The article recalls the anti-molecular transformation of biology 100 hundred years ago. The author recounts protein chemist Wolfgang Pauli’s announcement of a new era of biomedical research in 1905. Colloidal chemistry was supposed to be the center of the era described by Pauli. The author discusses the aspects that remained from the three decades in which colloidal science exerted a great influence on biological and biochemical research.

The aim of my paper is twofold. First, I show how the notion of phenomenal field can be used to examine, describe and understand particular collective patterns pertaining to the everyday domain of our common social experience. Secondly, I outline the role of the notion of "phenomenal field" in ethnomethodology. I briefly discuss Gurwitsch's notion of functional meaning. After presenting the argument, I show "the locally achieved ordinariness of a common task", that is the lining up of the player (...) of the two teams in the pitch, as an embodied coherence offigural contexture in its empirical perceptual details, as Garfinkel says. (shrink)

In making sense of the world, we typically cooperate, join forces, and draw on one another’s competence and expertise. A group or community in which there is a well-functioning division of cognitive-epistemic labor can achieve levels of understanding that a single agent who relies exclusively on her own capacities would probably never achieve. However, is understanding also collective? I.e., is understanding something that can be possessed by a group or community rather than by individuals? In this paper, I develop (...) an account of understanding phenomena according to which understanding a phenomenon requires reasonably endorsing an adequate and intelligible epistemic mediator that accounts for this phenomenon. I then show that understanding, conceived along these lines, can be attributed to collective entities. An important result of my arguments will be that a collective entity’s understanding cannot (always) be reduced to the sum of the understandings of the individuals belonging to it. This is because a collective entity can sometimes be rightfully claimed to understand a phenomenon while none of its individual members understands it. (shrink)

The theory of collective agency and intentionality is a flourishing field of research, and our understanding of these phenomena has arguably increased greatly in recent years. Extant theories, however, are still ill-equipped to explain certain aspects of collective intentionality. In this article we draw attention to two such underappreciated aspects: the failure of the intentional states of collectives to supervene on the intentional states of their members, and the role of non-human factors in collective agency and (...) intentionality. We propose a theory of collective intentionality which builds on the ‘interpretationist’ tradition in metasemantics and the philosophy of mind as initiated by David Lewis and recently developed further by Robbie Williams. The collective-level analogue of interpretationism turns out to look different in some ways from the individual-level theory, but is well-suited to accommodating phenomena such as hybrid collective intentionality. Complemented with Kit Fine’s theory of variable embodiment, such a theory also provides a diachronic account of intentional collectives. (shrink)

Among other things, this paper considers what so-called collective guilt feelings amount to. If collective guilt feelings are sometimes appropriate, it must be the case that collectives can indeed be guilty. The paper begins with an account of what it is for a collective to intend to do something and to act in light of that intention. An account of collective guilt in terms of membership guilt feelings is found wanting. Finally, a "plural subject" account of (...) collective guilt feelings is articulated, such that they involve a joint commitment to feel guilt as a body. (shrink)

What is collective about collective memory? Two different concepts of collective memory compete—one refers to the aggregation of socially framed individual memories and one refers to collective phenomena sui generis—though the difference is rarely articulated in the literature. This article theorizes the differences and relations between individualist and collectivist understandings of collective memory. The former are open to psychological considerations, including neurological and cognitive factors, but neglect technologies of memory other than the brain and (...) the ways in which cognitive and even neurological patterns are constituted in part by genuinely social processes. The latter emphasize the social and cultural patternings of public and personal memory, but neglect the ways in which those processes are constituted in part by psychological dynamics. This article advocates, through the example of traumatic events, a strategy of multidimensional rapprochement between individualist and collectivist approaches. (shrink)

The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group‐living species to achieve collective tasks that are far beyond single individuals' capabilities. In particular, a key benefit lies in the integration of partial knowledge of the environment at the collective level. In this contribution, we discuss various self‐organization phenomena in animal swarms and human crowds from the point (...) of view of information exchange among individuals. In particular, we provide a general description of collective dynamics across species and introduce a classification of these dynamics not only with respect to the way information is transferred among individuals but also with regard to the knowledge processing at the collective level. Finally, we highlight the fact that the individual’s ability to learn from past experiences can have a feedback effect on the collective dynamics, as experienced with the development of behavioral conventions in pedestrian crowds. (shrink)

One of the most significant natural phenomena in the evolution of living beings occurs when a certain number of like individuals construct a new collective individuality. The ideal conditions for this arise when the probability of collective survival is greater than that of individual survival in interaction with environmental uncertainty. In this article, we propose a mechanism whereby a local fluctuation between individuals may have a global impact in creating an innovation that can prove favorable or detrimental (...) to collective survival. This latter case is a situation in which the likelihood of a critical number of influential individuals of a coincident truth falls much more rapidly than a coincident untruth as the number of individual adherents to such unanimities rises. We term this phenomenon the collective misunderstanding syndrome, and it may explain rare collective behaviors such as the so-called ant mills. (shrink)

This paper introduces the author's approach to everyday ascriptions of collective cognitive states as in such statements as we believe he is lying. Collective epistemology deals with these ascriptions attempting to understand them and the phenomena in question.

