Joint Mental States and Quasi Agential Groups (original) (raw)

How to Share a Mind: Reconsidering the Group Mind Thesis

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (1), 99–120, 2014

Standard accounts in social ontology and the group cognition debate have typically focused on how collective modes, types and contents of intentions or representational states must be con-strued so as to constitute the jointness of the respective agents, cognizers and their engagements. However, if we take intentions, beliefs or mental representations all to instantiate some mental properties, then the more basic issue regarding such collective engagements is what it is for groups of individual minds to share a mind. Somewhat surprisingly, this very issue has not re-ceived much attention in the respective debates and when it has, typically the outlook has been skeptical or outright negative. In this paper I argue that it is epistemologically possible for a group of individuals to literally share a single mental unit. In particular, I will put forward and defend what I shall call the zombie conception of group minds.

Collective Emotions and Joint Action

Journal of Social Ontology, 2016

In contemporary philosophy of collective intentionality, emotions, feelings, moods, and sentiments do not figure prominently in debates on the explanation and justification of joint action. Received philosophical theories analyze joint action in terms of common knowledge of cognitively complex, interconnected structures of intentions and action plans of the participants. These theories admit that collective emotions sometimes give rise to joint action or more typically, unplanned and uncoordinated collective behavior that falls short of full-fledged jointly

Collective Intentions and Actions

This article begins with an intuition, a notation, and a presupposition. The intuition is: collective intentional behavior is a primitive phenomenon which cannot be analyzed as just the summation of individual intentional behavior; and collective intentions expressed in the form "we intend to do such-and-such", and, "we are doing such-and-such" are also primitive phenomena and cannot be analyzed in terms of individual intentions expressed in the form "I intend to do such-and-such" or "I am doing such-and-such". The notation is: S (p). The "S" stands for the type of psychological state, the "p" stands for the propositional content, the content which determines the conditions of satisfaction. Like all such notations, it isn't neutral; it embodies a theory. The presupposition is: all intentionality, whether collective or individual, requires a preintentional Background of mental capacities which are not themselves representational. In this case, that implies that the functioning of the phenomena represented by the notation requires a set of phenomena which cannot be represented by that notation.

From extended mind to collective mind

Cognitive Systems Research, 2006

Although the notion of collective intentionality has received considerable attention over the past decade, accounts of collective belief and intention remain individualistic. Most accounts analyze group intentional states in terms of a complex set of individual intentional states and, thus, it is individuals not groups that have intentional states. In this paper, I attempt to undermine one of the motivations for refusing to acknowledge groups as the bearers of mental states. The resistance to collective mental states is motivated by the view that mental states are located in minds and minds are in heads. Since groups do not have heads or brains, they cannot have minds or mental states. There is a significant and important thesis in cognitive science, however, which suggests that the mind is not bounded by skin and bones. If ''the mind ain't in the head'', then this removes a major barrier to the idea of collective minds.

Groups as Agents with Mental Attitudes

2004

We discuss a model of cooperation among autonomous agents, based on the attribution of mental attitudes to groups: these attitudes represent the shared beliefs and objectives and the wish to reduce the costs for the members. When agents take a decision they have to recursively model what their partners are expected to do under the assumption that they are cooperative, and they have to adopt the goals and desires attributed to the group: otherwise, they are considered by the other members uncooperative and thus liable.

Grounding Social Action and Phenomena in Mental Representations

We will present a basic ontology of social action by examining the most important forms, with special focus on pro-social forms, in particular Goal Delegation and Goal Adoption. They are the basic ingredients of exchange, cooperation, group action, and organization. We will ground this in the mental representations (beliefs and goals) of the agent in a social (inter)action: the individual social mind. We need such an analytical account of social action to provide a good scientific conceptual apparatus for social theory. We will try to show why we need mind-reading and cognitive agents (and therefore why we have to characterize cognitive levels of coordination and social action); why we need goals about the mind of the other (in interaction and in collaboration), or ‘adhesion’ and social commitment to the other; why cognition, communication and agreement are not enough for modelling and implementing cooperation; why emergent pre- cognitive structures and constraints should be formalized, and why emergent cooperation is needed also among planning and deliberative social actors.