Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:34:47.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALIST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2012

Kurt L. Sylvan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Group Agency, List and Pettit (L&P) defend ‘non-redundant realism’ about group agency, a view on which (A) facts about group agents are not ‘readily reducible’ to facts about individuals, and (B) the dependence of group agents on individuals is so holistic that one cannot predict facts about group agents on the basis of facts about their members. This paper undermines L&P's case in three stages. §1 shows that L&P's core argument is invalid. L&P infer (A) and (B) from two facts: (1) that group agents must often believe what few members personally believe, and (2) that a group agent's beliefs in certain propositions must often ‘depend on’ member attitudes to distinct propositions. I note that (2) is ambiguous, and that the only true reading of it is irrelevant to the status of (A). I argue further that (1) cannot support (A), since a group agent's belief in P may neatly constitutively depend on member attitudes to P that are weaker than personal belief. §2 makes this idea concrete with a plausible toy theory of group belief that implies it. While this kind of theory is popular in the literature on joint belief, L&P never discuss it – a striking fact, since it explains why (1) is true. Having made these points, I turn to argue in §3 that (B) is either false or uncontroversial.

Type
Symposium on Christian List and Phillip Pettit, Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents
Information
Episteme , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 271 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bratman, M. 1992. ‘Acceptance and Practical Reasoning in a Context.’ Mind, 101: 327–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bratman, M. 1999. Faces of Intention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, L. J. 1992. An Essay on Belief and Acceptance. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gilbert, M. 1989. On Social Facts. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gilbert, M. 1996. Living Together. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Gilbert, M. 2002. ‘Belief and Acceptance as Features of Groups.’ Protosociology, 16: 35–69.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 1969. Convention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
List, C., and Pettit, P. 2002. ‘Aggregating Sets of Judgments: An Impossibility Result.’ Economics and Philosophy, 38: 89–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, C., and Pettit, P. 2011. Group Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pettit, P. 2007. ‘Rationality, Reasoning and Group Agency.’ Dialectica, 61(4): 495–519.Google Scholar
Pettit, P. 2009. ‘The Reality of Group Agents.’ In Mantzavinos, C. (ed.), Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pettit, P., and Schweikard, D. 2006. ‘Joint Actions and Group Agents.’ Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 36: 18–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. 1990. ‘Collective Intentions and Actions.’ In Cohen, P., Morgan, J. and Pollack, M. E. (eds), Intentions in Communication. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Searle, J. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, R. 1984. Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tuomela, R. 1992. ‘Group Beliefs.’ Synthese, 91: 285–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuomela, R. 1995. The Importance of Us. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Tuomela, R. 2007. The Philosophy of Sociality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar