Collectivity And Circularity

Journal of Philosophy 104 (3):138-156 (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

According to a common claim, a necessary condition for a collective action (as opposed to a mere set of intertwined or parallel actions) to take place is that the notion of collective action figures in the content of each participant’s attitudes. Insofar as this claim is part of a conceptual analysis, it gives rise to a circularity challenge that has been explicitly addressed by Michael Bratman and Christopher Kutz.1 I will briefly show how the problem arises within Bratman’s and Kutz’s analyses, and then proceed to criticize some possible responses, including the ones proposed by Bratman and Kutz. My conclusion is that in order to avoid circularity and retain the features that are supposed to make this sort of account attractive, we need a notion of collectivity that does not presuppose intention. I suggest that we should make a distinction between collective and noncollective activity merely in terms of dispositions and causal agency. There are independent reasons to think that we actually possess such a distinct causal conception of collectivity. It is not necessary for the participants in a jointly intentional collective action to possess a stronger notion of their intended collective activity than this. In particular, they do not need to possess the concept of a jointly intentional collective action.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,783

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Two conceptions of collectivity.Mariam Thalos - 2008 - Journal of the Philosophy of History 2 (1):83-104.
Reflective Knowledge and Epistemic Circularity.C. S. I. Jenkins - 2011 - Philosophical Papers 40 (3):305-325.
Keeping the collectivity in mind?Harry Collins, Andy Clark & Jeff Shrager - 2008 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 7 (3):353-374.
The Yablo Paradox: An Essay on Circularity.Roy T. Cook - 2012 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Is Descartes's reasoning viciously circular?Markus Lammenranta - 2006 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 14 (2):323 – 330.
Name-bearing, reference, and circularity.Aidan Gray - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 171 (2):207-231.
Epistemic Circularity: Vicious, Virtuous and Benign.John Greco - 2011 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 1 (2):105-112.
Is Epistemic Circularity Bad?Matthias Steup - 2013 - Res Philosophica 90 (2):215-235.
When does circularity matter?Rosanna Keefe - 2002 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (3):253–270.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
182 (#107,704)

6 months
23 (#119,283)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Björn Petersson
Lund University

Citations of this work

Essentially Shared Obligations.Gunnar Björnsson - 2014 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 38 (1):103-120.
Joint actions and group agents.Philip Pettit & David Schweikard - 2006 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (1):18-39.
Modest sociality and the distinctiveness of intention.Michael E. Bratman - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 144 (1):149-165.
Collective Intentionality.David P. Schweikard & Hans Bernhard Schmid - 2012 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

View all 32 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references