Redundant Group Agency

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 364-384
Author(s):  
Lars J. K. Moen
Keyword(s):  
False Beliefs ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
Group Agent ◽  
Group Members

According to group-agent realism, treating groups as agents with their own intentional states, irreducible to those of the group members, helps us explain and predict the groups’ behavior. This paper challenges this view. When groups judge logically interconnected propositions, group members often have incentives to misrepresent their beliefs concerning propositions they care less about in order to increase the probability of their groups adopting their view of propositions they consider more important. Aggregating such untruthful judgments may lead to the group forming false beliefs. Treating groups as agents will then not help us explain or predict their behavior.

scholarly journals Three Conceptions of Group-Based Reasons

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
Christopher Woodard
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
Relevant Group ◽  
Relevant Pattern ◽  
What Matters

AbstractGroup-based reasons are reasons to play one’s part in some pattern of action that the members of some group could perform, because of the good features of the pattern. This paper discusses three broad conceptions of such reasons. According to the agency-first conception, there are no group-based reasons in cases where the relevant group is not or would not be itself an agent. According to the behaviour-first conception, what matters is that the other members of the group would play their parts in the relevant pattern, not whether they would have the cooperative intentional states constitutive of group agency in doing so. This paper argues against these conceptions and in favour of the powers-first conception, according to which what matters is that the members of the group have practically relevant powers.

scholarly journals Collective Intentionality

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marija Jankovic ◽  
Kirk Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Social Ontology ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
Psychological Features ◽  
Action Intention

Collective intentionality concerns the intentionality of groups or collectives. Intentionality is the property of being about, directed at, oriented toward, or representing objects, events, properties, and states of affairs. Examples of intentional states (states with intentionality, not just intentions) are belief, desire, hope, intention, admiration, perception, guilt, love, grief, fear, and so on. Collective intentionality involves joint, shared, or group intentionality and the intentionality of members (qua members) of groups that have joint or shared attitudes. More broadly, the study of collective intentionality concerns forms of intentionality that underpin social reality. What is distinctive about the study of collective intentionality within the broader study of social interactions and structures is its focus on the conceptual, ontological, and psychological features of joint or shared actions and attitudes, that is, actions and attitudes of (or apparent attributions of such to) groups or collectives, their relations to individual actions and attitudes, and their implications for the nature of social groups and their functioning. It subsumes collective action, intention, thought, reasoning, emotion, phenomenology, decision-making, responsibility, knowledge, trust, rationality, cooperation, competition, and related issues, and how these underpin social practices, conventions, institutions, and social ontology. The two main theoretical questions in the study of collective intentionality concern the ontology and psychology of collective agency and collective attitudes. The main ontological question is whether we should admit into our ontology group subjects of intentional states or attribute intentionality only to their members. The main psychological questions are, if we admit group subjects of intentional states, first, how to understand what they come to, whether they are the same or different than the intentional states we attribute to individuals and if different exactly how, and, second, what is special about the attitudes of individuals who participate in group action or whose attitudes underpin attributions of intentionality to groups? More specifically, can we understand what is special about the attitudes of individuals who participate in group agency or sustain the potential for group agency in terms of concepts already available in our understanding of individual agency, or must we introduce new concepts either of the modes of intending, believing, etc., or in the contents of such attitudes? Both questions concern the debate between methodological individualists and holists about the social, the first with respect to its ontology, the second with respect to its ideology.

scholarly journals Determining our Destiny: Do Restrictions to Collective Autonomy Fuel Collective Action?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Kachanoff ◽  
Nour Kteily ◽  
Thomas Khullar ◽  
Hyun Joon Park ◽  
Donald Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Group Identification ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
System Justification ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
Power Group ◽  
Group Members

Groups experience collective autonomy restriction whenever they perceive that other groups attempt to limit the freedom of their group to determine and express its own identity. We argue that collective autonomy restriction motivates groups (both structurally advantaged and disadvantaged) to improve their power position within the social hierarchy. Four studies spanning real-world (Studies 1 and 2) and lab-based (Studies 3 and 4) intergroup contexts supported these ideas. In Study 1 (N=311), Black Americans’ (a relatively disadvantaged group) experience of collective autonomy restriction was associated with greater support for collective action, and less system justification. In Study 2, we replicated these findings with another sample of Black Americans (N=292). We also found that collective autonomy restriction was positively associated with White Americans’ (a relatively advantaged group, N=294) support for collective action and ideologies that bolster White’s dominant position. In Study 3 (N=387, 97 groups), groups that were susceptible to being controlled by a high-power group (i.e., were of low structural power) desired group power more when their collective autonomy was restricted (versus supported). In Study 4 (N=803, 257 groups) experiencing collective autonomy restriction (versus support) increased low-power group members’ support of collective action, decreased system justification, and evoked hostile emotions, both when groups were and were not materially exploited (by being tasked with more than their fair share of work). Across studies, we differentiate collective autonomy restriction from structural group power, other forms of injustice, group agency, and group identification. These findings indicate that collective autonomy restriction uniquely motivates collective behavior.

scholarly journals Bratman, Searle, and Simplicity. A comment on Bratman, Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Petersson
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Intentional States ◽  
Shared Agency ◽  
Central Claim

