Group Minds Research Articles

A Theory of Collective Virtue

We introduce Imitationism, a new theory of collective virtue—that is, of virtues and vices held by collectives such as corporations and governments. This theory has the advantage of clearly explaining how collectives can have virtues in robustly nonreductive ways without appealing to group minds. We then use this theory to elucidate some examples of collective virtue and respond to some objections.

Group Minds in Ancient Narrative

Abstract The present article adopts a cognitive approach to examine the representation of group minds in ancient narrative and show the specific purposes to which they are put. Herodian’s History of the Roman Empire, a work that illustrates the social and collective dimension of mental functioning, is chosen as a case study. After a brief exposition of the state of research on collective minds in narratology and literature, the present study first discusses the formation of group minds and their stability or mutability over the course of Herodian’s narrative. The next section explores the internal dynamics of group minds, focusing especially on instances of splitting which helpfully illuminate the problematic nature of the Roman principate after Marcus’ death. The final section draws on contemporary theories of philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences and examines the way and extent that Herodian’s groups can be considered as ‘intentional agents’. In this regard, it is proposed that Herodian represents an approach to group agency that prefigures modern theory of ‘interpretivism’. Overall, the article suggests a novel way of studying ancient narrative, one that reconciles narratological and cognitive analysis with historical and political considerations by revealing the constitutive role of group minds in various aspects of the ancient social world.

Introspection in Group Minds, Disunities of Consciousness, and Indiscrete Persons

Kammerer and Frankish (this issue) challenge us to expand our conception of introspection beyond neurotypical human cases. This article describes a possible 'ancillary mind' modelled on a system envisioned in Leckie's (2013) science fiction novel Ancillary Justice. The ancillary mind constitutes a borderline case between a communicating group of individuals and a single, spatially distributed mind. It occupies a grey zone with respect to personal identity and subject individuation, neither determinately one person or subject nor determinately many persons or subjects, and thus some of its processes might be neither determinately introspection within a mind nor determinately communication between minds. If ancillary minds defy discrete countability, the same might be true for some actual minds on Earth. Kammerer and Frankish's research programme can be extended to include not only the study of possible forms of introspection, but also the study of possible mental activity intermediate between introspection and communication.

The meta-metaphysics of group beliefs: in search of alternatives

The aim of this paper is to argue that our understanding of the issue of institutional group minds might be broadened if we consider alternative meta-metaphysical frameworks to those which are presently presupposed in the field. I argue that the two major camps in the contemporary philosophical debate about group beliefs, namely strong realism and eliminative reductionism, share a commitment to some form of meta-philosophical realism. Two alternative metaontological frameworks for the discussion of the issue of group belief are outlined: fictionalism and deflationism. Fictionalism about group minds, although unpopular in the philosophical debate, is still a much-discussed option in legal theory and the theory of the firm in economics. I argue that, once formulated properly, the fictionalist position deserves serious consideration. The other alternative option is deflationism: I develop a sketch of the deflationary approach to group beliefs that is based on Thomasson’s approach to the existence of groups. The final parts of the paper are devoted to a discussion of the resulting four-element classification of the possible views on the reality of group minds: realism, eliminative reductionism, fictionalism, and deflationism. I offer some proposals with regard to the criteria that might be used to choose between these theories.

Entre Nous: Charles Taylor’s Social Ontology

ABSTRACT This article discusses Charles Taylor’s philosophy of human sociality, focusing especially on Taylor’s analysis of what happens, when a linguistic exchange or conversation starts. On his view, a shared space emerges, in which some object or topic is irreducibly ‘for us’, entre nous, not merely ‘for me’ and ‘for you,’. When something is brought to our shared attention, a ‘we’ is at the same time created. This article asks, first, how this differs from mutual recognition of others as candidate conversation partners, and from joint commitments, which bind the parties and structure further joint action. The article argues, against Margaret Gilbert, that these are three different phenomena highlighting different aspects of human sociality. Secondly, the article discusses the nature of the ‘we’: does the irreducibility claim commit Taylor to a view of plural subjects or ‘group minds’? Thirdly, the article outlines two possible readings of a ‘shared space’: one posits an emergent social layer and another an emergence of a ‘conversationally extended mind’. Both are possible interpretations of Taylor’s account, while neither is committed to a notorious phenomenal group mind or to a more demanding rational unity -view (Carol Rovane). Taylor’s ‘entre nous’ offers a distinct perspective, of continuing relevance.

