13. Collective Intentionality and Recognition from Others Arto Laitinen Abstract: This paper approaches questions of collective intentionality by drawing inspiration from theories of recognition (e.g. Honneth 1995, Ricoeur 2005, Bran-dom 2007). After some remarks about “recognition” and “groups” the paper ex-amines whether the kind of dependence on recognition that holds of individual agents is equally true of group agents. In the debates on collective intentionality it is often stressed that the identity, existence, ethos, and membership-issues of the group are up to the group to decide (e.g. Tuomela 2007). The members collectively accept (recognize) status functions, goals and beliefs for the group. This paper asks whether this thesis of ”forgroupness” should be re-evaluated: could the status functions, goals and beliefs be in some significant sense ”for others” as well? Can the group be dependent on others’ takes? 1. Introduction In the debates on collective intentionality it is often stressed that the identity, existence, ethos and membership-issues of the group are up to the group to decide. By debates on collective intentionality and social ontology I refer to the debates where for example the following have played a formative role: Bratman 1999, 2007; Gilbert 1989, 1996, 2000, 2006; Lagerspetz et al. 2001; Lewis 1969; Miller 2001; Pettit 1993, 2001; Pettit and List 2011; Searle 1995, 2010; Tuomela 1984, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2007. The members collectively accept or recognize status functions, goals and beliefs for the group (see Tuomela 2007, 15). This exploratory paper asks whether this thesis of “forgroupness” should be re-evaluated: can the status functions, goals and beliefs be in some significant sense “for others” as well? Can the group be constitutively dependent on others’ takes? This paper approaches questions discussed in the debates about collective intentionality by drawing inspiration from theories of mutual recognition. E.g. Hegel 1807; Brandom 2007; v. d. Brink and D. Owen 2007; Deranty 2009; Gutmann 1994; Fraser and Honneth 2003; Honneth 1995, 2007; Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2011; Pinkard 1994; Pippin 1989, 2008; Redding 1996; Ricoeur 2005; Schmidt am Busch and Zurn 2010; Siep 1979; Taylor 1992; Thompson 2006; Wildt 1982; Williams 1997. After some conceptual remarks about “recognition”, the paper asks whether the same points that can be said about the dependence of individual thinkers or agents or persons on recognition apply to group thinkers or agents as well. Thus the paper focuses on whether group agents need recognition from outside. And if they do, do they need it more specifically in order to exist at all, or to have recognized deontic statuses, or to have a functioning “relation to self”? The idea of a group’s relation-to-self derives from an analogy with individuals: it is often stressed that for individuals, respect from others is necessary for self-respect, esteem from others enhances self-esteem, and so on (Honneth 1995). This paper suggests that a group’s implicit relation-to-self can be said to consist of the ”attitudinal climate” among its members, but the group also has an explicit “realm of concern”, “intentional horizon” and an “ethos” (Tuomela 2007, p.15). It will be examined below whether and how these implicit and explicit self-relations depend on recognition from outsiders. It is perhaps worth pointing out that the paper leaves out of discussion various other relations of recognition such as recognition between the members, or recognition between the group and its members, and the paper does not elaborate on the nature of groups as recognizers. The focus will be on how “ordinary” collective intentionality might depend on recognition from outside the relevant group, whose intentions or beliefs or other attitudes are at stake. 2. “Recognition” in the relevant sense and why it matters In one meaning of the word, recognition can mean mere identification and re-identification of anything as the thing it is, or the kind of thing it is. This can be a purely non-normative usage (see Ricoeur 2005; Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2007). There are three further usages that are normatively loaded, and which are of interest to the debates on collective identity. These differ on whether the target of recognition is a normative entity (principle, reason, value, rule, a right, a duty etc), in which case recognition is not a matter of merely identifying the normative entity, but a matter of taking the principle, value, reason as valid. We can reserve the word acknowledgement for this usage. The principles so acknowledged may include moral principles, which according to moral realists are valid whether or not so acknowledged. It is a substantive debate between realists and constructivists whether all reasons, principles and normative entities exist dependently on acknowledgement (Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2007; Laitinen 2011). By contrast, what for example John Searle (1995, 2010) and Raimo Tuomela (2002, 2007) call collective “recognition” or “acceptance” concerns institutions. There is significant consensus on the fact that institutions are in one way or another made by humans. What such collective acceptance or recognition involves is a matter of debate, and one can perhaps approach it in a roundabout way: acceptance or recognition in this sense refers to those kinds of “taking and treating” which collectively bring institutions into existence and sustain them in existence. Searle (2010, p. 8) has recently stated that he prefers the word “recognition” as it does not suggest that “approval” is necessarily involved. As this paper