Abstract
We ordinarily attribute beliefs and other intentional states to collective entities. These attributions can be vindicated from a theoretical perspective that holds that: (i) collective entities can behave as rational agents in our argumentative practices of giving and asking for reasons; and (ii) attributions of beliefs are interpretative tools aiming to make sense of the behaviors and perspectives of agents, and to keep track of their commitments. However, it is not immediately clear that groups have attitudes that play the same role in our argumentative and interpretative practices as the beliefs of individuals. It seems that the belief-like attitudes attributed to collective agents lack some of the distinctive features of the beliefs of individuals. More specifically, collective (but not individual) agents seem to be able to form beliefs against the available evidence at will, moved by rewards or other practical considerations. This has made some authors (Wray, Synthese 129(3): 319–333, 2001; Wray PRO 18: 363–376, 2003; Meijers, ProtoSociology 16: 70–85, 2002; Meijers, PRO 18: 377–388, 2003; Hakli, Cogn Syst Res, 7(2–3): 286–297, 2006) argue that the belief-like attitudes of collectives are actually some form of acceptance (which does not involve the commitment to truth characteristic of belief). On our view, this proposal is misguided. We shall argue that the belief-like attitudes of collectives are actually subject to the norms that govern belief, even if these norms can be broken more blatantly in the case of groups than in the case of individuals. In order to explain why this is so, we appeal to the fact that doxastic deliberation in groups is mediated by the deliberative actions of the relevant members, which may be rationally motivated by practical considerations.
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Notes
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We also want to remain neutral about whether the constitution of a collective agent requires that its members adopt attitudes in the we-mode (Tuomela 2013; also Schmitz 2017) . In general, we wish to be as non-committal as possible about how the members of a group must interact in order for the group to behave as a collective agent (i.e. as a proficient player in normative practices of giving and asking for reasons) . It may well be that there is not a unique answer applying to all types of collective agent.
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There are numerous mathematical proofs, in the judgment aggregation literature, showing that, given some reasonable assumptions, it is impossible to aggregate profiles of rational individual beliefs in a completely coherent way (see List and Pettit 2011).
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Take ‘p?’ as shorhand for a grammatically correct formulation of the question whether p. Indeed, as a matter of psychological fact, individuals hardly ever deliberate asking explicitly to themselves ‘Should I believe that p?’, rather than simply ‘p?’. The sort of transparency we are discussing would explain why this is the case.
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Most of the main points we want to make could also be made in terms of weaker norms that do not require beliefs to be true, for instance the evidentialist norm that one ought to adjust one’s beliefs to the evidence available (see Conee and Feldman 2004). We will focus on truth-involving norms, for the sake of simplicity, and because of their plausibility.
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González de Prado, J., Zamora-Bonilla, J. (2021). Rational Golems: Collective Agents as Players in the Reasoning Game. In: Koreň, L., Schmid, H.B., Stovall, P., Townsend, L. (eds) Groups, Norms and Practices. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49590-9_2
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