Replies To Critics of the Construction of Social Reality

Abstract

Hornsby is correct in seeing I take collective intentionality as a fundamental notion in my analysis of social reality. It is, as she says, basic, pervasive, and crucial. On my account the concept cannot be reduced to of individual intentionality. That is, I think We-intentions cannot be reduced to I-intentions. It is not quite correct to say I think that philosophers have failed to understand the social world because they have posed a false about collective intentionality. In fact I think this is only part of the story, and there are other reasons for the failure. But certainly, I believe there is a false dilemma of the sort she points out. The problem, as she is right in seeing, is I need an account of collective intentionality which is consistent with methodological individualism. I need an account which is consistent with, for example, the definition of methodological individualism which she quotes from Popper. On my view, the existence of collective intentionality as a psychological primitive in the individual heads of individual agents does not commit one to a primitive ontology of actual human collectives. On the contrary, the basic ontology is of individual human organisms and their mental states. The collective arises from the fact collective intentionality is in the individual heads of individual organisms. The actual social collective consists entirely of individual agents with collective intentionality in their heads, nothing more. Ontologically speaking, collective intentionality gives rise to the collective, and not the other way round. Another way to put this point in a more epistemic vein, would be to say I could have all the collective intentionality I could want in my head and still be radically mistaken. The fact I have a we-intention does not by itself imply other people share my we-