Dixon et al. suggest that the psychological literature on intergroup relations should shift from theorizing to A focus on social change exposes the importance of psychological theories involving collective phenomena like social norms and institutions. Individuals' attitudes and emotions may follow, rather than cause, changes in social norms and institutional arrangements.

Philosophers and psychologists have devoted considerable attention to the study of intellectual humility and intellectual arrogance. To this point, theoretical and empirical studies of intellectual humility and arrogance have focused on these traits as possessed by individual reasoners. However, it is natural in some contexts to attribute intellectual humility or intellectual arrogance to collectives. This paper investigates the nature of collective intellectual humility and arrogance and, in particular, how these traits are related to the attitudes of individuals. I discuss (...) three approaches to collective intellectual humility and arrogance. Rather than arguing that one of these approaches is applicable to all instances of collective intellectual humility and arrogance, I argue that there are at least two and perhaps three distinct forms of both collective intellectual humility and arrogance. Recognizing these distinct forms of collective intellectual humility and arrogance, I argue, is crucial to understanding how intellectual humility and arrogance are related to troubling phenomena like political polarization. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there are resources in the work of Thomas Aquinas that amount to a unique approach to what David P. Schweikard and Hans Bernhard Schmid’s call the “Central Problem” facing theorists of collective intentionality and action. That is to say, Aquinas can be said to affirm both (1) the “Individual Ownership Claim” and (2) the “Irreducibility Claim,” coherently and compellingly. Regarding the Individual Ownership Claim, I argue that Aquinas’s concept of “general virtue” (virtus generalis) (...) buttresses an account of the way in which individuals act collectively qua individuals, i.e., without invoking hive minds or other scientifically problematic phenomena. Further, with respect to the Irreducibility Claim (2), I argue that Aquinas’s concept of “common good” (bonum commune) offers an account of the way in which some powers and acts of social groups are importantly irreducible to those of their members. Considered together, I argue that these two positions in Aquinas are correlative, and therefore amount to a coherent account of collective action and group agency, respectively. (shrink)

People inhabit a vast and intricate social network nowadays. In addition to our own decisions and actions, we confront those of various groups every day. Collective decisions and actions are more complex and bewildering compared to those made by individuals. As members of a collective, we contribute to its decisions, but our contributions may not always align with the outcome. We may also find ourselves excluded from certain groups and passively subjected to their influences without being aware of (...) the source. We are used to being in overlapping groups and may switch identities, supporting or opposing the claims of particular groups. But rarely do we pause to think: What do we talk about when we talk about groups and their decisions? At the heart of this dissertation is the question of collective agency, i.e., in what sense can we treat a group as a rational agent capable of its action. There are two perspectives we take: a philosophical and logical one. The philosophical perspective mainly discusses the ontological and epistemological issues related to collective agency, sorts out the relevant philosophical history, and argues that the combination of a relational view of collective agency and a dispositional view of collective intentionality provides a rational and realistic account. The logical perspective is associated with formal theories of groups, it disregards the psychological content involved in the philosophical perspective, establishes a logical system that is sufficiently formal and objective, and axiomatizes the nature of a collective. The first topic that is addressed is the ontology of collective agency, i.e., the question what exactly is collective agency. The philosophical discussion of collective agency centres around the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long influenced orthodox theories and made them face the choice between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories such as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as also realized on the level of a collective. To adequately explain social phenomena that are essentially relational in nature, we propose a relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. While acknowledging the irreducibility of the concept of a collective, we find that there is a deep incompatibility between the concept of a collective and the concept of intentionality as the mark of the mental. To explain how collective intentionality nevertheless is possible and why we tend to use it analogously to how we use the concept of individual intentionality, we explore a dispositional account of intentionality which enables us to give an account of the concept of intentionality at both the individual and collective level. Specifically, we subdivide the dispositional account into three aspects: behavioral, purely mental, and cognitive. We then argue that collective intentionality is real by analyzing different forms of attributive judgments of intentionality and by introducing the perspective of indispensable collective responsibility. We also analyze how philosophical theories about collective agency relate to central features of formal theories about collective decisions, such as game theory. Although the two fields are both concerned with collectives, there are also differences that need to be addressed. For example, game theory is clearly anti-psychologistic since its aim is a formal and objective analysis. However, from the relational and dispositional perspective, intentionality at the individual level and collective intentionality as we analyze it, inevitably involve mental content. In order to explain this difference and identify where the boundary is, we analyze the relationships between the three basic concepts involved, namely intentionality, preference, and dependency, so as to provide a unified picture of collective theory across philosophical and formal theories. After paving the nexus between philosophical and formal perspectives, the logical perspective becomes the theme of our discussion. To be able to express game theoretical concepts and to connect them to our philosophical perspective, We present a logic of preference and functional dependence and its hybrid extension, and provide an axiomatization which is sound and strongly complete. The decidability of this logic is also proved. Its application to modeling non-cooperative and cooperative games in strategic form is explored. The resulting framework provides a unified view of Nash equilibrium, Pareto optimality, and the core. The philosophical relevance of these game-theoretical notions to discussions of collective agency is made explicit. Finally, we conclude and clarify the position of our theory in the broader field of research on the topics addressed in the thesis. Also, we point out many new questions and directions suggested by our analysis, including philosophical and logical open problems. (shrink)

