Abstract
A central dispute in social ontology concerns the existence of group minds and actions. I argue that some authors in this dispute rely on rival views of existence without sufficiently acknowledging this divergence. I proceed in three steps in arguing for this claim. First, I define the phenomenon as an implicit higher-order disagreement by drawing on an analysis of verbal disputes. Second, I distinguish two theories of existence—the theory-commitments view and the truthmaker view—in both their eliminativist and their constructivist variants. Third, I examine individual contributions to the dispute about the existence of group minds and actions to argue that these contributions have an implicit higher-order disagreement. This paper serves two purposes. First, it is a study to apply recent advances in meta-ontology. Second, it contributes to the debate on social ontology by illustrating how meta-ontology matters for social ontology.
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Notes
I here give the argument for a hypothesis I entertained elsewhere (Himmelreich 2015, p. 484).
I understand “group minds” as the claim that a group has intentional states. I understand “group actions” as the claim that a group is an agent of an action.
This claim refers to a corpus of articles and books in philosophy with titles such as “group agency” or “group mind,” published between 2003 and 2018, omitting works on historical figures, normative or formal aspects. See the “Appendix” for details.
I amend the definition of Chalmers (2011, p. 522) in three ways to make it more amenable for the purposes here. First, I do not distinguish between broad and narrow disputes. Second, I define “verbal dispute” as encompassing partly verbal disputes. Third, I add condition (c).
In particular, the truthmaker view can be incorporated in the larger project of grounding and neo-Aristotelian metaphysics (Schaffer 2009). Although this latter project might provide a more nuanced discussion of the truthmaker position, for expositional reasons I relate my investigation to the earlier statement of the view.
I take these terms from Bratman (2018).
I avoid the term “methodological individualism” because methodological individualism “is commonly divided into two different claims,” an ontological and an explanatory one (Epstein 2007, p. 188).
Since the totality of things that exist are the ontological commitments of all of our best scientific theories, an author’s ontological commitments depend on what they take to be the best theories.
Sometimes truthmaker theory is formulated in terms of propositions instead of sentences. The difference is otherwise important but should not matter for the purposes here.
I suspect this subset claim holds only if one assumes that our best regimented theories are committed (in the sense of the theory-commitments view) to more than their fundamental truthmakers.
Some authors views may differ from my classification, often trivially so because my classification is very coarse-grained, whereas authors’ views will be more refined.
Although the quote above reads “talk of group agents” List and Pettit are concerned with group agency “both in common and in scientific discourse” (2011, p. 4).
Yet, my reading that their argument rests on the theory-commitments view can be supported also by the fact that this view is considered the default (Schaffer 2009, p. 347).
From this investigation of collective action sentences, Ludwig infers a thesis about collective intentionality. Ludwig argues that no collective agency implies no collective intentionality: “If there are no collective agents, there are no collective intenders.” (2007b, p. 365) This is rather surprising because Ludwig seems to get the implication backwards. Although intentionality is necessary for agency, contrary to what Ludwig assumes, agency is not necessary for intentionality.
Ludwig (2014, p. 125) writes that “groups per se are not primitive agents of any events … so far as the truth conditions of collective action sentences go.”
Rupert (2014) provides no references as to whom he is arguing against. It is plausible to take him as a party in the dispute over group minds together with List and Pettit, because he argues for the negation of the claim that they defend.
Yet, this argument could instead be read as being based on the theory-commitments view similar to arguments that Rupert makes elsewhere (2005, 2011, 2014). In this case, the dispute would be an internal one between Rupert and authors such as List and Pettit over the constructivist versus the eliminativist variant of the theory-commitments view.
This dependence only concerns some arguments for group minds. Sylvan (2012, p. 271) observes that List and Pettit (2011) hold “functionalist background views.” Ludwig (2015, p. 204) remarks that “[i]f functionalism is not an adequate theory of cognition, then the bar for showing that groups have genuine cognitive properties becomes higher.” He remains somewhat skeptical and writes in Ludwig (2017, n. 8): “No one has in fact made a good case that corporations … have a mind on the basis of functionalism. No one has produced an adequate functionalist theory…. What arguments there are consist largely in hand-waving and affirming the consequent (e.g. List and Pettit 2011) or begging the question under the guise of application of a parity principle (e.g. Theiner et al. 2010) …” On functionalism and agency see also List (2016).
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Acknowledgements
In writing this paper I benefitted from an early conversation with Daniel Nolan, discussions with Jesse Saloom, Sebastian Köhler and Ryan Cox, comments from two anonymous referees for this journal, and discussions at the European Congress of Analytic Philosophy (ECAP9).
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Appendix
Appendix
The corpus relevant to this article can be identified using the following search parameters in the advanced fuzzy search of philpapers.org. My argument does not depend on generalizations about this corpus, nor does my argument permit strong generalizations about this corpus. I give the search parameters in full to encourage investigations that allow such generalizations.
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Must appear: (group* plural* collecti* corporati*) (action* agen* behavio* mind* intentional* representatio* cogniti*)
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Excellent indicators: “group agency” “group mind” “group minds” “group agent” “group cognitive” “collective mind”
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Good indicators: “collective action” “groups with minds” “collective intentional” “collective intentionality” “collective representation” “group cognition”
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Irrelevance: Stit Anscomb* Dewey Husserl Heidegger Rousseau Ricoeur Theolog* Thomist* consciou* phenomen* coloni* duties history epistemi* religio* Lowith Scheler Stein Obligations Responsibility Aesthetics “group rights” “moral agency” photography african awareness team* memory introduction feasibility children legislat* plan*
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Year: 2003–2018
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professional authors only
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published only
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Minimal relevance: 5
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Himmelreich, J. Existence, really? Tacit disagreements about “existence” in disputes about group minds and corporate agents. Synthese 198, 4939–4953 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02379-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02379-3