In this paper I will discuss a certain philosophical and conceptual program -- that I have called philosophy of social action writ large -- and also show in detail how parts of the program have been, and is currently being carried out. In current philosophical research the philosophy of social action can be understood in a broad sense to encompass such central research topics as action occurring in a social context (this includes multi-agent action); shared we-attitudes (such (...) as we-intention, mutual belief) and other social attitudes expressing collective intentionality and needed for the explication and explanation of social action; social macro-notions, such as actions performed by social groups and properties of social groups such as their goals and beliefs; social practices, and institutions (see e.g. Tuomela, 1995, 2000a, 2001). The theory of social action understood analogously in a broad sense would then involve not only philosophical but all other relevant theorizing about social action. Thus, in this sense, such fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as Distributed AI (DAI) and the theory of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) fall within the scope of the theory of social action. DAI studies the social side of computer systems and includes various well-known areas ranging from human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, organizational processing, and distributed problem solving to the simulation of social systems. (shrink)

This volume presents a systematic philosophical theory related to the collectivism-versus-individualism debate in the social sciences. A weak version of collectivism (the "we-mode" approach) that depends on group-based collective intentionality is developed in the book. The we-mode approach is used to account for collective intention and action, cooperation, group attitudes, social practices and institutions as well as group solidarity.

A review of Raimo Tuomela's 2013 book Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents.

It is commonplace to attribute obligations to φ or blameworthiness for φ-ing to groups even when no member has an obligation to φ or is individually blameworthy for not φ-ing. Such non-distributive attributions can seem problematic in cases where the group is not a moral agent in its own right. In response, it has been argued both that non-agential groups can have the capabilities requisite to have obligations of their own, and that group obligations can be understood in terms of (...) moral demands on individual group members. It has also been suggested that members of groups can share responsibility for an outcome in virtue of being causally or socially connected to that outcome. This paper discusses the agency problem and argues that the most promising attempts at solutions understand group obligations and blameworthiness as grounded in demands on individual agents. (shrink)

Propositional attitudes, such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, can be attributed to collective agents. In my paper I focus on cognitive attitudes, and I explore the various types of collective beliefs. I argue that there is a whole spectrum of collective beliefs, and I distinguish between two extremes: the weak opinion poll conception and the strong agreement-based conception. Strong collective beliefs should be understood in terms of the acceptance of a proposition rather than of belief (...) proper. They are not purely epistemic and involve practical considerations. To believe that p collectively in the strong sense is to adopt a policy to use that proposition in the group’s deliberations about future actions. (shrink)

Moral agents possess a moral point of view: they have a moral identity or a moral self-conception. This implies that, in order for an organization to be a moral agent, it must have a moral point of view. Importantly, acquiring such a point of view is a social process. In light of this, I argue that collective moral agency is a social construct. It follows that organizations can but need not be moral agents. This raises (...) questions about the validity of our corporate responsibility practices. In particular, as an organization might lack moral agency, it can be illegitimate to hold it responsible for its actions. I go on to investigate the interests that members might have in preventing or promoting collective moral agency and thereby address the political dimension of this social construct. (shrink)

The main concern of this paper is the moral responsibility of the firm, as well as of the individuals in a firm, to uphold environmental protection. Much of the business ethics literature defines corporate social responsibility in terms of stakeholder relationships, and the emphasis is frequently on collective as opposed to individual responsibility. This paper has three objectives. The first is to clarify the nature of moral responsibility, and the distinction between legal and moral responsibility. The second objective (...) is to steer academicians and others towards a new vision of the firm. We argue that a firm is not just a singular legal entity but also a collectivity of morally responsible individuals who are liable for immoral acts of the firm. By expanding the boundary of responsibility of action from an intangible collectivity – the firm, to all the individuals within it, this vision moves beyond the typical emphasis on the firm as being the only moral agent responsible for corporate actions. The paper emphasizes not simply the responsibility of top echelon managers, but of every employee across ranks. The third goal of this paper is to examine the circumstances where application of moral responsibility becomes crucial, for instance, in the context of protection of the natural environment by a firm and its employees. (shrink)