The discussion of collective agency involves the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long restricted orthodox theories and made them face the tension between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as realized on the level of a collective. In order to adequately explain social phenomena that have relations as their essence, in (...) this paper we propose a relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. (shrink)

Many of the things we do, we do together with other people. Think of carpooling and playing tennis. In the past two or three decades it has become increasingly popular to analyze such collective actions in terms of collective intentions. This volume brings together ten new philosophical essays that address issues such as how individuals succeed in maintaining coordination throughout the performance of a collective action, whether groups can actually believe propositions or whether they merely accept them, (...) and what kind of evidence, if any, disciplines such as cognitive science and semantics provide in support of irreducibly collective states.The theories of the Big Four of collective intentionality -- Michael Bratman, Raimo Tuomela, John Searle, and Margaret Gilbert -- and the Big Five of Social Ontology -- which in addition to the Big Four includes Philip Pettit -- play a central role in almost all of these essays. Drawing on insights from a wide range of disciplines including dynamical systems theory, economics, and psychology, the contributors develop existing theories, criticize them, or provide alternatives to them.Several essays challenge the idea that there is a straightforward dichotomy between individual and collective level rationality, and explore the interplay between these levels in order to shed new light on the alleged discontinuities between them. These contributions make abundantly clear that it is no longer an option simply to juxtapose analyses of individual and collective level phenomena and maintain that there is a discrepancy. Some go as far as arguing that on closer inspection the alleged discontinuities dissolve. (shrink)

What is it for a group to believe something? A summative account assumes that for a group to believe that p most members of the group must believe that p. Accounts of this type are commonly proposed in interpretation of everyday ascriptions of beliefs to groups. I argue that a nonsummative account corresponds better to our unexamined understanding of such ascriptions. In particular I propose what I refer to as the joint acceptance model of group belief. I argue that group (...) beliefs according to the joint acceptance model are important phenomena whose aetiology and development require investigation. There is an analogous phenomenon of social or group preference, which social choice theory tends to ignore. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper examines the earthquake monitoring and prediction program, called “collective monitoring, collective defense,” in communist China during the Cultural Revolution, a period of political upheavals and natural disasters. Guided by their scientific and political ideas, the Chinese developed approaches to earthquake monitoring and prediction that emphasized mass participation, everyday knowledge, and observations of macro-seismic phenomena. The paper explains the ideas, practices, and epistemology of the program within the political context of the Cultural Revolution. It also suggests (...) possibilities for comparative analysis of science, state, and natural disasters. The paper redefines the concept of “citizen science” and argues that the concept provides a useful comparative perspective on the intimate relationship between science and the macropolitics of modern state and society. (shrink)

The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that did not exist a few years ago. Studies of (...) human dynamics based on these data sets are novel and exciting but, if not placed in context, can foster the misconception that mass-scale online behavior is all we need to understand, for example, how humans make decisions. To overcome that misconception, we draw on the field of discrete-choice theory to create a multiscale comparative “map” that, like a principal-components representation, captures the essence of decision making along two axes: aneast–westdimension that represents the degree to which an agent makes a decision independently versus one that is socially influenced, and anorth–south dimensionthat represents the degree to which there is transparency in the payoffs and risks associated with the decisions agents make. We divide the map into quadrants, each of which features a signature behavioral pattern. When taken together, the map and its signatures provide an easily understood empirical framework for evaluating how modern collective behavior may be changing in the digital age, including whether behavior is becoming more individualistic, as people seek out exactly what they want, or more social, as people become more inextricably linked, even “herdlike,” in their decision making. We believe the map will lead to many new testable hypotheses concerning human behavior as well as to similar applications throughout the social sciences. (shrink)

For almost three decades, Margaret Gilbert has introduced a new account of social facts taking “joint commitments”, not only explicit but also implicit, as the cement of sociality properly understood. Gilbert has used this original account of collective phenomena to clarify a variety of issues, both in the philosophy of rights and in the philosophy of the social sciences. This paper focuses on the latter domain; it argues that although Durkheim and Mauss are central references in her pioneering (...) work, On Social Facts, Gilbert’s model has been underestimated in the fields of sociology and anthropology. This may come from the fact that Gilbert provides the reader with only imaginary examples. To overcome this difficulty, Bouvier investigates several historical examples in two related domains:, the political and the religious. Another reason for this relative lack of interest may come from Gilbert’s very unconventional interpretation of the Durkheimian explanation of social beliefs. Although, on the one hand, her “contractualist” (or Rousseauist) interpretation permits a sharp illumination of certain social facts, it may, on the other hand, impede the recognition of the specificity of other kinds of beliefs, which sociologists and anthropologists—including Durkheim—usually consider as collective beliefs. Bouvier, by contrast, introduces alternative models, illustrating them with similar, although ultimately distinct from previous, historical examples. (shrink)

The Sōushén Hòujì: Latter Notes on Collected Spirit Phenomena Attributed to Tao Yuanming (365–427). By Richard VanNess Simmons. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 2022. Pp. xv + 132. $39.50 (paper), $32.50 (ebook).