distinguishes between several meanings of “recognition” the term “acceptance” can be reserved for the kind of acceptance or recognition relevant to the existence of institutions. While such “recognition” or “acceptance” is closely related to social norms, and to the reasons for action that institutions create, it seems that “acknowledgement” of principles differs from the “acceptance” that creates institutions: the normative principles may be taken to be valid independently of acknowledgement, whereas the relevant kind of acceptance will be necessary for the existence of institutions, and for the social norms and reasons that come with the institutions. So, for example, it is possible to hold that moral rights are valid independently from acknowledgement, but that legal and institutional rights depend on acceptance for their existence. (Laitinen 2011) There is finally the important sense of “recognition” where the recognized ones are recognizers themselves: individual persons or possibly groups (Honneth 1995; Brandom 2007; Ricoeur 2005; Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2007). This is the central sense of recognition used in such slogans as “mutual recognition” or “struggles for recognition”. It goes beyond mere identification, and may partly consist of acknowledgement of claims (say, rights), including claims dependent on institutional acceptance. Respect, esteem and concern for other persons are central forms of recognition in this sense. They are “recognitive attitudes”, or ways of taking and treating others more or less adequately in light of their normatively relevant features. All persons are worthy of respect, or claim respect from others, based on the mere fact that they are persons. Recognizing others, respecting them, is partly a matter of acknowledging the validity of the normative claims that the others’ personhood generates. Further, their merits make them worthy of esteem from others. (Such merits may concern for example service in an institutional role, which nicely illustrates how adequate recognition of persons takes place in the context of institutions, which in turn depend on acceptance in the sense given above). As needy, vulnerable beings capable of well-being or suffering, human persons call for care or love or empathy from each other—and it has been suggested that mutual concern is an emotional form of mutual recognition. It is this sense of recognition between persons or groups, respect, esteem, concern (in contrast to mere identification of anything, or acknowledgement of validity, or acceptance of institutions) that is centrally at stake in the philosophy of mutual recognition (Zurn and Schmidt am Busch 2010; Thompson 2006; Ikäheimo and Laitinen 2011). Being recognized in this relevant sense as a responsible agent, capable of autonomy, or as a possessor of merits, or as one of “us” matters to people’s lives in many ways. Here are five claims that will serve as the background for this paper: Recognition from others is, first of all, arguably constitutive of personhood, and thus necessary for anyone’s existence as a person. Among the necessary conditions of personhood is that one be recognized by others; or so at least some theories argue. There are rival theories of the nature of persons which do not take this to be necessary, but the claim is however familiar, and quite widely held by theorists from different traditions (from Hegel 1807 to Dennett 1978). This paper studies whether the claim is equally plausible concerning groups, especially group agents, or whether it loses all of its plausibility when applied to them. Secondly, recognition is relevant for one’s deontic or normative statuses. Even when not recognized, persons may have some moral and normative status which creates requirements for others to recognize them, but additionally, they may have deontic statuses which depend on them so being recognized: for example, being granted a citizenship, or a role or an office is a matter of being recognized, and it brings with it new rights and normative statuses. Thirdly, recognition from others is intimately dynamically (causally and intelligibly) intertwined to an agent’s relations to self. Respect from others affects one’s self-respect, esteem from others affects one’s self-esteem et cetera. This seems to be a deep fact about the human psychology, and it is understandable why it is so. This paper will ask whether something analogous is true of groups, or whether this is one of the disanalogies between individuals and groups. Fourthly, recognition from others is a feature that affects one’s agentic capacities or competences via such self-relations. One can be paralyzed or dysfunctional when one lacks the courage to say “no” to others or when one suffers from a sense of inferiority to others: that is, without sufficient self-respect or self-confidence one may cease to function as an agent. So one further question concerning groups is whether something analogous might be true of them. A fifth point worth stressing is that recognition from others is not directly constitutive of self-relations. The views of others (about the agent, or about anything else for that matter) do not directly constitute the agent’s views—it is crucial that the agent’s views and other’s views are ontologically separate and in principle can conflict and be a source of tensions and struggles. Despite the intimate connection and influence, the relationship is not a direct constitutive one. Again, the paper will discuss whether this is so concerning collective intentionality at the group-level as well. After some remarks on the nature of groups, the paper will discuss these points in more detail. 