review is presented, followed by an argumentation on how to incorporate it in an integral perspective. The article responds to recent debates in critical algorithm studies about the significance of the term. It develops a discussion along the lines of cognitive anthropology and the cognitive sciences, therefore advancing a definition that is grounded in observed practices as well as in modeled descriptions. The benefit of this approach is that it encourages scholars to explore cognitive structures via archaeologies of technological assemblages, where intentionalities play a defining role in understanding socio-structured practices and cognitive ecologies. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of collective intentionality and shows its relevance when we seek to understand public management. Social ontology – particularly its leading concept, collective intentionality – provides critical insights into public organisations. The paper sets out the some of the epistemological limitations of cultural theories and takes as its example of these the group-grid theory of Douglas and Hood. It then draws upon Brentano, Husserl and Searle to show the ontological character of (...) public management. Modern public institutions – such as advisory organisations and service delivery agencies, including schools and universities – are expressions of human collective intentionality. The central concept within these institutions, as a phenomenology reveals, is cooperation. Public institutions are natural structures that emerge from our evolutionary ancestry as cooperative animals and enduringly display all the features of that ancestry. (shrink)

People often do things together and form groups in order to get things done that they cannot do alone. In short they form a collectivity of some kind or a group, for short. But if we consider a group on the one hand and the persons that constitute the group on the other hand, how does it happen that these persons work together and finish a common task with a common goal? In the philosophy of action this problem is often (...) solved by saying that there is a kind of collective intention that the group members have in mind and that guides their actions. Does such a collective intention really exist? In this article I’ll show that the answer is “no”. In order to substantiate my view I’ll discuss the approaches of Bratman, Gilbert and Searle on collective intention. I’ll put forward four kinds of criticism that undermine the idea of collective intention. They apply mainly to Bratman and Gilbert. First, it is basically difficult to mark off smaller groups from bigger unities. Second, most groups change in membership composition over time. Third, as a rule, on the one hand groups are internally structured and on the other hand they belong to a larger structure. It makes that generally it cannot be a collective intention that moves the actions of the members of a group. Fourth, conversely, most individual actions cannot be performed without the existence of a wider context of agents who support these actions and make them possible. My critique on Searle mainly involves that in his approach his idea of collective intention is superfluous and that he is not radical enough in his idea that collective action is based on coordinated individual intentions and actions. However, it is a good starting point for showing how collective action actually functions, especially when combined with Giddens’s structuration theory. Every agent in a group executes his or her own individual intentions, relying on what the group offers to this agent and asks from him or her. In this way individual actions of the members of a group are coordinated and it makes that the group can function and that its goals can be performed. And in this way the group is produced and reproduced by fitting individual actions together. An individual agent who belongs to a group only needs to know what s/he wants and what s/he has to do in the group, even if s/he has no knowledge of the intentions and commitments of the other members. Then he or she can do things together with others in a group without supposing that there is something like a collective intention. (shrink)

I investigate collective intentionality (CI) through the “Ought” implies “Can” (OIC) principle. My leading question is does OIC impose any further requirement on CI? In answering the challenge inside a Searlean framework, I realize that we need to clarify what CI's structure is and what kind of role the agents joining a CI-act have. In the last part of the paper, I put forward an (inverted) Hartian framework to allow the Searlean CI theory to be agent sensitive and (...) cope with the problems that emerged. (shrink)

It is widely believed that what distinguishes the social cognition of humans from that of other animals is the belief–desire psychology of four–year–old children and adults (so–called theory of mind). We argue here that this is actually the second ontogenetic step in uniquely human social cognition. The first step is one year old children's understanding of persons as intentional agents, which enables skills of cultural learning and shared intentionality. This initial step is ‘the real thing’ in the sense that (...) it enables young children to participate in cultural activities using shared, perspectival symbols with a conventional/normative/reflective dimension—for example, linguistic communication and pretend play—thus inaugurating children's understanding of things mental. Understanding beliefs and participating in collective intentionality at four years of age—enabling the comprehension of such things as money and marriage—results from several years of engagement with other persons in perspective–shifting and reflective discourse containing propositional attitude constructions. (shrink)