This book brings together contributions from leading researchers in the field of agent-based modelling and simulation. This approach has grown out of some recent and innovative ideas in the social sciences, computer sciences, life sciences, physics and game theory. It is proving helpful in understanding complexity in many domains. The opportunities it offers to explore the experimental approach to social and human behaviour is proving of theoretical and empirical value across a wide range of fields. With contributions from (...) researchers whose work has served to define this new field such as Nigel Gilbert, Robert Axtell (in economics and social science) and Jacques Ferber (in multi-agent systems), as well as practitioners who are working at the cutting edge of the new domain, this collection of essays has been assembled by two of its leading exponents: Frédéric Amblard and Denis Phan. The research, case studies and theoretical approaches discussed in this book are designed to introduce beginners and experts alike to the current state of play in this new and exciting field of social science. (shrink)

The article makes four interrelated claims: (1) The mechanism approach to social explanation does not presuppose a commitment to the individual-level microfoundationalism. (2) The microfoundationalist requirement that explanatory social mechanisms should always consists of interacting individuals has given rise to problematic methodological biases in social research. (3) It is possible to specify a number of plausible candidates for social macro-mechanisms where interacting collective agents (e.g. formal organizations) form the core actors. (4) The distributed cognition (...) perspective combined with organization studies could provide us with explanatory understanding of the emergent cognitive capacities of collective agents. (shrink)

In the article, there proposed an original idea of the collective agent of cognition (CAC) that overcomes the controversy of individualism and collectivism. In the history of philosophy a clear conceptualization of has been offered by I. Kant (the notion of transcendental agent and scheme of imagination). This was interpretedby, among others, G.W.F. Hegel ("Zeitgeist") and K. Marx (the concept of the total and joint labor). A critical analysis of analytic social epistemology (A. Goldman, J. Lackey) helps clarify (...) the tacit presuppositions of the "individual-collective" dualism. In reducing the CAC to the cognizing individual, Lackey fails to interpret adequately the phenomenon of distributed knowledge widely spread in modern science and social practice (F. Hayek, H. Collins). As an alternative to reductionism, the article proposes a typological approach to CAC. It aims to understand its structure as consisting of four main levels (transcendental, imbedded, contract and distributed agent of cognition), each of which being illustrated by a paradigm example. In conclusion, the duality of collective and individual agents of cognition is unmasked as based on the mixture of everyday and philosophical discourses. (shrink)

The article makes four interrelated claims: (1) The mechanism approach to social explanation does not presuppose a commitment to the individual-level microfoundationalism. (2) The microfoundationalist requirement that explanatory social mechanisms should always consists of interacting individuals has given rise to problematic methodological biases in social research. (3) It is possible to specify a number of plausible candidates for social macro-mechanisms where interacting collective agents (e.g. formal organizations) form the core actors. (4) The distributed cognition (...) perspective combined with organization studies could provide us with explanatory understanding of the emergent cognitive capacities of collective agents. (shrink)

Mainstream game theory explains cooperation as the outcome of the interaction of agents who permanently pursue their individual goals. Amartya Sen argues instead that cooperation can only be understood by positing a type of rule-following behaviour that can be out of phase with the pursuit of individual goals, due to the existence of a collective identity. However, Sen does not clarify the ontological preconditions for the type of social behaviour he describes. I will argue that Sen's account (...) of collective identity can be best interpreted in the light of John Searle's notion of collective intentionality, while Sen's explanation of rule-following behavior and agency is best understood using the critical realist transformational model of social activity. (shrink)

The dynamical hypothesis has served to explore the ways in which cognitive agents can be understood dynamically and considered dynamical systems. Originally used to explain simple physical systems as a metaphor for cognition (i.e., the Watt governor) and eventually more complex animal systems (e.g., bird flocks), we argue that the dynamical hypothesis is among the most viable approaches to understanding pressing modern-day issues that arise from collective human behavior in online social networks. First, we discuss how the (...) dynamical hypothesis is positioned to describe, predict, and explain the time-evolving nature of complex systems. Next, we adopt an interdisciplinary perspective to describe how online social networks are appropriately understood as dynamical systems. We introduce a dynamical modeling approach to reveal information about emergent properties in social media, where radicalized conspiratorial beliefs arise via coordination between user-level and community-level comments. Lastly, we contrast how the dynamical hypothesis differs from alternatives in explaining collective human behavior in social networks. (shrink)