3. Groups Groups come in many shapes and sizes. In order for a collectivity to be capable of collective intentionality, it must be a group agent, “an integrate” (say, have some decision-making or opinion- and will-formation mechanism), not merely “an aggregate”—say a factual subset of agents (the extension of some intensional definition—say, the lefthanded males born in Boston), nor merely a socially (externally) constructed or labelled “grouping” (say, a race). See e.g. Pettit 2001; Tuomela 2007; Gilbert 1989; Pettit and List 2011. One issue is whether group agents can be group persons. That of course depends on what is meant by personhood. A reason for not regarding group agents as persons is that they are not full blown moral persons in the sense of having a serious right to life (Tooley 1972). I will accordingly here assume merely that there are group agents, which do not have a totally separate mind of their own, but which have collective intentions and function in a sufficiently organized way so that for example responsibility can be ascribed to the group. Thus they may be moral agents, and have a moral standing of some sort (they may have various rights), but do not have the significant standing of persons (e.g. they do not have a serious right to life). It is possible that two groups have exactly the same members. This is because group agents have not only members, but also a constitutive structure (related to its ethos), and historical and modal properties, which serve to distinguish two groups with the same members. As is often pointed out, a group can remain the same group even if its members change, in the same way that an organism can remain the same even if it is composed of different matter (different atoms) at different points of time. See e.g. Wiggins 2001; van Inwagen 1990. Interestingly, van Inwagen illuminates the ontology of biological organisms with an analogy to an institutional entity, an empire, pp. 170–81. Furthermore, two groups with a different ethos are different groups even though they would have the same members (the members of a hiring committee of a company might also form a jazz band in their free time). These considerations suggest that the ethos (the central goals and commitments of the group) is the group’s constitutive structure—analogously to the structure of an organism that remains the same despite changes in the matter that it is composed of. On the other hand, things are complicated by the fact that a group as a “continuant” may change at least some elements of its ethos and yet remain the same group (a sports club can be the same club even if it adds new kinds of sport to its repertoire, and drops off others). Furthermore, it is possible that there are different groups with exactly similar ethos. Typically they will then have different members, and so they cannot be the same group (any seemingly two things must necessarily be qualitatively indiscernible for them to be candidates for being numerically one and the same thing). As an interesting borderline case, one may ask whether there could be two groups with the same ethos and the same members. This depends on how the notion of “ethos” is cashed out in more precise terms. Say, the Finnish national soccer team and the Finnish national soccer team for under 21 year olds might in principle have the same members and a qualitatively similar ethos, but nonetheless they would differ in their modal properties: the former could in principle include older players but the latter could not. Their “constitution” rules different things out (although realistically speaking, this is bound to be reflected in their “ethos”.) This example serves to highlight the fact that modal and historical properties may need to be invoked, in keeping track of the numerical identity of the group. Concerning the ontology of material beings, it has been argued that even if a lump of bronze and a statue constituted by it may share the same spatio-temporal location, they differ in their historical and modal properties: the lump can survive flattening, but the statue cannot, and the lump typically is older than the statue (Baker 2000). Similarly, two groups (such as the two football teams discussed above) with different histories and different modal properties are indeed two different entities, even if they would have the same members, and share the same ethos. In any case, all group agents have not only members and modal and historical properties but an ethos, consisting of its central goals and commitments. More precisely, we can follow Tuomela (2007, p. 15) and say that a group agent has a “realm of concern”, “intentional horizon”, and an “ethos”. The “realm of concern” consists of the questions (including practical matters) of interest to the group—in contrast to the group’s “intentional horizon” which consists of the answers collectively accepted in the name of the group— the group’s official views as it were. The ethos consists, roughly, of the central elements of the group’s realm of concern and intentional horizon—of its central goals and commitments (below, a closer look at how “ethos” relates to the realm of concern and to the intentional horizon will be taken). Given this distinction we can see that groups are typically partly individuated by their realm of concern, by what kind of group is in question. The library committee and the hiring committee can be two groups with same members but different realms of concern. The fact that they have same members does not turn them into the same group, as they are groups for different purposes: one has the task of deciding and finding information about issues relevant to the library, the other about issues relevant to hiring. The groups can further be individuated by their intentional horizon, by the answers