Philosophy
The Ontology of Social Groups and Collective Agency
Quick fact
Philosopher Margaret Gilbert's 'plural subject' theory suggests that a group is a subject of its own, formed when individuals jointly commit to something, creating group obligations that are not just individual obligations.
Why this is interesting
We talk about 'Facebook' making decisions, 'the committee' choosing, and 'the crowd' acting—but can a group really think or act, or is that just a metaphor?
Read the full explanation
Understanding The Ontology of Social Groups and Collective Agency
Think of a basketball team. The team 'plays a fast break'—but it's the players who pass and run. Yet we say the team wins, loses, or makes a comeback. Is the team just a convenient label for the sum of its players, or is there something more?
A deeper explanation
Ontology asks what kinds of things exist. Applied to groups, the key debate is between ontological individualism—groups are just collections of individuals and their interactions—and holism, which posits that groups are sui generis entities (like institutions) that can have properties and intentions not reducible to individuals. The question of collective agency centers on whether groups can have intentional states (beliefs, desires, intentions) and act on them. One influential approach is 'we-intentions' (Tuomela) or 'joint commitments' (Gilbert), where individuals share an intention to act together, creating a genuinely collective entity. Others, like Michael Bratman, argue that shared agency is a structure of interlocking individual intentions. This matters because it affects how we assign moral responsibility to corporations or nations—can an abstract entity be blamed?