The present article is an elaborated and upgraded version of the Early Career Award talk that I delivered at the IAPR 2019 conference in Gdańsk, Poland. In line with the conference’s thematic focus on new trends and neglected themes in psychology of religion, I argue that psychology of religion should strive for firmer integration with evolutionary theory and its associated methodological toolkit. Employing evolutionary theory enables to systematize findings from individual psychological studies within a broader framework that could resolve lingering (...) empirical contradictions by providing an ultimate rationale for which results should be expected. The benefits of evolutionary analysis are illustrated through the study of collective rituals and, specifically, their purported function in stabilizing risky collective action. By comparing the socio-ecological pressures faced by chimpanzees, contemporary hunter-gatherers, and early Homo, I outline the selective pressures that may have led to the evolution of collective rituals in the hominin lineage, and, based on these selective pressures, I make predictions regarding the different functions and their underlying mechanisms that collective rituals should possess. While examining these functions, I echo the Early Career Award and focus mostly on my past work and the work of my collaborators, showing that collective rituals may stabilize risky collective action by increasing social bonding, affording to assort cooperative individuals, and providing a platform for reliable communication of commitment to group norms. The article closes with a discussion of the role that belief in superhuman agents plays in stabilizing and enhancing the effects of collective rituals on trust-based cooperation. (shrink)

This paper considers the applicability of expressive theories of punishment to the punishment of corporate entities. The author argues that although arguments which suggest that the denunciatory account is superior to a communicative account in paradigmatic cases of punishment cannot be transferred straightforwardly to cover this kind of case, there are other reasons, connected with the different attitudes we have to regret and remorse in individual and collective cases, for preferring a communicative to a denunciatory account here.

Co-learning of multiple agents has been studied in co-learning settings, and how do they help, or many different disciplines under various guises. For hamper, learning and cooperation? example, the issue has been tackled by distributed • How do we characterize the process and the artificial intelligence, parallel and distributed com- dynamics of co-learning, conceptually, mathe- puting, cognitive psychology, social psychology, matically, or computationally? game theory (and other areas of mathematical econ- • how do social structures and relations (...) interact omics), sociology, anthropology, and many other with co-learning of multiple agents? related disciplines. (shrink)

This is a systematic philosophical and conceptual study of the notion of a social practice. Raimo Tuomela explains social practices in terms of the interlocking mental states of the agents; he shows how social practices are 'building blocks of society'; and he offers a clear and powerful account of the way in which social institutions are constructed from these building blocks as established, interconnected sets of social practices with a special new social status. (...) His analysis is based on the novel concept of shared 'we-attitudes', which represent a weak form of collective intentionality, and he makes instructive connections to major topics and figures in philosophy and the social sciences. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of social science, psychology and sociology, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

How should we make sense of praise and blame and other such reactions towards collective agents like governments, universities, or corporations? My argument is that collective agents do not have to qualify as moral agents for us to make sense of their responsibility. Collective agents can be appropriate targets for our moral feelings and judgements because they can maintain and express moral positions of their own. Moral agency requires being capable of recognizing moral (...) considerations and reasons. It also necessitates the ability to react reflexively to moral matters, i.e., to take into account new moral concerns when they arise. While members of a collective agent are capable of this, the collective frames the thinking of the individual moral agents within it and affects their options in myriad ways. The moral positions thus formed and expressed belong to the collective. Crucially, unlike marginal moral agents, collective agents as moral actors can be held fully responsible for their acts and omissions. (shrink)