This paper distinguishes two conceptions of collectivity, each of which tracks the targets of classification according to their aetiology. Collectivities falling under the first conception are founded on (more-or-less) explicit negotiations amongst the members who are known to one another personally. Collectivities falling under the second (philosophically neglected) conception are founded – at least initially – purely upon a shared conception of “we”, very often in the absence of prior acquaintance and personal interaction. Th e paper argues that neglect of (...) collectivities of the second kind renders certain social phenomena (for example, sense of place and certain kinds of conflicted loyalty) inexplicable or invisible. And the paper also stresses that a conception referring to the second kind of collectivity will put us in position to revitalize a variety of important questions, including: Which conception of collectivity best serves the needs of a theory of justice? Th e paper will contrast the distinction between these two conceptions with the classical Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft distinction, as well as with the more recent attempts to articulate differences between groups according to membership-structuring norms. (shrink)

It is a commonly held assumption among cultural, social, and political psychologists that imagining the future of societies we live in has the potential to change how we think and act in the world. However little research has been devoted to whether this effect exists in collective imaginations, of social groups, communities and nations, for instance. This book explores the part that imagination and creativity play in the construction of collective futures, and the diversity of outlets in which (...) these are presented, from fiction and cultural symbols to science and technology. The authors discuss this effect in social phenomena such as in intergroup conflict and social change, and focus on several cases studies to illustrate how the imagination of collective futures can guide social and political action. This book brings together theoretical and empirical contributions from cultural, social, and political psychology to offer insight into our constant imagination of the societies in which we live. (shrink)

This Paper claims that, contrary to the common assumption of Anglo-American jurists, collective rights are secondary to a analytically and experientially prior culture. Culture constitutes the identity and content of a collective right. The thrust of my Paper examines the disjunction between collective rights and the culture constituting a collective right. The clue to the disjuncture is that a collective right is assumed to be a rule or principle signified or represented in a written language. (...) A rule or principle is a concept. A culture, in contrast, is constituted from an experiential knowledge in an unwritten language. -/- I raise two contexts where a collective right cannot be identified without a consideration the analytically prior culture of the social group protected by a collective right: peremptory norms in international law and affirmative discrimination clauses in constitutional law. I then highlight a crucially important factor generating the unwritten language of a culture: namely, the collective memories of a group. Although a personal memory is experienced in a context-specific event, a member of a group absorbs its collective memory. The collective memory of the group exists before one is a member. Such a memory may defer to some event centuries earlier. The event may possess a mythic or even false character which cannot be verified except as a myth or historical falsity. One cannot be accepted as a member of a group without the group’s collective memory. Shared assumptions and expectations characterise a collective memory generating a culture. Such assumptions and expectations constitute meant objects. Meant objects are not posted by some source 2 external to the individual members. Meant objects are experienced. A jurist cannot analyze the signified collective rights without examining the social culture said to be represented by the boundary of the collective rights. One may be able to rationally justify a collective right in terms of its source, such as a basic constitutional text, the regularity of behaviour of lawyers and judges or some ultimate concept such as dignity. Such a rational justification, however, does not address why an individual is obligated to defer to the collective rights of an in-group in a state. One has to examine the social-cultural assumptions and expectations presupposed in the content of such collective rights in order to understand why the rights are obligatory. Such an examination dissolves the traditional boundary of legal knowledge which has excluded cultural phenomena generating the collective rights. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the interdisciplinary theory of collective affective niche construction, which extends the extended mind (ExM) thesis from cognitive to affective phenomena. Although theoretically innovative, the theory lacks a detailed psychological account of how collective affectivity is scaffolded. It has also been criticized for its uncritical assumption of the subject qua the autonomous user of the affective scaffolding as disposable resources, abstracting away from embedded subjectivity in particular techno-political arrangements. We propose that the social motivation (...) hypothesis, an account grounded in recent empirical and theoretical developments in psychology as well as in the classic theory of moral sentiments, will address the former criticism by explicating the basic mechanisms of human social orientation at work in collective affective niche construction. We also begin to address the latter normative criticism in mobilizing a so-called we-mode approach to collective emotion. To make these theoretical dialectics salient, we study social media as a case of collective affective niches, focusing on the impact on subjective well-being. Finally, we briefly identify promising future directions in building a normative theory of affective niche construction on the collective level. (shrink)