they accept to the questions—typically political parties may share their realm of concern with other political parties but differ in the kinds of answers they accept and the kinds of views they hold. Individuals do not have a constitutive “realm of concern”—they may be more or less interested in various things, but they can in principle have views about anything. There may be a limit to how complex things they can understand (and these limits can be stretched by studying etc), and there may be normative limits, issues that are “none of their business” (for reasons of privacy etc). Now groups, being constructed for some purpose or another, or being multi-purpose groups for sharing most aspects of life, do have a realm of concern. There is some appeal in the idea that some group cannot (officially) have views on a totally unrelated subject matter—that there are some normative constitutive bounds. But then again, perhaps the realm of concern simply broadens when a group successfully forms views on some matters. In the literature it is typically assumed that the realm of concern, intentional horizon and ethos are self-constructed by the group. Below, we will take a closer look at how each of these concepts is perhaps shaped “dialogically” in relations of recognition. Further, among the members there is an (unofficial) “attitudinal climate”, which also may be shaped in relation to recognition from outside. 4. Recognition from outside and the existence of groups Insofar as there are group agents, we can ask whether recognition from outside is similarly constitutive of group agency as it is constitutive of individual personhood. We can start with issues of existence. Can there be group agents devoid of any recognition from outside at all? Whatever plausibility the claim concerning the necessity of recognition has concerning individuals, it seems to lose it completely concerning groups. Secret societies, for example a secret society of stamp collectors (Tuomela 2007, p. 21), provide a knock down argument against the view that there cannot be groups without recognition from outside. All it takes is that the members relate to each other in certain ways, and have an ethos and a realm of concern, and can function as members of the group. No one else, no support from outside, is needed. It is thus rather obvious then that there are independent, unrecognized groups, secret societies being a clear case in point. Could the whole of humanity be a group agent that is not recognized from the outside? To the extent that it is a group agent, it could, in a very interesting sense—otherwise it is a mere grouping or “aggregate” and not of interest to this paper as it does not have collective attitudes. But in principle it could also happen that the group including all humans would be recognized by some other subgroup whose members are humans. Perhaps there could even be two groups which both have all humans as their members, but which have a different ethos and serve a different purpose. These two groups could recognize each other from the outside—as the groups would not be each other’s members, their views would not come from within the group—and even send letters to one another. Cf. Wiggins’s 2001, p. 35 example about one officer sending a letter to another, even if both roles happen to be occupied by the same human being. I thank an anonymous referee for the question. Individual human beings are not born with fully formed capacities, but group agents seem to be. The group supervenes or depends upon its members, who have a variety of capacities and abilities. The group agent is, in a manner of speaking, a capable adult agent since day one. For example, it can be said to master a natural language, or several, because its members do so. It needs no socialization from outside, like human individuals do—who in getting socialized acquire rich relations of recognition to others. A group can come to exist without any such relations to others—relations between its members suffice for its existence. (There are, to be sure, puzzles about the collective intentional states that count as the group’s states. One puzzle is the problem of the first belief: a newly constituted group does not have any commitments when it comes to existence. Then it is somehow supposed to make its first commitment, without any background of prior commitments. The puzzle is whether we can make sense of a believer with only one belief.) Such independent unrecognized groups provide a clearest case of pure “forgroupness”. Any of the group’s matters are up to the group, for the group to decide, including the decision whether to keep on existing or not. The division of labour or authority within the group is a matter of internal relations of recognition, but no recognition from outside is needed. For the purpose of drawing a contrast with other kinds of cases we can compare these independent groups to the main character (Descartes) in a joke. Descartes is sitting at a bar, so the joke goes, when the bartender asks whether he’d like another drink. Descartes responds “I think not”, and vanishes into thin air. Of course, the joke does not get Descartes’ philosophy right, but it might get some theories about groups right: these theories make it seem like the existence of groups depends solely on whether the group (often the relevant members of the group) keeps thinking, or collectively accepting, that the group still exists. However, a closer look will suggest that not all groups are like this. There may be externally dependent groups, which essentially must be recognized: nothing is a group of that kind without due recognition. For example, nothing is an independent sovereign state without recognition from other states. Nothing