Different versions of the idea that individualism about agency is the root of standard game theoretical puzzles have been defended by Regan 1980, Bacharach, Hurley, Sugden :165–181, 2003), and Tuomela 2013, among others. While collectivistic game theorists like Michael Bacharach provide formal frameworks designed to avert some of the standard dilemmas, philosophers of collective action like Raimo Tuomela aim at substantive accounts of collective action that may explain how agents overcoming such social dilemmas would be motivated. This paper (...) focuses on the conditions on collective action and intention that need to be fulfilled for Bacharach’s “team reasoning” to occur. Two influential approaches to collective action are related to the idea of team reasoning: Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intention and Raimo Tuomela’s theory of a we-mode of intending. I argue that neither captures the “agency transformation” that team reasoning requires. That might be an acceptable conclusion for Bratman but more problematic for Tuomela, who claims that Bacharach’s results support his theory. I sketch an alternative framework in which the perspectival element that is required for team reasoning - the ‘we-perspective’ - can be understood and functionally characterized in relation to the traditional distinction between mode and content of intentional states. I claim that the latter understanding of a collective perspective provides the right kind of philosophical background for team reasoning, and I discuss some implications in relation to Tuomela’s assumption that switching between individual and collective perspectives can be a matter of rational choice. (shrink)

Theories of collective intentions must distinguish genuinely collective intentions from coincidentally harmonized ones. Two apparently equally apt ways of doing so are the ‘neo-reductionism’ of Bacharach (2006) and Gold and Sugden (2007a) and the ‘non-reductionism’ of Searle (1990, 1995). Here, we present findings from theoretical linguistics that show that we is not a cognitive primitive, but is composed of notions of I and grouphood. The ramifications of this finding on the structure both of grammatical and lexical systems (...) suggests that an understanding of collective intentionality does not require a primitive we-intention, but the notion of grouphood implicit in team reasoning, coupled with the individual concept I. This, we argue, supports neo-reductionism but poses difficulties for non-reductionism. (shrink)

Collective intentionality is one of the most fundamental notions in social ontology. However, it is often thought to refer to a capacity which does not presuppose the existence of any other social facts. This chapter critically examines this view from the perspective of one specific theory of collective intentionality, the theory of Margaret Gilbert. On the basis of Gilbert’s arguments, the chapter claims that collective intentionality is a highly contingent achievement of complex social practices (...) and, thus, not a basic social phenomenon. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, Gilbert’s thesis that certain kinds of collective intentionality presuppose joint normative commitments is introduced. Second, it is argued that, on this view, individual commitments can only constitute the relevant kinds of collective intentional states if there are socially shared “principles of membership” that connect the force of individual commitments to a shared content. Third, it is shown that strong collective intentionality depends on the practical acceptance of shared norms and on the establishment of authority relations through mutual recognition. (shrink)

The concept of recognition has played a role in two debates. In political philosophy, it is part of a communitarian response to liberal theories of distributive justice. It describes what it means to respect others’ right to self-determination. In ethics, Stephen Darwall argues that it comprises our judgment that we owe others moral consideration. I present a competing account of recognition on the grounds that most accounts answer the question of why others deserve recognition without answering the question of (...) what is involved in recognizing them. This paper answers the latter. I argue that, in general, recognition is something that we do to others rather than something that we think about others. In particular, recognition is an intentional action to treat another individual as a legitimate, self-determining agent. I then show that recognition's realizability requires that agents understand their intentions as dependent on others for their satisfaction. Thus, relations of recognition are instances of collective intentionality. (shrink)

We explore the idea that a group or ‘team’ of individuals can be an agent in its own right and that, when this is the case, individual team members use team reasoning, a distinctive mode of reasoning from that of standard decision theory. Our approach is to represent team reasoning explicitly, by means of schemata of practical reasoning in which conclusions about what actions should be taken are inferred from premises about the decision environment and about what agents are seeking (...) to achieve. We use this theoretical framework to compare team reasoning with the individual reasoning of standard decision theory, and to compare various theories of team agency and collective intentionality. (shrink)

In this paper, I am concerned with persons' capacity for joint action. I start by suggesting that approaches which seek to account for that capacity in terms of collective intentionality face a problem: there are actions that clearly seem to qualify as collective even though the involved persons cannot be said to entertain an overarching 'We'-intention (however one characterizes this notion). I then go on to develop an alternative account of action that loosely draws on Elizabeth Anscombe's (...) action theory and show how this alternative account can be applied to joint action. In so doing, I stress the importance of the phenomenal dimension of agency. (shrink)

In everyday contexts we do numerous things together. Philosophers of collective intentionality have wondered how we can distinguish parallel cases from cases where we act together. Often their theories argue in favor of one characteristic, feature, or function, that differentiates the two. This feature then distinguishes parallel actions from joint action. The approach in this book is different. Three claims are developed: (1) There are several functions that help human agents coordinate and act together. (2) This entails (...) that joint action should be understood through these different, interrelated, types of coordination. (3) A multidimensional conceptual space, with three levels of control and coordination, will allow us to connect these different forms of coordination and their interdependencies. This allows us to understand the jointness of an action in a more differentiated and encompassing way. This approach has ramifications for several distinctions that are typically understood to be binary, including those between action and mere bodily movement, joint action and parallel action, and action together and not together. (shrink)