Using a religious studies methodology, this paper offers a detailed contextual mapping and a structural configuration of how collective violence is justified in Orthodox Christianity. The research design is explanatory, whereby the functional perspectives of doctrine, ethics and worship are all investigated and probed as phenomena of lived religion and orthopraxy. While predominantly initiatory and pedagogical, the paper also proposes a systematic platform for advanced research on this subject, by flagging contexts, themes and areas of inquiry that a (...) researcher might examine in order to untangle the inner workings of the justification of violence in the mind of the Orthodox. Given the ongoing Russian War on Ukraine, relevant samples are drawn from this case.Contribution: This paper outlines the Orthodox Christian justification of violence from the perspectives of doctrine, ethics and ritual and identifies pivotal areas of ambiguity between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 31-42, January 2022. This paper distinguishes collective emotions from other phenomena pertaining to the social and interactive nature of emotion and proposes a taxonomy of different types of collective emotion. First, it emphasizes the distinction between collective emotions as affective experiences and underpinning mechanisms. Second, it elaborates on other types of affective experience, namely the social sharing of emotion, group-based emotions, and joint emotions. Then, it proposes a working definition (...) of collective emotion via a minimal threshold and four structural features. Finally, it develops a taxonomy of five types of collective emotion: emotional sharing, emotional contagion, emotional matching, emotional segregation, and emotional fusion. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper provides an introduction to three translations of articles by Soviet philosopher Boris Hessen: “Mechanical Materialism and Modern Physics,” “On Comrade Timiryazev’s Attitude towards Contemporary Science” and “Marian Smoluchowski (On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death)”. It begins by presenting a central tension in Hessen’s work; namely, how even though he is better known for the externalism of his 1931 Newton paper, much of his work has been considered exemplary of an internalist approach. I then show that for Hessen, (...) the history of modern science was defined by the discovery of the dialectical unity in opposition between dynamic and statistical regularity. This not only sheds important light on Hessen’s understanding of causation, but also reconciles the aforementioned tension by showing his approach to the relationship between individuals and collectives in the study of physical phenomena, along with the relationship between individual scientists and socioeconomic conditions. (shrink)

The economic crisis is also a crisis for economic theory. Most analyses of the evolution of the crisis invoke three themes, contagion, networks and trust, yet none of these play a major role in standard macroeconomic models. What is needed is a theory in which these aspects are central. The direct interaction between individuals, firms and banks does not simply produce imperfections in the functioning of the economy but is the very basis of the functioning of a modern economy. This (...) book suggests a way of analysing the economy which takes this point of view. The economy should be considered as a complex adaptive system in which the agents constantly react to, influence and are influenced by, the other individuals in the economy. In such systems which are familiar from statistical physics and biology for example, the behaviour of the aggregate cannot be deduced from the behaviour of the average, or "representative" individual. Just as the organised activity of an ants’ nest cannot be understood from the behaviour of a "representative ant" so macroeconomic phenomena should not be assimilated to those associated with the "representative agent". This book provides examples where this can clearly be seen. The examples range from Schelling’s model of segregation, to contributions to public goods, the evolution of buyer seller relations in fish markets, to financial models based on the foraging behaviour of ants. The message of the book is that coordination rather than efficiency is the central problem in economics. How do the myriads of individual choices and decisions come to be coordinated? How does the economy or a market, "self organise" and how does this sometimes result in major upheavals, or to use the phrase from physics, "phase transitions"? The sort of system described in this book is not in equilibrium in the standard sense, it is constantly changing and moving from state to state and its very structure is always being modified. The economy is not a ship sailing on a well-defined trajectory which occasionally gets knocked off course. It is more like the slime described in the book "emergence", constantly reorganising itself so as to slide collectively in directions which are neither understood nor necessarily desired by its components. (shrink)

This second, more cohesive volume of Schutz's papers goes beyond the critical and inconclusive work of Volume I, to advance, not quite a theory, but certain postulates for the interpretation of social phenomena. Schutz contends that the social scientist, normally an impartial observer, must also assume the standpoint of the subject: he must ask what is the meaning and rationality of social action for the actor himself. From such a bi-polar perspective Schutz describes the situations of "The Stranger," "The (...) Homecomer," and "The Well-Informed Citizen." In the longest paper he analyzes the meaning of equality both for those who are and for those who are not equal. These papers are perceptive—the best in the volume.—A. B. D. (shrink)

The Husserlian phenomenological approach to organisational research as a way to understand how collectives experience and mean their work context, is rarely used although, when it is, it often functions as a negative criticism of objectivist methods. The sociological potential of phenomenological concepts to enable understanding of subjective experience of social contexts, and the characterisation of those social contexts through ideal type construction, deserves to be used more extensively in a positive proposal of organisational research methodologies. However, a consistent phenomenological (...) approach—with its inherent qualities that enable the transcendental understanding of subjective phenomena and social objectivity—can be sociologically fruitful only if it benefits from accumulated sociological knowledge, realised by various approaches that discuss macro and micro aspects of organisations. The proposed phenomenological methodology considers both aspects. It takes account of social theories that consider the influences of both the macro environment and institutionalisation on structure and culture through their relationship with collective and individual action. Also, it performs collaboration between two close perspectives which recognise the importance of the subjective meanings of the individuals constituting the collective: Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Weber’s ideal type construction. It also discusses context, participant selection, the concepts of saturation and generalisation, and the applicability of the methodology. (shrink)

The aim of the book is to explore common concerns regarding methodological individualism in different fields of the life sciences broadly construed. It will address conceptual problems regarding individuals and their relation and dependence on the collectivities they are part of and consider innovative new viewpoints, grounded in specific scientific projects that question the present descriptions and understanding and raise challenges. A wide variety of recent, influential contributions in the life sciences utilize notions of collectivity, sociality, rich interactions and emergent (...) phenomena, as essential explanatory tools to handle numerous persistent scientific questions in the life sciences. -/- Examples range from gene expression and regulation, the dynamics of bacterial populations, the ecological developmental biology of symbiosis, levels of selection, to communication, motion and patterns of behavior in diverse life forms, the role of social institutions and cultural dynamics in human evolution, and the psychological basis for social norms. The book is being structured so that fruitful and rewarding disciplinary interactions take place among researchers and scholars who have been concerned with overcoming methodological individualism. -/- The books includes a section of four papers on holobionts and the hologenome theory and a special memorial article on the work of the late Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob authored by Herbert Levine. (shrink)

