Groups with minds of their own

Philip N. Pettit

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Philosophy and Theoretical Science Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics Critical Realism in Sociology

Abstract

There is a type of organisation found in certain collectivities that makes them into subjects in their own right, giving them a way of being minded that is starkly discontinuous with the mentality of their members. This claim in social ontology is strong enough to ground talk of such collectivities as entities that are psychologically autonomous and that constitute institutional persons. Yet, unlike some traditional doctrines (Runciman 1997), it does not spring from a rejection of common sense. This paper shows that the claim is supported by the implications of a distinctive social paradox — the discursive dilemma — and is consistent with a denial that our minds are subsumed in a higher form of Geist or in any variety of collective consciousness. Although the paper generates a rich, metaphysical brew, the ingredients it deploys all come from austere and sober analysis. The paper is in six sections. In the first I introduce the doctrinal paradox, a predicament recently identified in jurisprudence, and in the second I explain how it generalises to constitute the discursive dilemma. In the third section I show that that dilemma is going to arise for any group or gouping — henceforth I shall just say, group — that espouses or avows purposes, and that such purposive collectivities are bound to resolve it by imposing the discipline of reason at the collective rather than the individual level. In the fourth and fifth sections I argue that groups of this kind — social integrates, as I call them — will constitute intentional and personal subjects. Then in the sixth and last section I look briefly at how we should think of the relationship between institutional persons of this kind and the natural persons who sustain them.

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References

2018ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF A SOCIAL REALITY 1984Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories 1999From metaphysics to ethics: a defence of conceptual analysis 1989On social facts 1984Collective and Corporate Responsibility 2018What the Tortoise Said to Achilles 1986Unpacking the Court 1993The One and the Many: Adjudication in Collegial Courts

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