From extended mind to collective mind (original) (raw)
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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.
Many philosophers share the strong intuition that mental or cognitive properties should be attributed at exactly one level of organization: the individual organism. In particular, individual human beings are considered to be the paradigmatic subjects of mental properties. However, many highly prized activities in our species are accomplished only when we think and act together in groups. Can a group constitute a cognitive system—a mind—in its own right? The so-called “group mind” thesis was a popular fixture in the intellectual landscape of the late 19th and early 20th century (Wilson, 2004). It crystallized the idea of a group as a collective agent, and its gestalt as an emergent whole that is more than the sum of its parts. To its own detriment, many traditional formulations of this idea remained highly speculative and often bordered on the occult. As a result, the “group mind” concept quickly fell out of favor with the rise of behaviorism in psychology, since it remained unclear where the “group mind” was supposed to reside, and how we could measure it (Wegner, 1986). One way to summarize the precarious ontological status of group minds is in the form of the following dilemma. If the group mind is nothing over and above the collection of individual minds and their interactions, an appeal to group minds appears to be redundant. However, if the group mind is something over and above all these things, it appears to imply a collective version of mind-body dualism. This raises the familiar question of how the group mind exercises its causal influence on group members. Some bizarre answers were suggested in response to this problem, such as the putative mediation of a genetic “ectoplasm” (Jung, 1922) or telepathic communication (McDougall, 1920). In sum, neither horn of the dilemma makes the idea of group minds seem very attractive. However, roughly fifty years after the “cognitive revolution” in psychology, the idea that groups can have cognitive properties of their own has gained new ascendancy in a wide range of disciplines concerned with group behavior. Rather than engaging in abstract arguments about the possibility of “group minds,” contemporary appeals to group cognition have typically tied their claims to particular kinds of psychological predicates. For instance, social psychologists studying memory, problem-solving, and decision-making in small groups have based their work on a view of groups as adaptive information-processing systems in their own right (Wegner et al., 1985; Cicourel, 1990; Larsen & Christensen, 1993; Hinsz et al., 1997; Propp, 1999; Stasser, 1999; Mohammed & Dumville, 2001; Lewis, 2003; Goldstone & Gureckis, 2009). Organizational scientists have studied the memory and learning processes of firms and organizations (Sandelands & Stablein, 1987; Walsh & Ungson, 1991; Argote, 1999). Sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have found it useful to express generalizations about social groups in terms of their collective memory (Burke, 1989; Le Goff, 1992). Economists and political scientists continue to explore the relationships between individual and group rationality in the arena of judgment aggregation (Pettit, 2003; List, 2003, 2010). Evolutionary biologists have revived the idea that groups can evolve into adaptive units of cognition as a result of group-selection (D.S. Wilson, 1997, 2002; D.S. Wilson, van Vugt, & O’Gorman, 2008). Recent studies of animal behavior have revealed a number of collective decision-making mechanisms that are shared across a wide range of group types such as swarming ants, schooling fish, flocking birds, and also humans (Hölldobler & E.O. Wilson, 1990; Seeley, 1995; Bonabeau, Dorigo, & Theraulaz, 1999; Couzin, 2009). The framework of distributed cognition has been used to study the dynamics of collaborative work practices which are socially, technologically, and temporally distributed, and whose coordination is mediated by rich situational, material, and organizational constraints. (Hutchins, 1995a, 1995b; Hollan, Hutchins, & Kirsh, 2000). The framework of distributed cognition has recently been embraced by some philosophers of science as a unifying framework to overcome the present hiatus between “rationalist” and “social-constructionist” approaches to scientific cognition (Giere, 2002, 2005; Giere & Moffat, 2003; Nersessian, 2006). The term “crowdsourcing” has been coined to describe ways of leveraging Web 2.0 technologies for the purposes of mass collaboration (Howe, 2006; Shirky, 2008). Finally, philosophers seeking a conceptual analysis of collective intentionality—such as collective beliefs, intentions, and responsibilities—have tied their accounts to the recognition of groups as intentional subjects in their own right (Gilbert, 1989; Velleman, 1997; Schmitt, 2003; Tollefsen, 2004; List, 2010).