Different disciplines have analyzed binary choices to model collective behavior in human systems. Several situations in which social dilemma arise can be modeled as N-person prisoner’s dilemma games including homeland security, public goods, international political economy among others. The purpose of this study is to develop an analytical solution to the N-person prisoner’s dilemma game when boundedly rational agents interact in a population. Previous studies in the literature consider the case in which cooperators and defectors have the (...) same learning factors. We obtain an analytical equation to find equilibria in the N-person prisoner’s dilemma game in the general case when agents have different learning factors. We also introduce a more realistic approach where probability values are bounded between zero and one and therefore eliminates the possibility of infeasible probability values. Since no analytic solution can be derived in this case, agent based simulation is used to analyze the asymptotic behavior of the resulted dynamical system. (shrink)

The notions 'worldview' and 'social identity' are examined to consider whether they contribute substantively to causal sequences or networks or thought clusters that result in group acts executed intentionally. ... Three proposed explanaitons of sectarian conflict or ethnic violence are analysed as examples of theories that causally link intenitonal group behaivour to the worldviews and social identities of the individual agents directly involved. But as will be shown, it is not a priori features of worldivews and identities (...) as such, but historically specific facts and contingent circumstances that need to be examined in order to explain group-motivated behaviour. Reference to worldviews and identities detract from adequate explanation. (shrink)

A program for the simulation of rational social normative trust, predictive `trust,' and predictive reliance between agents will be introduced. It offers a tool for social scientists or a trust component for multi-agent simulations/multi-agent systems, which need to include trust between agents to guide the decisions about the course of action. It is based on an analysis of rational social normative trust (RSNTR) (revised version of M. Tuomela 2002), which is presented and briefly argued. For (...) collective agents, belief conditions for collective agency should be added. For the various forms of trust agents must have (at least) subjectively rational reasons to believe that the conditions of the trust account are fulfilled. A list of such reasons (of varied weights), e.g., given by empirical research, can manually be built into a parameter file or be generated by a calling program in a fixed format. From this list of reasons the program randomly generates a belief base for the agents of the artificial society. Reasons can be chained together so that one set of reasons satisfies several belief conditions. The program checks if the conditions are fulfilled for the artificial agents' social normative trust/predictive `trust'/`predictive reliance' in another agent that he will perform an action X. Each outcome is logged to a result file. In conclusion we discuss various aspects of the application of a trust component of the suggested kind in empirical research, social simulation, and multi-agent systems. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to a critical ontology of social objects. Recent works on collective intentionality and norm-following neglect the question how free agents can be brought to collectively intend to x , although x is not in their own interest. By arguing for a natural disposition to empathic understanding and drawing on recent research in the neurosciences, this article outlines an ontological framework that extends collective intentionality to questions of oppression and status asymmetries. In (...) a contribution to this journal, Wisnewski (2005) unfortunately mischaracterizes the problem of meaning in social criticism. Implementing status problems in studies of collective intentions and construing social facts as both subjective and objective in character helps explain why agents can have persistent "misunderstandings" of social objects. (shrink)

This volume brings together contributions from leading researchers in the field of agent-based modelling and simulation. This approach has grown out of some recent and innovative ideas in the social sciences, computer sciences, life sciences, physics and game theory. It is proving helpful in understanding complexity in many domains. The opportunities it offers to explore the experimental approach to social and human behaviour is proving of theoretical and empirical value across a wide range of fields. With contributions from (...) researchers whose work has served to define this new field such as Nigel Gilbert, Robert Axtell (in economics and social science) and Jacques Ferber (in multi-agent systems), as well as practitioners who are working at the cutting edge of the new domain, this collection of essays has been assembled by two of its leading exponents: Frédéric Amblard and Denis Phan. The research, case studies and theoretical approaches discussed in this book are designed to introduce beginners and experts alike to the current state of play in this new and exciting field of social science. (shrink)

Social media chat groups, such as WeChat and WhatsApp groups, are widely applied in online communication. This research has conducted two studies to examine the individual level and collective level’s opinion dynamics in those groups. The opinion dynamic is driven by two variables, people’s perceived peer support and willingness of opinion expression. The perceived peer support influences the willingness of opinion expression, and the willingness influences the dynamics of real opinion-expression. First, the quasi-experimental study recruited twenty-five participants as (...) the observation group and found that decreasing perceived peer support would significantly increase individuals’ expression willingness to protect his/her opinion. To generalize the individual level findings to a collective level, the second study treated the social media chat groups as an undirected fully-connected social network and simulated people’s opinion expression dynamics with an agent-based model. The simulation indicated that with the help of increased willingness of opinion expression, the minority opinion supporters as a collective did not fall silent but continue to express themselves and increasing willingness of opinion expression would maintain the existence of minority opinion but could not help the minority reverse to the majority. (shrink)

