A Beginner’s Guide to Group Minds

Abstract

Conventional wisdom in the philosophy of mind holds (1) that minds are exclusively possessed by individuals and (2) that 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 and associated closely with the brain; no parts of the brain that are constitutive of a human mind are considered capable of having a mind. 1 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. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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