There is a collection of exogenously given socially feasible sets, and, for each one of them, each individual in a group chooses from an individually feasible set. The fact that the product of the individually feasible sets is larger than the socially feasible set notwithstanding, there arises no conflict between individual choices. Assuming that individual preferences are random, I characterize rationalizable collective choices.

This paper provides an axiomatic formalization of a theory of foundational relations between three categories of entities: individuals, universals, and collections. We deal with a variety of relations between entities in these categories, including the is-a relation among universals and the part-of relation among individuals as well as cross-category relations such as instance-of, member-of, and partition-of. We show that an adequate understanding of the formal properties of such relations – in particular their behavior with respect to time – (...) is critical for formal ontology. We provide examples to support this thesis from the domain of biomedicine. (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)

Mindfulness has come to be considered an important approach to help individuals cultivate transformative capacity to free themselves from stress and suffering. However, the transformative potential of mindfulness extends beyond individual stress management. This study contributes to a broadening of the scope of contemplative science by integrating the prominent, individually focused mindfulness meditation literature with collective mindfulness scholarship. In so doing, it aims to illuminate an important context in which mindfulness interventions are increasingly prevalent: workplaces. Typically, the intended effect (...) of workplace mindfulness training is to help workers manage stress better. Since mindfulness in organizations impacts individual and collective processes, the study blends the above literatures to create a cross-level “next-generation” Team Mindfulness Training pilot. Its potential in helping individuals and teams to manage work stress better is investigated via a two-phase mixed-methods research study in high-stress military work populations, and compared to a conventional 8-week mindfulness meditation program based on mindfulness-based stress reduction. Results suggest that compared to the “first-generation” mindfulness program, TMT seems no less effective in raising individual stress management skills, and may hold more promise in generating collective capacity to manage stress and unexpected difficulty, linked to an apparent interdependence between collective and individual mindfulness capacity development. Based on these empirical results, the study contributes to theory in three important ways: first, it outlines how individual and collective mindfulness in workplaces may be interdependent. Second, it explains why “next-generation” workplace training interventions should apply a cross-level approach. And third, it illustrates how its transformative potential for people at work, individually as well as collectively, can be extended by moving beyond an inward-looking meditation focus in mindfulness training. The study contributes to practice by providing a detailed outline of the pilot TMT program, and offers a series of follow-up research opportunities to inspire further scientific innovation in workplace mindfulness training, especially for high-stress work populations. The study’s ultimate aim is to prompt a shift away from adapting clinically oriented, self-focused “first-generation” mindfulness training protocols, and towards mindfulness as team sport: a more prosocially oriented mindfulness science intent on generating wisdom and compassion, for one and all. (shrink)

Some instances of right and wrongdoing appear to be of a distinctly collective kind. When, for example, one group commits genocide against another, the genocide is collective in the sense that the wrongness of genocide seems morally distinct from the aggregation of individual murders that make up the genocide. The problem, which I refer to as the problem of collective wrongs, is that it is unclear how to assign blame for distinctly collective wrongdoing to individual contributors when none of those (...) individual contributors is guilty of the wrongdoing in question. I offer Christopher Kutz’s Complicity Principle as an attractive starting point for solving the problem, and then argue that the principle ought to be expanded to include a broader and more appropriate range of cases. The view I ultimately defend is that individuals are blameworthy for collective harms insofar as they knowingly participate in those harms, and that said individuals remain blameworthy regardless of whether they succeed in making a causal contribution to those harms. (shrink)

Kirk Ludwig develops a novel reductive account of plural discourse about collective action and shared intention. Part I develops the event analysis of action sentences, provides an account of the content of individual intentions, and on that basis an analysis of individual intentional action. Part II shows how to extend the account to collective action, intentional and unintentional, and shared intention, expressed in sentences with plural subjects. On the account developed, collective action is a matter of there being multiple agents (...) of an event and it requires no group agents per se. Shared intention is a matter of agents in a group each intending that they bring about some end in accordance with a shared plan. Thus their participatory intentions differ from individual intentions not in their mode but in their content. Joint intentional action then is a matter of a group of individuals successfully executing a shared intention. (shrink)