Myths and Facts on Corona, Myths Related to Cure, Drugs, Measures

As of late toward the finish of 2019, another illness was found in Wuhan, China. This illness was analyzed to be brought about by another kind of Covid and influenced nearly the entire world. Chinese scientists named this novel infection as 2019-nCov or Wuhan-Covid. Notwithstanding, to try not to misjudge the World Health Organization commotions it as COVID-19 infection while interfacing with the media COVID-19 is new internationally just as in India. This has upset peoples and group minds. There are different gossips and tidbits about the Covid in Indian culture which causes alarm in neighborhoods and people group minds. It is the need of society to know legends and realities about Covid to lessen the frenzy and make the correct preparatory moves for our security against the Covid. Subsequently, this article attempts to bring to the open fantasies and present current realities to the ordinary citizens. We have to confirm fantasies spreading through online media and keep our selves prepared with realities and be confident of what we know and do at this COVID 19 era at individual levels. Fitting these activities in individual minds across nations is bound to benefit the whole world.

Group minds as extended minds

Despite clear overlap between the study of extended minds and the study of group minds, these research programs have largely been carried out independently. Moreover, whereas proponents of the extended mind thesis straightforwardly advocate the view that there are, literally, extended mental states, proponents of the group mind thesis tend to be more circumspect. Even those who advocate for some version of the thesis that groups are the subjects of mental states often concede that this thesis is true only in some loose or metaphorical sense. I argue that this imbalance is a mistake. A literal interpretation of the group mind thesis is no less plausible than the extended mind thesis, because group minds are particularly defensible instances of extended minds. However, the extended mind thesis, and the view that group minds are extended minds, are defensible only following a revision of the extended mind thesis.

Extended self

In this paper I aim to show that in the debate about the nature of the self one concept, the concept of the cognitive self, has a theoretical primacy over other conceptual alternatives because of its connection with the concept of a person in the debate about personal identity. Consequently, I will offer a defence of the hypothesis that the Extended Mind thesis implies the Extended Cognitive Self thesis if we additionally assume Parfit?s Psychological criterium of personal identity. After I consider several counterarguments to the claim that the Extended Mind implies the Extended Self, I will offer their criticism and show that they either distort the original Extended Mind thesis or introduce hardly defensible metaphysical assumptions. To one such assumption, that claims that one mind can contain another, I will pay special attention. By careful examination it will be shown that such assumption can be kept only if the relation between the mereologically connected minds is such that prevents psychological continuity between them, while it has to be abandoned if there is a psychological continuity between such minds because it would produce numerous problems such as the problem of too many thinkers, the proliferation of minds, the concept of the person would become useless, etc. Also, these considerations will lead us to the clear demarcation line between those approaches that claim the possibility of group minds and those that claim that there are extended minds. Their key difference will be in taking contrary stances towards the relation of psychological continuity when it comes to different wide minds and their biological constituents. This will be one of the main results of this paper, together with the defence of the Extended Cognitive Self thesis.

Existence, really? Tacit disagreements about “existence” in disputes about group minds and corporate agents

A central dispute in social ontology concerns the existence of group minds and actions. I argue that some authors in this dispute rely on rival views of existence without sufficiently acknowledging this divergence. I proceed in three steps in arguing for this claim. First, I define the phenomenon as an implicit higher-order disagreement by drawing on an analysis of verbal disputes. Second, I distinguish two theories of existence—the theory-commitments view and the truthmaker view—in both their eliminativist and their constructivist variants. Third, I examine individual contributions to the dispute about the existence of group minds and actions to argue that these contributions have an implicit higher-order disagreement. This paper serves two purposes. First, it is a study to apply recent advances in meta-ontology. Second, it contributes to the debate on social ontology by illustrating how meta-ontology matters for social ontology.