Theories of collective intentionality and theories of relational autonomy share a common interest in analyzing the social dynamics of agency. However, whereas theories of collective intentionality conceive of social groups primarily as intentional and voluntarily willed, theories of relational autonomy claim that autonomous agency is both scaffolded and constrained by social forces and structures, including the constraints imposed by nonvoluntary group membership. The question raised by this difference in view is whether social (...) theorizing that overlooks the effects of nonvoluntary social group membership on individual and joint agency overlooks crucial aspects of the social dynamics of agency. To explore this question, this article first evaluates Michael Bratman's planning analysis of individual agency from the perspective of relational autonomy theory and compares it with a narrative self‐constitution account of temporally extended agency. It then evaluates Bratman's analysis of shared agency and discusses Shaun Gallagher and Deborah Tollefsen's concept of we‐narratives, which extends the notion of narrative construction to shared agency. Overall, the argument aims to show that if we are interested in understanding the social dynamics of agency, it is critical to attend to the way that agents exercise their intentional agency in relation to internalized and external social constraints. (shrink)

The article addresses the topic of “group agency” with respect to large organizations. It undertakes to analyze some of the concrete micro- and meso-level processes (microfoundations) through which large organizations arrive at collective “knowledge” and “action.” The article makes use of the theory of strategic action fields to analyze processes of knowledge and the implementation of organizational intentions. The article describes some of the dysfunctions and disunities that should be expected from these individual-level processes, including principal–agent problems, conflicts of (...) interests and priorities among organizational actors, loose coupling among subunits, and outcomes that are influenced by powerful outsiders. It argues for a limited conception of “ bounded localistic organizational rationality” in which organizations have limited coherence, unity, and consistency over time in their beliefs and actions. (shrink)

In societies with a non-elementary degree of complexity, we find institutions, social roles, promises, marriages, corporations, enterprises, and the large variety of what we can label “social objects”. On the one hand, we commonly speak and think of such entities as if they existed on a par with entities such as tables and persons. On the other hand, there is a clear link between what people think and how people behave and the social domain. We argue that the widespread “reductionist” (...) approach in social ontology fails to account for both those aspects of social reality, and put forward a new approach. The main idea is that a particular kind of social objects, namely documents – and more generally records of social acts – are the ground of social reality. The fundamental difference from the reductionist approach is that the content of collective intentions will turn out to be not so important in accounting for the ontological variety of complex social realities such as ours. (shrink)

English summary: Taking into account the relevant and mostly contemporary ango-american debates concering collective intentionality, the author eximanes what it means to share reasons and other intentional states such as thoughts and emotions. The guiding question of the dissertation is in what way and to what extent morality and therefore self-consciousness can be understood as conditions of possibility for the sharing of mental states, especially reasons. The dissertation is a contribution mainly to fields of research in practical philosophy (...) (normative ethics and moral psychology) and in social philosophy (collective intentionality analysis) and rational choice theory. German description: Juliette Gloors Monographie fragt aus hauptsachlich analytischer Perspektive und unter spezieller Berucksichtigung der einschlagigen anglo-amerikanischen Debatten, was es bedeutet, Grunde und andere intentionale Einstellungen zu teilen. Die Leitfrage der Untersuchung lautet, inwiefern Moral und damit Selbstbewusstsein als Bedingungen der Moglichkeit solchen Teilens begriffen werden konnen. Die Dissertation ist ein Beitrag zur Forschung innerhalb des Gebiets der Praktischen Philosophie (insbesondere der normativen Ethik) und der Sozialphilosophie (speziell im Bereich der Kollektiven Intentionalitat). (shrink)

In everyday language, we readily attribute experiences to groups. For example, 1 might say, “Spain celebrated winning the European Cup” or “The uncovering of corruption caused the union to think long and hard about its internal structure.” In each case, the attribution makes sense. However, it is quite difficult to give a nonreductive account of precisely what these statements mean because in each case a mental state is ascribed to a group, and it is not obvious that groups can have (...) mental states. In this article, I do not offer an explicit theory of collective experience. Instead, I draw on phenomenological analyses and empirical data in order to provide general conditions that a more specific theory of collective experience must meet in order to be coherent. (shrink)