This paper outlines, from a sociological and social psychological perspective, a theoretical framework with which to define and analyse consciousness, emphasizing the importance of language, collective representations, conceptions of self, and self-reflectivity in understanding human consciousness. It argues that the shape and feel of consciousness is heavily social, and this is no less true of our experience of collective consciousness than it is of our experience of individual consciousness. The paper is divided into two parts. Part One argues (...) that the problem of consciousness can be approached fruitfully by beginning with human group and collective phenomena: community, language, language-based communication, institutional and cultural arrangements, collective representations, self-conceptions, and self-referentiality. A collective is understood as a group or population of individuals that possesses or develops collective representations of itself: its values and goals, its structure and modes of operating, its strategies, developments, strengths and weaknesses, etc. Collective reflectivity emerges as a function of an organization or group producing and making use of collective representations of the self in its discussions, critical reflections, and planning. A collective monitors its activities, achievements and failures, and reflects on itself as a defined and on-going collective being. In this perspective, human consciousness is understood as a type of reflective activity: observing, monitoring, judging and re-orienting and re-organizing self; considering what characterizes the self, what self perceives, judges, could do, should do . The reflectivity is encoded in language and developed in conversations about collective selves. Part Two of the paper applies the framework to analysing the individual experience of consciousness, self-representation, self-reference, self-reflectivity and self-development. (shrink)

Abstract: Focusing on early child pretend play from the perspective of developmental psychology, this article puts forward and presents evidence for two claims. First, such play constitutes an area of remarkable individual intentionality of second-order intentionality (or 'theory of mind'): in pretence with others, young children grasp the basic intentional structure of pretending as a non-serious fictional form of action. Second, early social pretend play embodies shared or collective we-intentionality. Pretending with others is one of the ontogenetically primary instances (...) of truly cooperative actions. And it is a, perhaps the, primordial form of cooperative action with rudimentary rule-governed, institutional structure: in joint pretence games, children are aware that objects collectively get assigned fictional status, 'count as' something, and that this creates a normative space of warranted moves in the game. Developmentally, pretend play might even be a cradle for institutional phenomena more generally. (shrink)

Hutton made a geological collection to illustrate his theory of the Earth, and frequently cited phenomena displayed by specimens in it to support his arguments. His followers also considered that the evidence provided by the collection would help to establish his views. After Hutton's death it was given to the Royal Society of Edinburgh which, however, under the terms of its charter, was obliged to lodge it in the Natural History Museum of the University. The Museum's curator, the Wernerian, (...) Robert Jameson, thought the collection of little account, and neither displayed it nor kept it together. By the mid-1830s most of it had been dispersed or thrown away, and nothing is known of it since. The list of specimens compiled by its first trustees has also disappeared. By piecing together information in Hutton's writings and letters, and in those of his friends, we learn something about the contents of the collection and how it was formed, and also add to our knowledge of his acquaintance. The final section of the article brings together all Hutton's descriptions of his rocks and minerals and, in doing so, demonstrates the weight of proof that he rested on careful visual analysis of hand specimens. (shrink)

This study investigates how collective corruption appears, using a computational method. Specifically, acknowledging that the characteristics of collective corruption process are analogous to percolation phenomena, we illuminate that collective corruption is formed by ongoing social interactions in an organizational boundary. By formulating a percolation-based system dynamics model, we consider the behavioral characteristics of collective corruption in terms of individuals’ corruption preferences governed by personal attributes on corruption. We also propose and examine scenarios regarding the formation (...) of collective corruption. (shrink)

Education and cognition research today generally recognize the tri-dimensional nature of reasoning processes as involving cognitive, social and emotional phenomena. However, there is so far no theoretical framework articulating these three dimensions from a descriptive perspective. This paper aims at presenting a first model of how group emotions work in collective reasoning, and specifies their social and cognitive functions. This model is inspired both from a multidisciplinary literature review and our extensive previous empirical work on an international corpus (...) of videotaped student debates. The cognitive function of emotions is defined in reference to the process of schematization and associated emotional framing. On the other hand, the social function of emotions refers to recognition-oriented behaviors that correspond to engagement into specific types of group talk, implying specific politeness rules or face-preservation systems. We believe that our multi-dimensional and multi-level approach to group reasoning, which mostly employs a linguistic perspective, can be applied to a diversity of contexts. We hope it will serve as a basis for further discussion on the role of emotions in reasoning among the interdisciplinary community of argumentation studies. (shrink)

