HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALIST

Abstract

AbstractIn Group Agency, List and Pettit (L&P) defend ‘non-redundant realism’ about group agency, a view on which (A) facts about group agents are not ‘readily reducible’ to facts about individuals, and (B) the dependence of group agents on individuals is so holistic that one cannot predict facts about group agents on the basis of facts about their members. This paper undermines L&P's case in three stages. §1 shows that L&P's core argument is invalid. L&P infer (A) and (B) from two facts: (1) that group agents must often believe what few members personally believe, and (2) that a group agent's beliefs in certain propositions must often ‘depend on’ member attitudes to distinct propositions. I note that (2) is ambiguous, and that the only true reading of it is irrelevant to the status of (A). I argue further that (1) cannot support (A), since a group agent's belief in P may neatly constitutively depend on member attitudes to P that are weaker than personal belief. §2 makes this idea concrete with a plausible toy theory of group belief that implies it. While this kind of theory is popular in the literature on joint belief, L&P never discuss it – a striking fact, since it explains why (1) is true. Having made these points, I turn to argue in §3 that (B) is either false or uncontroversial.