Abstract
Raimo Tuomela’s work on collective action and social phenomena is extremely elaborate and well-engineered, it has matured and undergone numerous refinements over the last four decades, and it will continue to be a main point of reference in the debates surrounding the term “collective intentionality.” Already in the early 1980s, when – although this is somewhat speculative – only a handful of philosophers of action (not counting rational choice theorists) paid attention to the cognitive and intentional structures underlying cooperation, Tuomela and his immediate collaborators, originally especially Kaarlo Miller, embarked on the study of specifically social forms of intentionality, which lead, to mention just some of the highlights, to analyses of we-intentions, cooperators’ practical reasoning, social practices and institutions, collective responsibility, group agency and group solidarity. The breadth and depth of these analyses can hardly be reconstructed in one short commentary. Instead, in what follows I shall focus on the most recent statement of a centrepiece of Tuomela’s philosophical social theory and I shall seek to formulate a challenge to it that at least calls for further clarification. In particular, the following considerations centre on Tuomela’s account of acting as a group-member as it is presented in several chapters and passages of his Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (2013, here cited as “SO”).
In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.
(Albert Einstein)
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Notes
- 1.
Talking of considerations or reasons as having weights, or of their speaking in favour of certain courses of action is metaphorical, as e.g. also John Broome (2013) or Thomas Scanlon (2014) acknowledge. Without further elaboration I shall assume here that this way of talking nevertheless gives us an understandable, if not an intuitive picture of how agents view and respond to situations.
- 2.
I am here referring to the rendering of the case at the beginning of Sophocles’ Antigone.
- 3.
The situation is, of course, more complicated, as Polynices was killed by his own (and Antigone’s other) brother, Eteocles, who again died by Polynices’ hand – indeed, they “brought about their deaths with mutual hands” (in Robin Bond’s translation) – but was honoured with a grave. The aspect of the case of interest here is Antigone’s siding with Polynices against Lord Creon’s decision.
- 4.
I understand‚ selfish interest’ to refer to her egoistic interest, i.e. the one that tracks precisely that which refers only to her own individual well-being and the consequences her actions may have in this regard. Given that she in fact takes her allegiance to her brother to define what she is, her ultimate decision could also be cast as selfish in this extended sense. But there is no need to further unpack the meaning of selfish, possibly against common parlance, in this context.
- 5.
I am here setting aside the possibility that one’s relationship to one’s state qua community could be understood as a personal attachment of sorts. Subscribe to that view and you strengthen the analogy with Antigone’s case.
- 6.
The following is based on SO 38 ff.. I here skip a separate discussion of the third component of the we-mode, the collectivity condition, as it is not sufficiently relevant to the discussion at hand.
- 7.
See SO 26 ff.
- 8.
Cf. SO 43.
- 9.
For an account of individual agency that expounds this idea in detail, see Bratman (1987).
- 10.
One could argue that cross-temporal individual agency involves a relationship between one’s selves at different points in time, but it would seem odd – at least to me – to claim that these intrapersonal relationships closely resemble interpersonal relationships with respect to normative implications such as rights and obligations.
- 11.
See, for instance, Gilbert (2006, 106).
- 12.
- 13.
Cf. Raz (1986) and SO, 116 f..
- 14.
Formulations of this sort recur throughout Social Ontology, e.g.: “It is important to recall that genuine we-moders will, on the ground of their intrinsic group-centered motivation, set aside their private interests and refrain from free-riding.” (SO 224) And: “Indeed, a member of a paradigmatic we-mode group is normatively required to act for a group reason and not for a private one.” (SO 253).
- 15.
I shall not here elaborate any detailed differentiation between role obligations and social obligations, even though the case could certainly be made in view of the two cases at hand.
- 16.
For a discussion of content independence with regard to associative political obligations cf. Simmons (2001, chapter 4).
References
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Tuomela, R. (2013). Social ontology – Collective intentionality and group agents. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Schweikard, D.P. (2017). Voluntary Groups, Noncompliance, and Conflicts of Reason: Tuomela on Acting as a Group-Member. In: Preyer, G., Peter, G. (eds) Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33236-9_7
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