A Beginner’s Guide to Group Minds
Theiner, G. (2014). A Beginner’s Guide to Group Minds. In J. Kallestrup & M. Sprevak (Eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mind (pp. 301-322). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
"Conventional wisdom in the philosophy of mind holds that (1) minds are exclusively possessed by individuals, and that (2) no constitutive part of a mind can have a mind of its own. For example, the paradigmatic minds of human beings are in the purview of individual organisms, associated closely with their brains, and no parts of the brain that are constitutive of a human mind are considered as capable of having a mind. Let us refer to the conjunction of (1) and (2) as standard individualism about minds (SIAM). Put succinctly, SIAM says that all minds are singular minds. This conflicts with the group mind thesis (GMT), understood as the claim that there are collective types of minds that comprise two or more singular minds among their constitutive parts. The related concept of group cognition refers to psychological states, processes, or capacities that are attributes of such collective minds. In recent years, the once-discredited concept of group cognition has shown definite signs of a comeback in the social sciences, some regions of cognitive science, and among philosophers concerned with collective agency. However, there are important differences among their respective views of why some psychological property should count as a group level phenomenon. If we want to understand these differences, it is critical that we develop a shared ‘lingua franca’ that we can use to taxonomize different variants of group cognition. It is the goal of my paper to contribute to this larger enterprise. The paper is organized as follows. First, I elaborate on the distinction between singular and group minds, and draw a distinction between hive cognition, collective cognition, and socially distributed cognition. Then I briefly clarify the concept of mind that we can plausibly take to be at play in the present debate. In the rest of the paper, I sketch an analysis of the emergent character of socially distributed cognition that is free from the metaphysical shackles of vitalism. I close with a few remarks on the idea that there are multiple levels of cognition."
Can Collectives Cognize? Taking Seriously the Idea of Group Cognition
Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, 2010
The study of collective cognition has taken many forms in recent years; however, few have confronted the foundational ideas underlying group mentality directly. The current work uses foundational debates in philosophy and the social sciences to propose a model as a meta-theoretical heuristic to orient studies of collective cognition.
Collective Intentionality (Syllabus)
In this course, we survey contemporary treatments of collective intentionality. Situated amidst discussions of agency and intentionality in a social context, collective intentionality broadly refers to the kind of intentionality that allows people to experience, act, or think about something together, or as a group. Collective intentionality is manifested in a variety of phenomena. For example, joint attention is a basic form of intersubjective awareness of the world as perceptually available in the pursuit of shared engagements. Shared intentions allow people to carry out collaborative activities and tasks in a coordinated and cooperative manner. Collective acceptance is a key mechanism for the creation and maintenance of symbolic realities such as language, institutions, and power relations. Collective beliefs provide a common ground of normative commitments to regulate shared deliberative and evaluative practices. The power of collective emotions to fuel social conflicts, or to unite people, is evident from the history of mass gatherings, public rituals, and political movements. It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which collective intentionality permeates the social and cultural fabric of our lives. But what exactly does it mean to ascribe intentionality to people 'as a group' – provided that collective intentionality is not just a shorthand for the ‘summative’ or ‘aggregate’ intentionality of individuals? The distinctive focus of the philosophical analysis of collective intentionality rests on the conceptual, metaphysical, psychological, and normative features which underlie the 'joint' or 'shared' character of experiences, actions, and attitudes, and the related question of how these features help constitute the social world. The resurgence of interest in collective intentionality began in the late 1980s, and substantially expanded in the 1990s, thanks mostly to the pioneering work of John Searle, Margaret Gilbert, Michael Bratman, and Raimo Tuomela. Today, collective intentionality is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary area of philosophical research which draws on, and has left its mark on, social ontology and epistemology, phenomenology, psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, sociology, political science, economics, legal theory, and cultural and evolutionary anthropology. Our goal in this course is to compare and contrast leading theories of collective intentionality by delving into specific debates over the nature of joint attention, collective intentions and beliefs, collective acceptance and shared evaluative attitudes, collective emotions, collective knowledge and rationality, as well as collective agency and responsibility.
Empirical Arguments for Group Minds: A Critical Appraisal
Philosophy Compass, 2011
This entry addresses the question of group minds, by focusing specifically on empirical arguments for group cognition and group cognitive states. Two kinds of positive argument are presented and critically evaluated: the argument from individually unintended effects and the argument from functional similarity. A general argument against group cognition -which appeals to Occam's razor -is also discussed. In the end, much turns on the identification of a mark of the cognitive; proposed marks are briefly (and inconclusively) surveyed in the final section.
Consciousness, Belief, and the Group Mind Hypothesis
Synthese
According to the Group Mind Hypothesis, a group can have beliefs over and above the beliefs of the individual members of the group. Some maintain that there can be group mentality of this kind in the absence of any group-level phenomenal consciousness. We present a challenge to the latter view. First, we argue that a state is not a belief unless the owner of the state is disposed to access the state’s content in a corresponding conscious judgment. Thus, if there is no such thing as group consciousness, then we cannot literally ascribe beliefs to groups. Secondly, we respond to an objection that appeals to the distinction between ‘access consciousness’ and ‘phenomenal consciousness’. According to the objection, the notion of consciousness appealed to in our argument must be access consciousness, whereas our argument is only effective if it is about phenomenal consciousness. In response, we question both parts of the objection. Our argument can still be effective provided there are reasons to believe a system or creature cannot have access consciousness if it lacks phenomenal consciousness altogether. Moreover, our argument for the necessary accessibility to consciousness of beliefs does concern phenomenal consciousness.