AbstractMichael Bratman’s work is established as one of the most important philosophical approaches to group agency so far, and Shared Agency, A Planning Theory of Acting Together confirms that impression. In this paper I attempt to challenge the book’s central claim that considerations of theoretical simplicity will favor Bratman’s theory of collective action over its main rivals. I do that, firstly, by questioning whether there must be a fundamental difference in kind between Searle style we-intentions and I-intentions within that type of framework. If not, Searle’s type of theory need not be less qualitatively parsimonious than Bratman’s. This hangs on how we understand the notions of modes and contents of intentional states, and the relations between modes, contents, and categorizations of such states. Secondly, by questioning whether Bratman’s theory steers clear of debunking or dismissing collectivity. Elsewhere I have claimed that the manoeuvres Bratman suggested to avoid circularity in his conceptual analysis (in 1992 and 1997) undermine the strength of his resulting notion of collective action. Bratman responds in detail to this objection in his new book and I return to the issue towards the end of the paper.

GROUP AGENCY AND EPISTEMIC DEPENDENCY

Episteme ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Dewitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Dependence ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Agency Model ◽  
Group Agent ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Group Agents

AbstractModern epistemic questions have largely been focused around the individual and her ability to acquire knowledge autonomously. More recently epistemologists have begun to look more broadly in providing accounts of knowledge by considering its social context, where the individual depends on others for true beliefs. Hardwig explains the effect of this shift starkly, arguing that to reject epistemic dependency is to deny certain true beliefs widely held throughout society and, more specifically, it is to deny that science and scholarship can provide true belief. Alternatively, Hardwig argues that beliefs could be granted to communities or groups but denied to individuals. This paper approaches these broad assertions using a group agency model from List and Pettit. Through a discussion of the ‘epistemic desideratum’ of group agents, I conclude that List and Pettit give us reason to accept some of Hardwig's concerns, but that attributing beliefs to groups does not require us to deny them to individuals, rather an individual can use a group agent as a source of epistemic dependence.

scholarly journals Eliminating Group Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Lars J. K. Moen
Keyword(s):  
Gain Control ◽  
Attitude Formation ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Group Agent ◽  
Interacting Agents ◽  
Social Explanations

Abstract Aggregating individuals’ consistent attitudes might produce inconsistent collective attitudes. Some groups therefore need the capacity to form attitudes that are irreducible to those of their members. Such groups, group-agent realists argue, are agents in control of their own attitude formation. In this paper, however, I show how group-agent realism overlooks the important fact that groups consist of strategically interacting agents. Only by eliminating group agency from our social explanations can we see how individuals vote strategically to gain control of their groups and produce collective attitudes we cannot make sense of if we treat groups as agents.

scholarly journals Opinion Aggregation and Individual Expertise

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Martini ◽  
Jan Sprenger
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitudes ◽  
Management Science ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Group Agency ◽  
Opinion Aggregation ◽  
Group Judgment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Empirical Perspective ◽  
Group Members

Group judgments are often influenced by their members’ individual expertise. It is less clear, though, how individual expertise should affect the group judgments. This chapter surveys a wide range of models of opinion aggregation and group judgment: models where all group members have the same impact on the group judgment, models that take into account differences in individual accuracy, and models where group members revise their beliefs as a function of their mutual respect. The scope of these models covers the aggregation of propositional attitudes, probability functions, and numerical estimates. By comparing these different kinds of models and contrasting them with findings in psychology, management science, and the expert judgment literature, the chapter provides a better understanding of the role of expertise in group agency, both from a theoretical and from an empirical perspective.

The power of norms to sway fused group members

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winnifred R. Louis ◽  
Craig McGarty ◽  
Emma F. Thomas ◽  
Catherine E. Amiot ◽  
Fathali M. Moghaddam
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Anthropology ◽  
Normative Systems ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Identity Fusion ◽  
Group Members

AbstractWhitehouse adapts insights from evolutionary anthropology to interpret extreme self-sacrifice through the concept of identity fusion. The model neglects the role of normative systems in shaping behaviors, especially in relation to violent extremism. In peaceful groups, increasing fusion will actually decrease extremism. Groups collectively appraise threats and opportunities, actively debate action options, and rarely choose violence toward self or others.

Stuttering-Related Podcasts: Audio-Based Self-Help for People Who Stutter

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 1131-1138
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Dignazio ◽  
Megan M. Kenny ◽  
Erik X. Raj ◽  
Kyle D. Pelkey
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Support Group ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
Group Leaders ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Group Members

Purpose It is known that people who stutter (PWS) benefit from self-help experiences, such as attending support groups or conferences. However, limited research has been done to explore the listening of stuttering-related podcasts as a form of self-help for PWS. This study seeks to understand the reasons why PWS listen to stuttering-related podcasts and provide descriptions of their listening experiences. Method Thirty-three PWS who have listened to stuttering-related podcasts were recruited to participate in an online survey that included multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Responses were analyzed and grouped into descriptive themes. Results Participants reported listening to stuttering-related podcasts as a way to gain information and perspective. They also reported experiences that fit themes of empowerment and camaraderie, as a result of listening. Conclusions Stuttering-related podcasts seem to be a positive self-help tool for PWS. Stuttering support group leaders and/or speech-language pathologists may consider introducing their group members or clients who stutter to this type of audio-based self-help experience.

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