Group Minds and Natural Kinds

Group Minds and Natural Kinds

Extended mind, functionalism and personal identity

In this paper, I address one recent objection to Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s functionalist argument for the extended mind thesis (EM). This objection is posed by Kengo Miyazono, who claims that they unjustifiably identify the original cognitive subject with the hybrid one in order to reach their conclusion about the mind extension. His attack consists of three steps: (a) distinguishing hybrid from traditional cognitive subjects based on the systems reply originally directed at Searle’s Chinese room argument; (b) pointing out that the conclusion of the functionalist argument for EM must be rephrased to state that there are hybrid, and not extended, systems with widely realized mental states; and (c) arguing that functionalist EM cannot justify the assumption about the identity of these two kinds of subjects without circularity. I argue that Miyazono’s main argument is ill-founded but that it, nevertheless, points out one important issue, namely, that we need further justification of the identity assumption, without which EM loses much of its flavor. Thus, I am going to challenge Miyazono’s argument, provide a reinterpretation of the argumentation in the EM debate, defend the possibility of wide and extended selves, and offer a justification of the identity assumption, which I find crucial not only for vindicating EM but also for differentiating EM from other similar theses, such as the thesis about group minds.

The Problem of Other (Group) Minds (Response to Schwitzgebel)

In recent papers, Eric Schwitzgebel (Philosophical Studies, 172, 1697-1721, 2015, Philosophia, 44, 877-883, 2016) argues that if physicalism is true, then the United States is probably conscious. My primary aim here is to demonstrate that the source of Schwitzgebel’s conditional argument is the “Problem of Other Minds,” which is a general problem; wherefore, Schwitzgebel’s conclusion should be revised and applied not only to physicalism, but to most contemporary theories of the mind. I analyze the difference between Schwitzgebel’s argument and other arguments against functionalism, arguing that the difference between them is rooted in referring to the causal role of the whole system, rather than referring to the casual role of the system’s parts. This key difference between functionalism and behaviorism explains why the source of Schwitzgebel’s argument stems from the problem of other minds. I conclude that however counterintuitive from a metaphysical point of view, the United States may have its own stream of consciousness, but it has nothing to do with physicalism in particular.

The Dynamics of Group Cognition

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the postulation of irreducible, distributed cognitive systems (or group minds as they are also known in the literature) is necessary for the successful explanatory practice of cognitive science and sociology. Towards this end, and with an eye specifically on the phenomenon of distributed cognition, the debate over reductionism versus emergence is examined from the perspective of Dynamical Systems Theory (DST). The motivation for this novel approach is threefold. Firstly, DST is particularly popular amongst cognitive scientists who work on modelling collective behaviors. Secondly, DST can deliver two distinct arguments in support of the claim that the presence of mutual interactions between group members necessitates the postulation of the corresponding group entity. Thirdly, DST can also provide a succinct understanding of the way group entities exert downward causation on their individual members. The outcome is a naturalist account of the emergent, and thereby irreducible, nature of distributed cognitive systems that avoids the reductionists' threat of epiphenomenalism, while being well in line with materialism.

Group Minds and Explanatory Simplicity

AbstractThis paper explores the claim that explanation of a group's behaviour in term of individual mental states is, in principle, superior to explanation of that behaviour in terms of group mental states. We focus on the supposition that individual-level explanation is superior because it is simpler than group-level explanation. In this paper, we consider three different simplicity metrics. We argue that on none of those metrics does individual-level explanation achieve greater simplicity than a group-level alternative. We conclude that an argument against group minds should not lay weight on concerns of explanatory simplicity.