Meaning lies at the very heart of the development of language. Therefore, it is not surprising that the linguists have long been fascinated by the study of meaning, from the early days of the discipline to the present. Over time, the approach to meaning has evolved, shifting from structuralist analyses of linguistic signs to a focus on the combinatory potential of grammatical structures. Currently, the dominant cognitive-semantics approach examines meaning in relation to concepts and the human brain's abilities. One of (...) the most intriguing questions throughout the history of semantics has been the one that deals with the relationship between an individual and the linguistic community within the framework of the wider sign-meaning relation. This essential, but insufficiently explored relationship was the central topic of the 33rd International Conference of the Croatian Applied Linguistics Society. (shrink)

This work employs Elizabeth Cripps’ collectivist account of responsibility for climate change in order to ground an individual duty to reduce one’s GHG emissions. This is significant not only as a critique of Cripps, but also as an indication that even on some collectivist footings, individuals can be assigned primary duties to reduce their emissions. Following Cripps, this work holds the unstructured group of GHG emitters weakly collectively responsible for climate change harms. However, it argues against Cripps that what (...) follows from this is a corresponding collective duty to act qua group to bring about an end to the harm and a derivative duty for each emitter to promote the required organization of a group capable of this. Instead, this work argues that acts of GHG emission, to the extent that they are avoidable and performed with requisite knowledge, make one into a member of a group that is morally responsible for climate-related harms. Thus, individual emitters who can do otherwise should recognize themselves as members of a group that collectively harms. Subsequently, they should take all possible steps in order to renounce their membership (e.g. by reducing their GHG emissions). (shrink)

101 real couples participated in a controlled experimental risk-taking task involving variations in household and individual income risks, while controlling for ex-ante income inequality. Our design disentangles the effects of household risk, intra-household risk inequality, and ex-post payoff inequality. We find that most couples (about 79%) pooled their risk at the household level when risks were borne symmetrically, but a significant proportion of couples (about 36%) failed to do so when individual risks were borne asymmetrically. Additionally, within the scope of (...) the control variables we have utilized, we find that intra-household risk inequality has a larger impact on non-married couples compared to married ones. These results remain robust when the analysis is limited to couples in which both spouses are risk-averse. Lastly, we find that preferences for household efficiency are significantly correlated across both certain and risky situations. However, couples consisting of two income-maximizing spouses do not show greater aversion to risk inequality compared to couples with other compositions. (shrink)

It is commonplace to suppose that the theory of individual rational choice is considerably less problematic than the theory of collective rational choice. In particular, it is often assumed by philosophers, economists, and other social scientists that an individual's choices among outcomes accurately reflect that individual's underlying preferences or values. Further, it is now well known that if an individual's choices among outcomes satisfy certain plausible axioms of rationality or consistency, that individual's choice-behavior can be interpreted as maximizing expected utility (...) on a utility scale that is unique up to a linear transformation. Hence, there is, in principle, an empirically respectable method of measuring individuals' values and a single unified schema for explaining their actions as value maximizing. (shrink)

This chapter will develop standards for assessing individual moral responsibility for collective action. In some cases, these standards expand a person’s responsibility beyond what she or he would be responsible for if performing the same physical behavior outside of a group setting. I will argue that structural differences between two ideal types of groups— organizations and goal- oriented collectives— largely determine the baseline moral responsibility of group members for the group’s collective action. (Group members can be more or less (...) responsible for collective action beyond that baseline due to personal qualities like knowledge of the intended collective outcome.) The same individual physical behavior can make the member of a goal-oriented collective responsible for the entire collective action to an equal degree with her fellow group members, whereas the typical organization member is only responsible for his contributory action. (shrink)

While structural approaches to sustainability have remained unable to muster wider political support, green political theory has for some time taken a voluntarist turn, arguing that deep changes in attitudes and behaviour are necessary to reduce the ecological debt of the rich countries. Within environmental citizenship theory it is believed that justice requires each individual to start living within his or her 'ecological space'. Firmly rooted in the pollution paradigm, environmental citizenship theory holds that the path to sustainability goes through (...) a dramatic reduction in economic activity and international trade. Since such cuts in material welfare run counter to the preferences of many, doubts can be had about their political plausibility. More seriously, with a world population of more than seven billions, it is doubtful that even such harsh sacrifices would suffice to ensure environmental sustainability. This article challenges environmental citizenship theory by arguing that it is tied to a conception of sustainability which is both theoretically misleading and strategically unfortunate in a rapidly industrialising world. Instead of further individual guilt, there is an urgent need to define new collective progressive projects aimed at universal affluence and natural restoration. Fashionable as a sense of individual guilt may be, it fails to recognise the responsibility of the rich world to provide new technologies capable of securing global environmental sustainability. (shrink)

