Cognitio 2011

Abstract: Do groups have minds?  More specifically, do groups have minds distinct from the minds of the individuals of which they are composed?  One approach to answering these questions focuses on whether there are mental states, such as beliefs and desires, which cannot be reduced to the mental states of a group’s members.  If there are such non-reducible mental states, it stands to reason that there must be a mind in which they are instantiated; and if these mental stats are not instantiated in the minds of group members, it follows that there must be an irreducible, instantiating “group mind”.  If, on the other hand, there are no such irreducible mental states, if all such states can be explained by or understood in terms of individual members’ psychology, then the case for ontologically real group minds is significantly diminished.

Recently, certain philosophers interested in these questions (e.g., Corlett 1996; Gilbert 1987, 1992, 1996, 2002, 2004; Tollefsen 2002a, 2002b) have offered arguments for thinking that mental states properly belong to groups rather than individuals, based on the apparent ubiquity of collective mental state attributions in everyday vernacular.  Likewise, Phillip Pettit has further argued that such talk is ontologically grounded in psychologically autonomous entities, “groups with minds of their own.” (List & Pettit, 2006; Pettit, 1993, 2003, 2009; Pettit & Schweikard, 2006)  Importantly, many of the strong metaphysical conclusions expressed by those in favor of group minds/mental states are drawn from premises involving ordinary language ascriptions and considerations of what must be the case in order to preserve the rationality of such attributions.  The justification for arguments supporting group minds and mental states, then, turns on how best to understand what is happening in everyday attributions of mental states, specifically when those attributions involve groups.

Given the remarkable metaphysical/ontological conclusions that these philosophers draw from everyday language, it seems especially important that we be clear on what is actually happening in ordinary language. Yet, surprisingly, much of the reasoning about everyday mental state attributions takes places entirely from the armchair, without any empirical investigation of the everyday psychology being employed in those attributions.  

In this paper I attempt to show that arguments for group minds, such as those from Gilbert and Pettit, are fundamentally flawed.  Appealing to recent empirical data (Arico, 2010; Arico, Fiala, Goldberg, & Nichols, forthcoming; Phelan, Arico, & Nichols, in prep), I argue that everyday attributions of mental states involving groups should not be understood as implying irreducible group minds.  Rather, I suggest, such everyday mental state attributions are best understood as pragmatic shorthand for distributions of mentality across some relevant (albeit vague) subset of group members.  And given this conclusion, arguments for non-reductive accounts of group minds lose much of their pre-theoretical plausibility.  That is, if the ubiquitous language invoking group mentality is, in fact, merely pragmatic shorthand for distributing mental states to some vague subset of group members, then ordinary language isn’t about irreducible group minds at all.  And if ordinary language isn’t at all about irreducible group minds, then appealing to ordinary language will ultimately fail to justify conclusions that posit irreducible group minds.