is a business corporation, a registered association, or a married couple without being recognized by some relevant authority. Groups of this kind do not come to existence or cease to exist merely by the relevant members thinking so: affirmation from outside is needed. To be a group of that kind is not only “for the group”, it is constitutively “for others” as well. Switzerland is a state not only for the Swiss; Heikki and Ming-Chen are a married couple for others as well, and not only in their own minds; the Finnish philosophical society is recognized at least by some registrar of the Finnish state; and Nokia is recognized as a business corporation by various countries. Legally recognized associations cannot come to existence or cease to exist on their own will—at least the relevant kind of notice to the registrar is needed. Legal recognition is sufficient for the existence of an otherwise dormant group—say, the registrar might think the group still needs to fulfill some of its commitments and debts before it lets it cease to exist. Thus we have independent groups on the one hand, and externally dependent groups on the other. There may also be interesting intermediate cases, such as groups, which come to existence as independent groups, and then take on various duties, obligations and responsibilities towards other parties. Because of these responsibilities, they owe it to the other party that they fulfill them—and it would be wrong of them to decide to cease to exist without fulfilling the responsibilities. It is possible to argue that as long as the responsibilities are recognized by the outsider party, and the group continues to be capable of functioning as a group agent, the recognized normative role keeps the group in existence. Human individuals cease to exist when they die in the biological sense, but groups cease to exist on the basis of intentional and social factors. Thus, there is room to argue that also an initially independent group may be kept in existence by the recognition from outside, if the group has by its deeds given the outsider party some “normative say” or “normative power” concerning the matter—and one form which this normative power can take is the power to determine whether some obligation, duty or responsibility is satisfactorily fulfilled, so that the outsider party no longer has a claim against the group. Thus, continuous recognition of an unmet moral responsibility might be sufficient to keep an otherwise dormant group in existence. Another kind of intermediate case could be a group which is an externally dependent group to begin with, but then the outsider party grants the group independence. After that, it is up to the group to decide whether to continue in existence. We will return to such cases below, when we discuss other core aspects of the group phenomena, over and above the issue of existence. Before moving on, it is worth noting that even though in the cases of externally dependent groups (such as business corporations, registered associations, married couples) the “forgroupness” principle does not hold concerning the existence of the group in question, there is typically a broader context, a group or a society where a constitutive rule is accepted: “something is a married couple only if …”, “something is a business corporation only if …” and so on. Thus, the “forgroupness” feature may hold concerning this wider society, but within it, the smaller unit in question (say, a married couple) is dependent on recognition from outside. 5. Recognition from others and deontic statuses Let us turn next to normative issues of deontic status. Typically there are not only constitutive rules accepted in the wider society but also regulative rules concerning how to treat such smaller groups as married couples. For example, concerning marriages, the members of the society in their relevant dealings and expectations recognize a couple as married and thus refrain from certain kinds of interpersonal relationships (e.g. refrain from romantic interludes out of respect for the marriage) and engage in others (e.g. invite couples to events together); and the married couple is also recognized by the state which sees marriage as making a difference for the rights and responsibilities of the individuals. In these cases there are regulative rules of how to take and treat others—and cases of treating them in these ways are importantly cases of recognition. Taking such cases into account enables us to see how such group items as married couples are multiply recognized by others in the social context. This kind of recognition of the “deontic statuses” (rights and responsibilities) of groups makes a huge difference to the practical relevance of such deontic statuses, but may also be necessary for the group even to have the deontic statuses in question. Moral realists argue that individual persons have a moral status independently of whether others recognize such statuses. We can grant that here in order to draw a contrast: it is not clear whether groups have such moral standings, or any deontic statuses, independently of recognition or instituting or granting—at least acquiring institutional rights is a matter of being recognized. Perhaps there is an independently valid demand for others to respect a group’s ethos, which derives from the demand to respect the members’ autonomy. But it is an open possibility that groups have deontic statuses only by being recognized. Furthermore, independently of how the deontic statuses have arisen, it is a contingent issue whether such statuses will in fact be sufficiently respected by others. Thus, recognition from others will make a difference to how the deontic statuses actually work. While secret societies were the prime example of independent groups (and independence seems to have a positive connotation—independence certainly sounds good), here one of the crucial downsides of secrecy comes to fore. Others cannot be in a position to respect a secret group’s ethos. (Note that known, but formally independent groups can have such a status—such as a stamp collectors’ club which is not secret, but retains all the normative say concerning its own matters). The norms on how to take and treat a group concern how others, outsiders, regard the group in their practical reasoning and more immediate reactions—they are norms of recognition. In many contexts, such deontic statuses are the most important way in which recognition from outside matters to groups. 