In everyday discourse and in the context of social scientific research we often attribute intentional states to groups. Contemporary approaches to group intentionality have either dismissed these attributions as metaphorical or provided an analysis of our attributions in terms of the intentional states of individuals in the group.Insection1, the author argues that these approaches are problematic. In sections 2 and 3, the author defends the view that certain groups are literally intentional agents. In section 4, the author argues (...) that there are significant reasons for social scientists and philosophers of social science to acknowledge the adequacy of macro-level explanations that involve the attribution of intentional states to groups. In section 5, the author considers and responds to some criticisms of the thesis she defends. (shrink)

This volume explores new and urgent applications of collective action theory, such as global poverty, the race and class politics of urban geography, and culpable conduct in organizational criminal law. It draws attention to new questions about the status of corporate agents and new approaches to collective obligation and responsibility.

Dung’s argumentation frameworks have been applied for over twenty years to the analysis of argument justification. This representation focuses on arguments and the attacks among them, abstracting away from other features like the internal structure of arguments, the nature of utterers, the specifics of the attack relation, etc. The model is highly attractive because it reduces most of the complexities involved in argumentation processes. It can be applied to different settings, like the argument evaluation of an individual agent or the (...) case of dialectic disputes between two agents (pro and con), or even in multi-agent collective argumentation. The latter case involves agents with possibly different arguments and/or opinions on how to evaluate them, leading to the possibility of considering multiple sets of arguments and attack relations. Two basic questions can be asked here, namely ‘what to aggregate’ and ‘how to aggregate’. The former concerns what kinds of entities do the agents intend to choose (arguments, attacks, assessments, etc.), while the second one focuses on which aggregation mechanisms yield rational choices (voting on arguments, merging procedures to obtain a common argumentation framework, deliberation processes, etc.). In particular, the question about the rationality of a collective argument choice relates this topic to Social Choice and Judgment Aggregation theories, while its associated strategic issues relate it to Game Theory. The research efforts on the disparate problems elicited by collective argumentation have generated a considerable corpus of literature that deserves an orderly evaluation. This survey is intended as a contribution to that end. (shrink)

In the context of business, interactions between individuals generate social systems that emerge anywhere within a corporation or in its relations with external agents. These systems influence the behaviors of individuals and, as a result, the collective actions we usually attribute to corporations. Social systems thus make a difference in processes of action that are often morally evaluated by internal and external agents to the firm. Despite this relevance, social systems have not yet been (...) the object of specific attention in the literature on moral agency in business. To fill this gap, I construct a theoretical framework based on Luhmann’s ideas on social systems and morality. In particular, I argue that morality is a phenomenon that occurs in communication, and an agent can engage in morality in three different ways (as a moral factor, an expressive moral agent, or a reflective moral agent) depending on the functions it plays in communicative interactions. Based on this framework, I argue that social systems in business can be considered moral agents of those types. (shrink)

From its inception in 1987 social epistemology has been divided into analytic and critical approaches, represented by Alvin I. Goldman and Steve Fuller, respectively. In this paper, the agendas and some basic ideas of ASE and CSE are compared and assessed by bringing into the discussion also other participants of the debates on the social aspects of scientific knowledge—among them Raimo Tuomela, Philip Kitcher and Helen Longino. The six topics to be analyzed include individual and collective epistemic (...) agents; the notion of scientific community; realism and constructivism; truth-seeking communities; epistemic and social values; science, experts, and democracy. (shrink)

