Abstract
We use a deontic logic of collective agency to study reducibility questions about collective agency and collective obligations. The logic that is at the basis of our study is a multi-modal logic in the tradition of stit (‘sees to it that’) logics of agency. Our full formal language has constants for collective and individual deontic admissibility, modalities for collective and individual agency, and modalities for collective and individual obligations. We classify its twenty-seven sublanguages in terms of their expressive power. This classification enables us to investigate reducibility relations between collective deontic admissibility, collective agency, and collective obligations, on the one hand, and individual deontic admissibility, individual agency, and individual obligations, on the other.
Highlights
In the philosophy of the social sciences, individualism is the methodological precept that any social phenomenon is to be explained in terms of the actions and interactions of individuals
Does it hold that for every statement about collectives there is a logically equivalent statement about individuals? In this paper, we use techniques from modal logic to find answers to specific reducibility questions, including: Does it hold that for every statement about collective agency there is a logically equivalent statement about individual
We rephrase the reducibility questions as questions of expressivity: Can statements from a specific language that includes specific statements about collectives be expressed with statements from another language? We follow standard practice in modal logic and develop new notions of bisimulation to determine the answers to these questions of expressivity
Summary
In the philosophy of the social sciences, individualism is the methodological precept that any social phenomenon is to be explained in terms of the actions and interactions of individuals. One of the central questions in the debate on individualism is whether statements about collectives can be reduced to statements about individuals. Does it hold that for every statement about collectives there is a logically equivalent statement about individuals? We use techniques from modal logic to find answers to specific reducibility questions, including: Does it hold that for every statement about collective agency there is a logically equivalent statement about individual Does it hold that for every statement about collectives there is a logically equivalent statement about individuals? In this paper, we use techniques from modal logic to find answers to specific reducibility questions, including: Does it hold that for every statement about collective agency there is a logically equivalent statement about individual
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