6. The self-understandings of the group and recognition from outside: the attitudinal climate, the realm of concern, the intentional horizon and the ethos Having now discussed issues of existence and deontic statuses, let us next turn to issues of self-relations and self-definitions. As mentioned above, concerning individuals, self-esteem and self-respect depend on esteem and respect from others, and affect their agentic competences in social surroundings (Honneth 1992). Concerning groups we can point out first of all that how outsiders perceive the worth of the activities of the group affects the (private) attitudes of the members towards the group: how motivated they are to function as members of this group especially when there are obstacles. The level of commitment, identification or solidarity of the members may depend on how highly others think of the group. Such informal “for-otherness” can be highly relevant to both formally independent and dependent groups. The attitudinal climate among members depends in understandable ways on recognition from outside. Among the members, there is an attitudinal climate concerning the importance of the group (how vital is it from the viewpoint of the daily life, well-being or meaning of life of the members?; does it have a special mission or calling in realizing certain values or functions for wider society or humanity?), capabilities of the group (what kinds of power does the group possess? what kind of power-in-common do the members have?; will they be able to “stick together” in their pursuit of demanding or important goals?), evaluative qualities that the group may have and the members and others may want it to have (how just, respectful towards the rights of all members and internal minorities, democratic, well-organized, pleasant, solidaristic, internally divided etc. is it?). Similarly, there is an external attitudinal environment concerning the importance, capabilities and evaluative qualities of the group—and this external attitudinal climate consists of the environment of recognitive attitudes directed at the group in question. And just like in the case of individuals, the implicit self-understanding of the group is dependent on recognition from others. So the first point to note is that the functioning of any group depends on the attitudinal and motivational climate, the “morale” or “group spirit” among the members, concerning the importance, capabilities and evaluative qualities of the group. And recognition from outside concerning the importance, capabilities and evaluative qualities of the group may dynamically affect the “morale” of the group and thus the functioning of the group. Secondly, any group agent will have a “realm of concern” (Tuomela 2007, p. 15). This realm of concern consists of the questions (including practical matters) of interest to the group—in contrast to the group’s “intentional horizon” which consists of the answers collectively accepted in the name of the group. Here, too, the difference between dependent and independent groups is relevant: the realm of concern is not always for the group to determine. Think of a committee whose tasks are fixed before its members are chosen, and whose members do not have the normative say over the tasks of the committee. Such a committee is dependent on how such tasks are defined from outside. By contrast, other groups, such as the secret stamp collectors’ club can be free to make up and revise its realm of concern. Again, we can ask whether in the case of dependent groups, the idea of “forgroupness” can be held concerning a larger group: say, the larger organization which sets the tasks for its library committee, and its hiring committee. Such a move seems possible, but it does not seem to threaten the idea that nonetheless, the library committee and hiring committee are genuine cases of externally dependent groups—they are real groups and not merely aspects of the larger group. Here, the intermediate category of a group which starts as a dependent group but acquires independence by being recognized as an independent group seems very relevant: the group may gain some more normative say over its own realm of concern, if the external group recognizes its independence. Thirdly, what about the group’s “intentional horizon”? Perhaps surprisingly, the intentional horizon is categorically very different from the realm of concern when it comes to recognition. An intentional horizon consists of the answers (including intentions) the group accepts, the actual stands it takes on the issues in its realm of concern. For example, the library committee may prefer some option X to some option Y. Here it seems that a categorical stand is available: to be the group’s views, they have to be accepted by the group itself (via its members or representatives); not from outside. Interestingly, all group agents must in this respect be independent groups, if they are to have views at all. Theories of recognition concerning individuals concur