This work provides a game theoretical analysis of the classical idea of a social contract. According to what we might call the Hobbesian justification of the state, coercion is necessary in order to provide people with basic security and to enable them to successfully engage in mutually beneficial cooperation. The establishment and maintenance of a central coercive power, i.e. a state, can therefore be said to be in everyone's interest. The aim of this essay is to examine and evaluate (...) these claims. It is common to interpret the problem of cooperation in a Hobbesian state of nature as a Prisoner's Dilemma game. In this kind of game, each agent prefers that cooperation is brought about, but each also prefers not to cooperate herself, regardless of what others do. Most studies, however, have focused on the prospects for spontaneous cooperation in the 2-player PD. This work focuses instead on the generalized, n-player version of the same game. Invoking an evolutionary game theoretical model, it is argued that the prospects for spontaneous cooperation to emerge in an n-player PD are much worse than in the 2-player case. In order to analyze how the existence of sanctions might affect the prospects for cooperation, a model of a limited sanction system is developed. It is demonstrated that the game that emerges when an n-player PD is modified by a suitable system of sanctions is an n-player version of what Sen has called an Assurance game. It is also demonstrated that in this game, unlike the n-player PD, general cooperation is evolutionarily stable. It is also discussed whether the establishment and maintenance of such a sanction system does itself constitute an n-player PD. It is argued that it does not. (shrink)

The contributions gathered in this volume present the state of the art in key areas of current social ontology. They focus on the role of collective intentional states in creating social facts, and on the nature of intentional properties of groups that allow characterizing them as responsible agents, or perhaps even as persons. Many of the essays are inspired by contemporary action theory, emotion theory, and theories of collective intentionality. Another group of essays revisits early (...) phenomenological approaches to social ontology and accounts of sociality that draw on the Hegelian idea of recognition. This volume is organized into three parts. First, the volume discusses themes highlighted in John Searle's work and addresses questions concerning the relation between intentions and the deontic powers of institutions, the role of disagreement, and the nature of collective intentionality. Next, the book focuses on joint and collective emotions and mutual recognition, and then goes on to explore the scope and limits of group agency, or group personhood, especially the capacity for responsible agency. The variety of philosophical traditions mirrored in this collection provides readers with a rich and multifaceted survey of present research in social ontology. It will help readers deepen their understanding of three interrelated and core topics in social ontology: the constitution and structure of institutions, the role of shared evaluative attitudes, and the nature and role of group agents. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to Markus Arnold’s comment and Amanda Bryant’s comment on my work “Can Kuhn’s Taxonomic Incommensurability be an Image of Science?” in Moti Mizrahi’s edited collection, The Kuhnian Image of Science: Time for a Decisive Transformation?. Philosophers and scientists are social epistemic agents. As such, they ought to behave in accordance with epistemic norms governing the behavior of social epistemic agents.

Artificial agents create significant moral opportunities and challenges. Over the last two decades, discourse has largely focused on the concept of a ‘responsibility gap.’ We argue that this concept is incoherent, misguided, and diverts attention from the core issue of ‘control gaps.’ Control gaps arise when there is a discrepancy between the causal control an agent exercises and the moral control it should possess or emulate. Such gaps present moral risks, often leading to harm or ethical violations. We propose (...) a second-order ‘duty of moral control’ that mandates closing these gaps to reduce risks within acceptable moral limits. Our analysis encompasses both autonomous machines and collective agents, acknowledging their similarities and key differences in constitution and moral status. We suggest four methods to close control gaps: ensuring artificial agents attain moral agency, providing meaningful human control, implementing safety engineering, and employing social control. These methods aim to responsibly integrate artificial agents into society. We conclude that a realistic approach, which addresses the practical problems posed by control gaps, is essential. This approach provides solutions to manage the risks posed by artificial agents while maintaining acceptable moral standards, ensuring we responsibly harness their potential and address the ethical challenges they present. (shrink)

Women, particularly those in public positions (e.g. journalists, politicians, celebrities, activists) are subject to disproportionate amounts of abuse on social media platforms like Twitter. This abuse occurs in a landscape that those platforms designed, and maintain. Focusing in particular on Twitter, as typical of the kind of platform we’re interested in, we argue that it is the platform not (usually) the individuals who use it, that bears collective responsibility as a corporate agent for misogyny. Social media platforms, (...) however, should not overstep the prevention of misogyny into interference in open political debates. (shrink)

