Abstracts
Gabriel Sandu (University of Helsinki) -Raimo Tuomela's analysis of joint intentions; some problems and challenges
The most important ingredient in Raimo Tuomela's analysis of collective actions is his notion of joint intentions. This notion is not reducible to individual intentions. I will discuss some of the problems related to its logical analysis.
Adrian Miroiu (S.N.S.P.A)-Individuals and groups: a view from social choice theory
I discuss some formalizations in social choice theory (SCT) of the concept of higher order group decisions, i.e., decisions taken in groups that have other groups as members. Then I argue that some concepts used in we-mode reasoning can be expressed in such a formal framework. A number of examples are given, to make clearer the arguments and also to test the relevance of the concepts. I focus on examples from both political science literature and real life.
Pekka Mäkelä (University of Helsinki)- Agency and Collective Responsibility
In this talk I will discuss my collaboration with Raimo Tuomela on the topic of collective responsibility. As a starting point for this discussion I draw on our joint paper which turned out to be Tuomela’s last published work. The paper focuses on the following questions: 1) When is an action attributable to a group as its action ?, 2) Under what conditions do the actions by the members of the group generate action attributable to the group?, 3) What does it mean that the group bears responsibility for its action?, and 4) Under what conditions is it justified to hold the group responsible for the actions performed by the members of the group? In addition to unfolding the view and position for which we tried to argue I will discuss some philosophical tensions Tuomela and I had between us, some paths of research inspired by joint work with Tuomela, and if time allows spend some time wondering why we did not discuss certain issues related to collective responsibility which we perhaps should have.
Makowski, Piotr (University of Warsaw)-Shared intentions in the Coleman Boat
In philosophy of the social sciences, the Coleman Boat represents the structure of reductive explanations of social or organizational phenomena. Assuming that theories of collective intentionality may be an interesting part of the micro-macro explanations in the social sciences, it seems that there is a room for reductive accounts of collective intentionality to be integrated into the reductive explanations of social and organizational phenomena. At least, there is a puzzle of how to combine theories of collective intentionality with philosophy of the social sciences.
Focusing on the case of the project of micro-foundations of organizational routines, in my talk I will try to map the most important conceptual and methodological challenges related to this question.
Raul Hakli (University of Helsinki)
The role of team reasoning in collective intentionality can be understood in two different ways. According to one understanding, represented by Michael Bacharach, Robert Sugden, and Natalie Gold, team reasoning is a method of practical reasoning that results in the formation of collective intentions. According to another understanding, represented by Raimo Tuomela and his collaborators, team reasoning is a method of practical reasoning that starts from collective intentions and therefore presupposes them. I will employ the latter understanding to study the question of what is collective in collective agency and intentionality. Theories of collective intentionality are standardly divided into subject accounts (defended, e.g., by Gilbert and Schmid), mode accounts (defended, e.g., by Tuomela and Searle), and content accounts (defended, e.g., by Bratman and Ludwig). I will argue that team reasoning cannot be formulated in terms of content accounts, but only in terms of mode and subject accounts that allow attribution of collective intentional states to groups. Hence, if team reasoning is in fact a mode of reasoning that people actually employ, it supports mode and subject accounts of collective intentionality over content accounts. Furthermore, mode accounts make more modest ontological assumptions and may therefore be preferable to subject accounts.
Herlinde Pauer-Studer (University of Vienna)