How should national societies build legitimate and inclusive collective identities amidst prolific multiculturalism and linguistic diversity? We argue that cultural ownership of particular ways of framing ethics should be part of this collective identity building process. We should avoid unfair domination of minority cultural identities, but how do we do this when ethical discourses themselves tend to be shaped by particular dominant identities? We look into the case of the challenges that a particular multicultural society, the Philippines, faces (...) in its ongoing collective identity building project on three levels: ethnic and linguistic differences, the historical layers of foreign culture that have each influenced these distinct cultural identities in different degrees, and the apparent domination of Tagalog linguistic culture over others. Our answer to the question of legitimate and inclusive collective identity comes from an inter-linguistic dialogue that can be effected between cultures by harnessing similarities of ethical concepts, without compromising cultural differences. We present three different possible approaches under the following headings: Pilipino ethics, Filipino ethics and Philippine ethics, each representing a particular stance to the dominant Tagalog linguistic culture. We argue for the third option, which is the most inclusive because of how it equalizes the status of all participating cultures in the dialogue. We also draw from the possibilities afforded by the phenomena of Scandinavian semicommunication and what this practice offers in making collective identity building more inclusive. (shrink)

This book attempts to marry truth-conditional semantics with cognitive linguistics in the church of computational neuroscience. To this end, it examines the truth-conditional meanings of coordinators, quantifiers, and collective predicates as neurophysiological phenomena that are amenable to a neurocomputational analysis. Drawing inspiration from work on visual processing, and especially the simple/complex cell distinction in early vision (V1), we claim that a similar two-layer architecture is sufficient to learn the truth-conditional meanings of the logical coordinators and logical quantifiers. As (...) a prerequisite, much discussion is given over to what a neurologically plausible representation of the meanings of these items would look like. We eventually settle on a representation in terms of correlation, so that, for instance, the semantic input to the universal operators (e.g. and, all)is represented as maximally correlated, while the semantic input to the universal negative operators (e.g. nor, no)is represented as maximally anticorrelated. On the basis this representation, the hypothesis can be offered that the function of the logical operators is to extract an invariant feature from natural situations, that of degree of correlation between parts of the situation. This result sets up an elegant formal analogy to recent models of visual processing, which argue that the function of early vision is to reduce the redundancy inherent in natural images. Computational simulations are designed in which the logical operators are learned by associating their phonological form with some degree of correlation in the inputs, so that the overall function of the system is as a simple kind of pattern recognition. Several learning rules are assayed, especially those of the Hebbian sort, which are the ones with the most neurological support. Learning vector quantization (LVQ) is shown to be a perspicuous and efficient means of learning the patterns that are of interest. We draw a formal parallelism between the initial, competitive layer of LVQ and the simple cell layer in V1, and between the final, linear layer of LVQ and the complex cell layer in V1, in that the initial layers are both selective, while the final layers both generalize. It is also shown how the representations argued for can be used to draw the traditionally-recognized inferences arising from coordination and quantification, and why the inference of subalternacy breaks down for collective predicates. Finally, the analogies between early vision and the logical operators allow us to advance the claim of cognitive linguistics that language is not processed by proprietary algorithms, but rather by algorithms that are general to the entire brain. Thus in the debate between objectivist and experiential metaphysics, this book falls squarely into the camp of the latter. Yet it does so by means of a rigorous formal, mathematical, and neurological exposition – in contradiction of the experiential claim that formal analysis has no place in the understanding of cognition. To make our own counter-claim as explicit as possible, we present a sketch of the LVQ structure in terms of mereotopology, in which the initial layer of the network performs topological operations, while the final layer performs mereological operations. The book is meant to be self-contained, in the sense that it does not assume any prior knowledge of any of the many areas that are touched upon. It therefore contains mini-summaries of biological visual processing, especially the retinocortical and ventral /what?/ parvocellular pathways computational models of neural signaling, and in particular the reduction of the Hodgkin-Huxley equations to the connectionist and integrate-and-fire neurons Hebbian learning rules and the elaboration of learning vector quantization the linguistic pathway in the left hemisphere memory and the hippocampus truth-conditional vs. image-schematic semantics objectivist vs. experiential metaphysics and mereotopology. All of the simulations are implemented in MATLAB, and the code is available from the book’s website. • The discovery of several algorithmic similarities between visison and semantics. • The support of all of this by means of simulations, and the packaging of all of this in a coherent theoretical framework. (shrink)

Searle’s social ontology is criticized on two grounds: (1) that Searle’s arguments do not adequately support his commitment to logically and conceptually irreducible collective-to-individual intentionality, and (2) his formulation of the constitutive rule of collective intentionality conferring symbolic social status on intended objects does not express the required concept as clearly, unequivocally, or economically as available alternatives. Two corresponding positive recommendations are offered in response to both criticisms for developing a conservatively improved neo-Searlean philosophy of social phenomena,practices (...) and institutions. (shrink)

Embree claimed that Schutz did not remain a methodological individualist during all of his academic life since he came to consider the individual as an abstractum abstracted from a concrete collective life. In this view, the socio-historical world cannot be understood as a mere structure of individuals because it also contains groups that are related one to another in diverse ways and which are the concrete subject of the social world. I stress three major contributions of Embree to social (...) phenomenology: to have shown the deficiencies of methodological individualism because it conceals that the social world is a world of groups; to have found a phenomenological way to speak of collective subjects not involving metaphysical mystifications; and to have found a different way to access phenomena by re-specifying the first person perspective as “first person plural.”. (shrink)