Study on Urban Roadside Landscape with the Procedure of Permanent Urban Planning

In past, the urban roadside was the connector joint of the inside manmade landscape and outside natural landscape. Disorganization of spatial hierarchical in physical system of the cities due to be modernized, has caused that the urban roadside landscapes have been unidentified and encountered to disorganization. The urban roadside landscape is the first space that the travelers are visiting. Therefore, this space must be effective information of group minds and their mental imaginations. Later, through expansion of cities to harbor areas, the locations which those squares and boulevards where, are urban roadside landscape now, will be located therein, and will be further converted to an urban difficulty. Therefore, a type of foresight is necessary for decreasing the difficulties of the permanent future structure. In this article, urban landscapes are studied with consideration to the permanency principles. Results of the research are presented as strengthening components of permanent development dimensions in order to design the urban roadside landscapes. This research is in the type of fundamental and the research methodology type is descriptive-analytical.

There are No Primitive We-Intentions

John Searle’s account of collective intentions in action appears to have all the theoretical pros of the non-reductivist view on collective intentionality without the metaphysical cons of committing to the existence of group minds. According to Searle, when we collectively intend to do something together, we intend to cooperate in order to reach a collective goal. Intentions in the first-person plural form therefore have a particular psychological form or mode, for the we-intender conceives of his or her intended actions as singular contributions by means of which – or: by way of which – a collective goal is pursued. Accordingly, we-intentions are held to have a psychological mode with a “collective goal by means of (viz. by way of) singular contribution” structure, which makes them primitive and irreducible to intentions in the I-form. It is further contended that, albeit primitive and irreducible, we-intentions are not the mental states of an alleged group mind but always of an individual’s mind. This paper targets Searle’s claim of irreducibility by developing an argument whose aim is to show that, pace Searle, it is possible to track the idea of intentions with a psychological mode structured in terms of “collective goal by means of (viz. by way of) singular contribution” back to the concept of intentions in the I-form. The argument mainly relies on the idea that Searle’s technical expressions “being a collective goal by means of singular contribution intention in action” or “being a collective goal by way of singular contribution intention in action” are susceptible to conceptual analysis. The upshot of this analysis is that we-intentions can be reduced to complex bundles of mental states, all of which come in the first-person singular form. If this argument is sound, Searlean we-intentions do not belong to a primitive kind of mental states.

Group Minds and the Case of Wikipedia

Group-level cognitive states are widely observed in human social systems, but their discussion is often ruled out a priori in quantitative approaches. In this paper, we show how reference to the irreducible mental states and psychological dynamics of a group is necessary to make sense of large scale social phenomena. We introduce the problem of mental boundaries by reference to a classic problem in the evolution of cooperation. We then provide an explicit quantitative example drawn from ongoing work on cooperation and conflict among Wikipedia editors. We show the limitations of methodological individualism, and the substantial benefits that come from being able to refer to collective intentions and attributions of cognitive states of the form "what the group believes" and "what the group values".

Perspectives

Seven recent papers are explored in this Perspectives column selected for the insights they provide into cross-cultural working, the effect of culture on meetings conduct, the role of Intranets in enabling learning about organizational culture. Closely linked to these topics are articles on the creation of trust in virtual teams and how multidisciplinary teams may move from their different knowledge bases to develop group minds. The power of storytelling as a communication mechanism and a taxonomy of mechanisms for assessing knowledge impact complete this article.

Extending organizational cognition: A conceptual exploration of mental extension in organizations

The study of collective cognition has taken many forms in recent years, including collective managerial cognition, organizational learning, shared mental models, transactive memory and psychological climate. However, few studies have confronted the foundational ideas underlying group mentality directly, leaving the concept as largely metaphorical. The current work reviews foundational debates around the conceptual components of group minds to serve as a meta-theoretical heuristic to orient future research. To lay out this framework, conceptual distinctions are drawn between phenomenal, vehicle, content and context elements of cognition. Next, existing approaches are reframed as conjunctions of claims across the four levels, leading to a distinction between configurationalist, situated and extended views of collective cognition. Finally, future research is proposed regarding the interfaces between conceptual levels and the possibility of establishing bona fide group mental entities.

Group Minds and the Problem of the First Belief

Group Minds and the Problem of the First Belief