In this commentary, I discuss three aspects of Monique Deveaux’s account. First, the method of Grounded Normative Theorizing she adopts to engage directly with the contexts and views of those experiencing poverty fits within a range of proposals to enhance the methodology of moral and political philosophy, and I would call on all philosophers working in this space to further develop these innovative methodologies. Second, Deveaux extends the capabilities approach by focusing on the group-based character of poverty and making the (...) case for building the collective capabilities of poor-led social movements. While I do not substantially disagree with this argument (in practice), I argue that we should be careful to avoid normative collectivism (as a theoretical assumption). Finally, Deveaux discusses political solidarity with people experiencing poverty. I argue that this should be based on esteeming each other’s various contributions in more diverse ways than only in narrow economic terms. Treating people in poverty and poor-led social movements as agents of justice, as Deveaux advocates, is a significant step in this endeavour. (shrink)

Within current debates about the future impact of Artificial Intelligence on human society, roughly three different perspectives can be recognised: the technology-centric perspective, claiming that AI will soon outperform humankind in all areas, and that the primary threat for humankind is superintelligence; the human-centric perspective, claiming that humans will always remain superior to AI when it comes to social and societal aspects, and that the main threat of AI is that humankind’s social nature is overlooked in technological designs; (...) and the collective intelligence-centric perspective, claiming that true intelligence lies in the collective of intelligent agents, both human and artificial, and that the main threat for humankind is that technological designs create problems at the collective, systemic level that are hard to oversee and control. The current paper offers the following contributions: a clear description for each of the three perspectives, along with their history and background; an analysis and interpretation of current applications of AI in human society according to each of the three perspectives, thereby disentangling miscommunication in the debate concerning threats of AI; and a new integrated and comprehensive research design framework that addresses all aspects of the above three perspectives, and includes principles that support developers to reflect and anticipate upon potential effects of AI in society. (shrink)

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups (...) literally intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

The common assumption is that if a group comprising moral agents can act intentionally, as a group, then the group itself can also be properly regarded as a moral agent with respect to that action. I argue, however, that this common assumption is the result of a problematic line of reasoning I refer to as “the collective fallacy.” Recognizing the collective fallacy as a fallacy allows us to see that if there are, in fact, irreducibly joint actors, (...) then some of them will lack the full-fledged moral agency of their members. The descriptivist question of whether a group can perform irreducibly joint intentional action need not rise and fall with the normative question of whether a group can be a moral agent. (shrink)

New challenges are constantly emerging in the social sector in South Africa. Various social (non-profit) organisations are developing new and innovative ways to accommodate these challenges and to meet social needs. The aim of this research article is to measure the current social innovation capacity of the Dutch Reformed Church (DR Church), with reference to innovation capabilities, to determine at what level the church is meeting new social needs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data (...) from six different congregations and a governing body in the Pretoria area, South Africa, was included. Twelve participants were interviewed between August and October 2017. The participants, consisting of ministers and board members, each held a management position. The social innovation capacity measurement of the DR Church showed that the organisation was successfully developing new ways to serve as a social agent in society. There are obstacles that prohibit the DR Church from developing new innovative ways to meet the social needs of its society, for example, entrepreneurial, developmental and leadership change capacities. Recommendations are made to maximise social innovation capacity of the managers (ministers and board members). (shrink)

From nineteenth-century abolitionism to Black Lives Matter today, progressive social movements have been at the forefront of social change. Yet it is seldom recognized that such movements have not only engaged in political action but also posed crucial philosophical questions about the meaning of justice and about how the demands of justice can be met. -/- Michele Moody-Adams argues that anyone who is concerned with the theory or the practice of justice—or both—must ask what can be learned from (...) social movements. Drawing on a range of compelling examples, she explores what they have shown about the nature of justice as well as what it takes to create space for justice in the world. Moody-Adams considers progressive social movements as wellsprings of moral inquiry and as agents of social change, drawing out key philosophical and practical principles. Social justice demands humane regard for others, combining compassionate concern and robust respect. Successful movements have drawn on the transformative power of imagination, strengthening the motivation to pursue justice and to create the political institutions and social policies that can sustain it by inspiring political hope. -/- Making Space for Justice contends that the insights arising from social movements are critical to bridging the gap between discerning theory and effective practice—and should be transformative for political thought as well as for political activism. (shrink)