The scalar notion of collective intentionality has been used to characterize the evolution of largely uncollaborative apes to highly collaborative ones. This proposal covers human evolution up until and including the formation of hunter-gather groups. But can collective intentionality also explain the emergence of complex societies? I argue that it cannot. Instead of collective intentionality, collaboration in complex societies hinges on a set of non-strategic attitudes and standardized human interactions so that role divisions, institutions, norms and conventions (...) can emerge as group-level phenomena. This set, summarized as ‘conventionality’, is a product of group-level selection rather than of collectively intending minds. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Based on an experiential dream series this consciousness study shapes a theory that the fragmentary nature of dreams seeks wholeness deriving from the Collective Unconscious. As dreams evolve from a microscopic-personal worldview to a macroscopic-transpersonal dimension, concern for survival of self is augmented with concern for survival of the species. Entangled dream imagery provides cues to quantum functions actualized through the tutelage of departed scientific luminaries. The intentionality, specificity, and information (...) input experienced in the communications imply that the collective unconscious and quantum cognition are an integrated structure revealing an underlying methodology. (shrink)

On the basis of definition of the concept ‘methodological potential‘ possibilities of development of the new theoretical and methodical ideas interfaced to the initial concept of collective creative education of Nominative of Ivanov are illustrated. Treatments of such concepts and the phenomena as an education technique, methodical approach of the teacher, methodical system are presented. It is shown as by means of the concept new vision of a problem of productivity and efficiency of educational activity opens. In end (...) the short prospective characteristic of the new pedagogical theory - the theory of a personal choice in pedagogical activity is given. (shrink)

The Psychological Study of Social Memory Phenomena Very often our memories of the past are of experiences or events we shared with others. And “in many circumstances in society, remembering is a social event” (Roediger, Bergman, & Meade, 2000, p.129): parents and children reminisce about significant family events, friends discuss a movie they just saw together, students study for exams with their roommates, colleagues remind one another of information relevant to an important group decision, and complete strangers discuss a (...) crime they happened to witness together. Psychology is at the heart of recent interdisciplinary efforts to understand the relationships between an individual remembering alone, an individual remembering in a group, and the group itself remembering. (shrink)

The intensification of cross-sector collaboration phenomena has occurred in multiple fields of action. Organizations in the private, public, and social sectors are working together to tackle society’s most wicked problems. Some success has resulted in a generalized belief that cross-sector collaborations represent the new paradigm to manage complex problems. Yet, important knowledge gaps remain about how cross-sector alliances generate value for society, particularly to its beneficiaries. This paper answers the question: How cross-sector collaborations lead to systemic change? It uses (...) a qualitative embedded case study design. I use two general cases of alliance-based interventions in the developing country Colombia. Embedded cases within each general case identify evidence of collective action capacity of the beneficiaries. Findings identify and explain alliances’ contributions to beneficiaries’ capacity building: brokering trust and creating spaces where beneficiaries develop an emergent collective action capacity. Alliances also enable beneficiaries to enact that capacity by building bridges, circulating capitals, and buffering relationships to protect people’s initiatives. Alliances and empowered collectives of beneficiaries produce systemic change using five mechanisms: brokering trust, creating spaces, building bridges, circulating capitals, and buffering relationships. Beneficiaries increased capacity for collective action is an outcome that becomes an alliance input, leading overtime to further benefits involving systemic change. (shrink)

We examine the interdependence between individual and group behavior surrounding a somewhat arbitrary, real‐world decision: selecting a name for one’s child. Using a historical database of the names given to children over the last century in the United States, we find that naming choices are influenced by both the frequency of a name in the general population, and by its ‘‘momentum’’ in the recent past in the sense that names which are growing in popularity are preferentially chosen. This bias toward (...) rising names is a recent phenomena: In the early part of the 20th century, increasing popularity of a name from one time period to the next correlated with a decrease in future popularity. However, more recently this trend has reversed. We evaluate a number of formal models that detail how individual decision‐making strategies, played out in a large population of interacting agents, can explain these empirical observations. We argue that cognitive capacities for change detection, the encoding of frequency in memory, and biases toward novel or incongruous stimuli may interact with the behavior of other decision makers to determine the distribution and dynamics of cultural tokens such as names. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In (...) this paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)

Numerous studies in the fields of Science and Technology Studies and philosophy of technology have repeatedly stressed that scientific practices are collective practices that crucially depend on the presence of scientific technologies. Postphenomenology is one of the movements that aims to draw philosophical conclusions from these observations through an analysis of human–technology interactions in scientific practice. Two other attempts that try to integrate these insights into philosophy of science are Ronald Giere’s Scientific Perspectivism and Davis Baird’s Thing Knowledge. In (...) this paper, these two approaches will be critically discussed from the perspective of postphenomenology. We will argue that Giere and Baird problematically assume that scientific instruments have a determined function, and that all human members of a scientific collective have immediate access to this function. However, these assumptions also allow them to offer a clear answer to the question how scientists can collectively relate to scientific phenomena. Such an answer is not yet formulated within the postphenomenological perspective. By adding a postphenomenological touch to the semiotic approach in Actor-Network Theory, we offer an account of how different individual human–technology relations are integrated into larger scientific collectives. We do so by showing that scientific instruments not only help constitute scientific phenomena, but also the intersubjectivity within such collectives. (shrink)