This edited volume examines the relationship between collective intentionality and inferential theories of meaning. The book consists of three main sections. The first part contains essays demonstrating how researchers working on inferentialism and collective intentionality can learn from one another. The essays in the second part examine the dimensions along which philosophical and empirical research on human reasoning and collective intentionality can benefit from more cross-pollination. The final part consists of essays that offer (...) a closer examination of themes from inferentialism and collective intentionality that arise in the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Groups, Norms, and Practices provides a template for continuing an interdisciplinary program in philosophy and the sciences that aims to deepen our understanding of human rationality, language use, and sociality. (shrink)

The kind of collective improvisation attained by the “free jazz” at the beginning of the sixties sets a challenge to analytic theories of collective intentionality, that emphasize the role played by future-directed plans in the interlocking and interdependent intentions of the individual participants, because in the free jazz case the performers’ interdependence or [interplay] stems from an intuitive understanding between musicians. Otherwise said: what happens musically is not planned in advance, but arises from spontaneous interactions in (...) the group. By looking at the way jazz improvisers take up the challenge of making music together without a pre-conceived notion as to what kind of effect they will achieve and without a pre-set code of agreements, my aim has been to clarify what kind of strategies — other than advanced action plans and joint commitments — are used by improvising musicians to integrate their improvisations into a unified shared activity. In developing this proposal I initially drawn pre-theoretically on one paradigmatic study case — Ornette Coleman’s double quartet Free Jazz, A collective Improvisation and brought it in conversation with Husserl’s phenomenology of time. In a final move, I brought this phenomenological frame into dialogue with some recent readings of the predictive coding model. All in all, what we learned from the Free Jazz case is that the interdependence and interlocking of attitudes among individual participants characteristic of shared intention is not determined by a future-directed plan and the rational pressure to be responsive to and coordinate with others, it typically engages. Rather, in the free jazz case, the performers’ connection and interplay depend on the players’ readiness to feel each other out, by listening to each other playing, in a way that no doubt presupposes the Husserlian retention-protention scheme. (shrink)

John Searle, in several articles and books, has contended that institutions incorporating status functions with deontic powers are created by collective acceptance that is not analysable into individual acceptance. I point out three self-contradictions in Searle’s exposition.

"Dimensions of Shared Agency" investigates the way in which standard philosophical accounts have been dealing with the issue of collective actions. In particular, the book focuses on the 'Big Five' of analytical social ontology and their accounts of shared/collective intentions and actions. Through systematic readings of different positions in the debate, the author proposes original ways of analyzing and classifying current theories of shared agency according to whether they advance a member-level or a group-level account of shared (...) agency. While member-level accounts are theories of shared agency based on individuals' attitudes and actions, group-level accounts give attention to the group of individuals considered as a whole, i.e., as an agent itself. Criticism arises against the idea that the Big Five have proposed stable group-level accounts suitable for explaining the case of shared agency as a group-level phenomenon. The widespread tendency in the debate is to endorse a perspective called holistic individualism, which maintains that high-level explanations are objective even though social facts are ontologically reducible to facts about individuals. Lasagni argues that as long as holistic individualism is held, the GLA is reducible to the MLA because holistic individualism upholds ontological individualism based on a deep individualistic premise, fixing the special status of individual agents as natural persons. The premise makes the claim to treat groups as agents contradictory to the general framework of the theory. This book profiles an alternative interpretation according to which agency should be considered as a functional kind, which is equally instantiated by different systems, such as individual human beings and organized social groups. In this way, the author claims, the reduction of the social can be avoided. "Dimensions of Shared Agency" will be of interest to doctoral students, researchers, and scholars interested in social ontology and the philosophy of the social sciences. It can also be utilised as supplementary reading or an introduction to philosophy students and scholars who are first approaching the philosophy of collective intentionality and shared agency. (shrink)

The idea of representation has been central in discussions of intentionality for many years. But only more recently has it begun playing a wider role in the philosophy of mind, particularly in theories of consciousness. Indeed, there are now multiple representational theories of consciousness, corresponding to different uses of the term "conscious," each attempting to explain the corresponding phenomenon in terms of representation. More cautiously, each theory attempts to explain its target phenomenon in terms of _intentionality_, and (...) assumes that intentionality is representation. (shrink)