This study aims to reveal the impact and response to the apartheid system in shaping the collective trauma of African society through symbolic representations of suffering and social performativity through political action in “Amnesty” short story by Nadine Gordimer. This study used the cultural trauma theory by Jeffrey Alexander with descriptive qualitative method. The results of this research found that social suffering is symbolically represented with a humanist and theocentric images. Even so, the two seemingly different treatments (...) are essentially the same suffering, disguised by social and cultural symbols. Then, as a response to this suffering, there was social performativy through the political actions of social agents carried out by the Labor Union. These actions occur after going through of socio-cultural processes such as gathering, organizing, rioting, speeches, demonstrations, and accommodating or representing pain as well as distributing social awareness to arrive at the point where the apartheid system is the cause of all forms of suffering they experience. (shrink)

BackgroundPublic involvement activities are promoted as measures for ensuring good governance in challenging fields, such as biomedical research and innovation. Proponents of public involvement activities include individual researchers as well as non-governmental and governmental organizations. However, the concept of ‘public’ in public involvement deserves more attention by researchers because it is not purely theoretical: it has important practical functions in the guidance, evaluation and translation of public involvement activities.DiscussionThis article focuses on collective agency as one property a public as (...) a small group of participants in a public involvement activity could exhibit. It introduces a prominent theoretical approach to collective agents as one specific kind of social entities and demonstrates how this approach can be applied to current practice in public involvement activities. A brief discussion of different types of representation as they are used in the existing literature on this topic is also included because representation and collective agency can be closely related to each other. Suggestions and ideas that are derived from this reasoning include the proposal to use a ‘validity check’ for the generation of collective agents as a regular element of certain types of public involvement activities, the consequences of combining collective agency and representativeness as a further property a public could exhibit, and standards for reporting the content of public involvement activities in scientific publications.SummaryThis article discusses the importance of the concept of ‘public’ in public involvement activities, with a focus on biomedical research and innovation. It introduces various practically relevant ideas that are based on a theoretical analysis of collective agency as an important property a public can possess. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a recent, clever, and novel argument for the need for genuine collectives in our ontology of agents to accommodate the kinds of normative judgments we make about them. The argument appears in a new paper by David Copp, "On the Agency of Certain Collective Entities: An Argument from 'Normative Autonomy'" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Shared Intentions and Collective Responsibility, XXX, 2006, pp. 194-221; henceforth ‘ACE’), and is developed in Copp’s paper for this (...) special journal issue, “The Collective Moral Autonomy Thesis” (henceforth ‘CAT’). The argument goes as follows. -/- (1) We correctly assign blame (or obligations) to collectives in circumstances in which it would be a mistake to assign any (relevantly related) blame (or obligations) to their members. (2) If (1), then collectives are genuine agents over and above their members. (3) Therefore, collectives are genuine agents over and above their members. -/- Following Copp, I call (1) the Collective Moral Autonomy Thesis (CMA). Copp argues for CMA primarily by appeal to cases, but also offers two general arguments for it. In the cases that Copp describes, we are to judge that a collective act is blameworthy, though each member of the group that acts is blameless because he is merely following procedures appropriate for his participation, or because there are excusing factors, or because of overriding personal duties. -/- I argue that the case for CMA has not been made. In particular, I argue that, in each case in which we feel inclined to hold a group responsible for something but not its members, it is because -/- 1. we have accepted a false dilemma, that when no one agent is fully responsible for the action of a group of which he is a member, the only entity that could be responsible is the group as such, or 2. we have directed our attention to the wrong individual or individuals, or 3. we have become confused about the commitments of the individuals, or 4. we have mistaken ameliorating for excusing factors, or 5. we have mistaken moral blameworthiness and all-in rational blameworthiness, or 6. a combination of these things. (shrink)