on this point: A’s views are sometimes in tension, or in struggle with B’s views, so there cannot be a direct constitutive connection. The connection between the adopted views, and views of outsiders may be very intimate, but it cannot be a constitutive relation. Fourthly, what should we say about the ethos of the group? Can it be externally dependent? Here one may in fact expect a clash of intuitions among theorists: their considered opinions may remain divided, if we accept the sharp difference that the previous two points create between the realm of concern and the intentional horizon. On the one hand, it makes good sense to assume that the group’s ethos is a subset of its intentional horizon and that a group can define its ethos only itself. Indeed, if ethos is a subset of the intentional horizon, and intentional horizon is always self-defined by the group, then ethos is also self-defined. On the other hand, it also makes sense to assume that the central questions of the realm of concern, the tasks that provide the raison d’etre of the group, are a crucial constitutive part of the group’s ethos. And then, in the case of committees whose tasks have been defined from the outside, part of the ethos of the committee has been defined from the outside. Defenders of the first view may hold that the committee acquires an ethos only when its members collectively accept the externally defined realm of concern, and decide to affirm and take on the tasks posed from outside (to give a contemporary example from Egypt or Libya: an army unit, which rebels against tasks given from outside, defines its ethos by itself, and so its ethos has not been defined from outside.) But the defenders of the second view may say that in many cases we cannot draw such a distinction: each member may accept the given tasks when he or she is nominated to the committee, and no collective acceptance need take place before the ethos is fixed “by default” as it were. All and all, equally good arguments seem to suggest that that ethos is a subset of the intentional horizon on the one hand, and that ethos includes the realm of concern (which may be defined from outside). Thus, discussing the issues of self-understandings of groups from the viewpoint of recognition yields somewhat surprising conceptual results: the realm of concern is sharply different from the intentional horizon when it comes to possible dependence from outside recognition, and both of the notions are intimately related to the notion of the group. These three notions (realm of concern, intentional horizon, ethos) comprise the group’s official self-understandings, and on top of them, any group will have an informal attitudinal climate, which is indirectly relevant to the group’s capacity to act. 7. Conclusions The paper has explored whether recognition from others plays a role for collective intentionality and the ontology of groups. The conclusion is that recognition from others may be of constitutive relevance (in the dependent and intermediate cases) and functional relevance (in all cases). Finally, it could be asked (indeed, an anonymous referee did ask) whether one must adopt a non-reductive view of groups to accept the claims of this paper. Or could a reductive account defend the same set of claims? It seems that most of the claims are independent of claims about the ontological status of groups. The only clear exception is the ontological issue of coming to exist and ceasing to exist. If one holds a view on which groups do not literally exist, then their coming to exist and ceasing to exist do not literally take place either, so recognition cannot make a difference in that respect. Especially concerning the issues of existence and realm of concern the distinction between independent and externally dependent groups proved to be central. The very fact that there are such dependent groups challenges the idea of pure “forgroupness”, but that idea can perhaps be preserved by pointing out that in these cases there is always a broader context or wider society “to whom” the issues of determining the existence and realm of concern of a group fall. The issue of the deontic statuses of the group is primarily “for others” and not “for the group”. By contrast the intentional horizon is always self-determined, and primarily “for the group”—even though it is for others as well in the sense that others may respect the group’s views and ethos in their behavior and attitudes. The informal attitudinal climate among the members is always more or less open to influences from outside—and this climate makes a big difference to how motivated the group members are to act for the group reasons created by the ethos of the group. I would like to thank the participants of the Collective Intentionality VII conference at Basel 2010, August 23–26, as well as Raul Hakli, Matti Heinonen, Onni Hirvonen, Heikki Ikäheimo, Byron Kaldis, Kaarlo Miller, Pekka Mäkelä, Mikko Salmela, David Schweikard, Maj Tuomela, Raimo Tuomela and an anonymous referee for their comments. References Baker, L. R. 2000. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brandom, R. 1994. Making it Explicit. Reason, Representing and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. –––. 2007. “The Structure of Desire and Recognition.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 33(1): 127–50. Bratman, M. 1999. Faces of Intention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. –––. 2007. Structures of Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van den Brink, B. and Owen, D. eds., Recognition and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dennett, D. 1978. “Conditions of Personhood.” In: Brainstorms. 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