From Individual to Collective Intentionality

New Essays

Edited by Sara Rachel Chant, Frank Hindriks, and Gerhard Preyer

Includes essays that extend and enrich existing theories of collective intentionality as well as essays that challenge the need for a theory of collective intentionality.
The essays concerning collective rationality (part II) break new ground in that they challenge the idea that there is a straightforward dichotomy between individual and collective level rationality

From Individual to Collective Intentionality

New Essays

Edited by Sara Rachel Chant, Frank Hindriks, and Gerhard Preyer

Description

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

From Individual to Collective Intentionality

New Essays

Edited by Sara Rachel Chant, Frank Hindriks, and Gerhard Preyer

Introduction:
Beyond the Big Four and the Big Five
Sara Rachel Chant, Frank Hindriks, and Gerhard Preyer

Part I: Collective Attitudes and Actions

1. A Dynamic Theory of Shared Intention
Deborah Tollefsen

2. Collective Goals Analyzed
Kaarlo Miller and Raimo Tuomela

3. Group Belief and Acceptance
Frederick F. Schmitt

4. Against Group Cognitive States
Robert D. Rupert

5. The Ontology of Collective Action
Kirk Ludwig

Part II: Collective Rationality

6. Indispensability, the discursive dilemma, and groups with minds of their own
Abe Roth

7. Do Groups Have Scientific Knowledge?
Melinda Bonnie Fagan

8. Collective Rationality's Roots
Paul Weirich

9. Structural Rationality and Collective Intentions
Julian Nida-Rümelin

From Individual to Collective Intentionality

New Essays

Edited by Sara Rachel Chant, Frank Hindriks, and Gerhard Preyer

Author Information

Sara Rachel Chant is Associate Professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Frank Hindriks is Associate Professor at the University of Grogingen.

Gerhard Preyer is Adjunct Professor at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, editor of Donald Davidson on Truth, Meaning, and the Mental (OUP 2012) and co-editor of Contextualism in Philosophy (0UP, 2005).

Contributors:

Melinda Bonnie Fagan, Rice University
Kaarlo Miller, University of Helsinki
Kirk Ludwig, Indiana University-Bloomington
Julian Nida-Rumelin, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munchen
Abe Roth, Ohio State University
Robert D. Rupert, University of Colorado-Boulder
Frederick F. Schmitt, Indiana University-Bloomington
Deborah Tollefsen, University of Memphis
Raimo Tuomela, University of Helsinki
Paul Weirich, University of Missouri-Columbia