There has been considerable progress in investigating collective actions in the last decades. However, the real progress is different from what many scholars take it to be. It lies in the fact that there is by now a wealth of different approaches from a variety of fields. Each approach has carved out fruitful mechanisms for explaining collective action, but is also faced with limitations. Given that situation, we submit that the next step in investigating collective action is (...) to acknowledge the plurality of approaches and bring them into dialogue. With this aim in mind, the present article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of some of the to our mind most relevant approaches to collective action in current debates. We begin with the collective intentionality framework, the team reasoning approach, and social identity theory. Then, we move to ecological social psychology, participatory sense-making, and, through the lenses of those frameworks, dynamical systems theory. Finally, we discuss practice theory. Against this background, we provide a proposal for a synthesis of the successful explanatory mechanisms as they have been carved out by the different research programs. The suggestion is, roughly, to understand collective action as dynamical interaction of a self-organizing system with its environment, shaped by a process of collective sense-making. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 13 The article starts with the theses that it is the very concept of action that is at stake in many debates between philosophers and historians. Whereas in philosophy actions are conceptualized by reference to their beginning, namely their motives or intentions, in historiography the consequences of actions are much more in the focus of interest. Especially the debate about the dualism of structure and agency is characterized by different concepts of action. In the article it (...) is argued that this dualism can be overcome by stressing the intentionality of collective actions. First, a concept of action is developed against the background of a theory of intentionality. Second, intentional collective action is distinguished from individual and social actions and an analysis of a collective we-intention is proposed. Third, it is argued that the development of social structures has to be understood by reference to intentional collective actions. (shrink)

How can the law be characterized in a theory of collective intentionality that treats collective intentionality as essentially layered and tries to understand these layers in terms of the structure and the format of the representations involved? And can such a theory of collective intentionality open up new perspectives on the law and shed new light on traditional questions of legal philosophy? As a philosopher of collective intentionality who is new to legal (...) philosophy, I want to begin exploring these questions in this paper. I will try to characterize the law in terms of the layered account of collective intentionality that I have introduced in some earlier writings (Schmitz 2013; 2018). In the light of this account I will then discuss a traditional question in the philosophy of law: the relation between law and morality. I begin by giving a brief sketch of the layered account in the next section. Collective intentionality should be understood in terms of experiencing and representing others as co-subjects, rather than as objects, of intentional states and acts on different layers or levels. I distinguish the nonconceptual layer of the joint sensory-motor-emotional intentionality of joint attention and joint bodily action, the conceptual level of shared we-mode beliefs, intentions, obligations, values, and so on, and the institutional level characterized through role differentiation, positions taken in role-mode, e.g. as a judge or attorney, and writing and other forms of documentation. In the third section I introduce a set of parameters for representations such as their degree of richness, of context-dependence, of density and differentiation of representational role and of durability and stability, which can be used to more precisely distinguish different layers. I also put forward the hypothesis that these properties are connected and tend to cluster, and that higher levels can only function and determine conditions of satisfaction against lower level ones. In the fourth and final section I critically discuss the sharp positivistic separation of morality and the law according to which whether something is a law is completely independent of its moral merits. I argue that this only seems plausible if we take an observational stance towards the law, but not towards morality. When we treat them the same way, it rather appears that the moral attitudes of the co-subjects of a society will determine whether and to what extent they will accept its legal order. I conclude by proposing to think of the law as being itself an institutionalized form of morality. (shrink)

The present paper attempts to look at on the genealogy of both shared intentionality and collective intentionality, comparing Michael Tomasello’s concept with Max Scheler’s threedimensional concept of intentionality: ens amans, ens volens, ens cogitans, as affective, conative, and cognitive intentionality. I focus on various forms of affective collective intentionality — Schelerian forms of sympathy — to show collective subjectivity from the whole spectrum of emotional intentionality, presented by Scheler’s example of parents (...) standing over the corpse of a child. Even though Tomasello’s works seem to empirically corroborate Scheler’s intuitions about the emotional genealogy of collective intentionality, they will differ in the horizons within they locate intentionality. In the case of the evolutionary psychology of Tomasello, we can talk about the horizon of cooperation, in the case of Scheler’s Scheler’s phenomenology of acts about the horizon of responsibility or co-responsibility, which gives intentionality its unique character. The similarities of both concepts concern the following pillars: 1) genealogy of intentionality covering the dimension of affective intentionality, conative intentionality, and the level of cognitive intentionality; 2) Imitation or, as Scheler would say, following someone. Because a person is recognized by the author of Formalism as an act, or a bundle of acts, the way to understanding and communication with another person is the maieutic coperformance of their acts — i.e., imitation. The maieutic co-execution of acts of others triggers the constitution process of a person, both on an individual and community level. We can speak, in the case of Tomasello, about the ontho- and sociogenetic function of co-executing acts or imitating; however, in the case of Scheler, we are dealing with the clearly axiological nature of such a constitution of both the individual and collective subjectivity ; 3) collaborative engagement as a driving force behind collective intentionality in one case in form of co-responsibility, a nature of a collective person ; in the other case in form of collaboration developing intentionality to various units of community life. (shrink)