The article examines the processes of individualization in relation to the emergence and existence of various forms of collectivity. It analyzes the complexities of this process, which, while a necessary characteristic of modern society, can lead to atomization, frustration, and loss of meaning in life. Particular attention is paid to the nature of individualization: on one hand, it presupposes the uniqueness of each individual; on the other, it is inextricably linked to an individual’s association with certain collectives and the (...) internalization of supra-individual values. The article asserts that new forms of collectivity are emerging in the modern era that, rather than suppressing individuality, foster creative self-realization. The research explores issues of depersonalization and pseudo-collectivity, as well as the interplay between freedom and responsibility in the context of global digitalization. The author elucidates the dangers associated with the virtualization of personality, the erosion of boundaries between private and public spheres, and the potential for total control over individuals. Contemporary forms of virtual individualization, while creating an illusion of freedom, may in fact lead to a loss of personal individuality. The article further explores the impact of digital technologies on the transformation and evolution of both individual and collective memory, as well as their role in shaping identity. It underscores that digitalization not only offers new opportunities but also poses significant anthropological challenges. Dialogue is examined as a means of resolving conflicts and facilitating both individual and collective self-realization. The author contrasts M.M. Bakhtin’s dialogical approach with J.-P. Sartre’s existentialist interpretation of the relationship between the Self and the Other. It is emphasized that genuine dialogue requires mutual recognition and respect among participants, a shared space for communication, and a willingness to reconsider one’s own position. In conclusion, the study posits that addressing many of the problems generated by modern processes of individualization and collectivization in the age of global digitalization necessitates the creation of conditions conducive to interpersonal, intergroup, and intercultural dialogue. (shrink)

Can groups of people possess epistemic virtues? There has been some attention to this question in recent years in social epistemology and ethics. Interestingly, most defenses and criticisms of collective virtues so far have focused on proving or disproving that groups can have collective versions of individual virtues. Trying to or disprove that a group can have a good motivation that supervenes motivations of individuals, for example, is a typical strategy. But maybe group virtues are a completely different kind (...) of animal. Does it make sense to demand that they resemble individual virtues? I propose that group virtues can be something different that individual virtues, and whether this is plausible or not depends on the theory we adopt about how virtues are grounded. (shrink)

Most moral and political theories take agency to have special moral value, and to make the bearers of agency therefore worthy of particular moral concern. To be deprived of agency is to be wronged, and to be considered incapable of agency is to be denied respect. Thus, there is morally a lot at stake in how we conceptualize agency. Standard theories of agency, such as Bratman’s, focus on the individual use of practical reason through intention, planning, and goal-oriented action. On (...) this account there are many lack agency, however, such as, extremely poor persons, mentally disabled persons, and traditional, collectivist cultures. Instead of understanding the core of agency to lie in the use of goal-oriented reasoning, I argue that we should locate it in norm-guided and –guiding behavior. In this paper I sketch such an alternative account. On this picture agency is more of a collective than an individual achievement. Although not all norms and traditions are morally valuable, the ability to behave in norm-guided and –guiding ways is especially valuable because it enables higher order cognitive abilities and moral action. Goal-directed agency can be seen as a special case of basic agency, given norms of rationality and planning. (shrink)

This paper addresses how multiple individual credences on logically related issues should be aggregated into collective binary beliefs. We call this binarizing belief aggregation. It is vulnerable to dilemmas such as the discursive dilemma or the lottery paradox: proposition-wise independent aggregation can generate inconsistent or not deductively closed collective judgments. Addressing this challenge using the familiar axiomatic approach, we introduce general conditions on a binarizing belief aggregation rule, including rationality conditions on individual inputs and collective outputs, and determine which rules (...) (if any) satisfy different combinations of these conditions. Furthermore, we analyze similarities and differences between our proofs and other related proofs in the literature and conclude that the problem of binarizing belief aggregation is a free-standing aggregation problem not reducible to judgment aggregation or probabilistic opinion pooling. (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)

Individualist normative theories appear inadequate for the complex moral challenges of climate change. In climate ethics, this is especially notable with the relative marginalization of Kant. I argue that Kant’s philosophy, understood through its historical and cosmopolitan dimensions, has untapped potential for the climate crisis. First, I situate Kant in climate ethics and evaluate his marginalization due to perceived individualism, interiority and anthropocentrism. Then, I explore aspects of Kant’s historical and cosmopolitan writings, which present a global, future-orientated picture of humanity. (...) Ultimately, Kant’s philosophy offers a unique take on the climate deadlock capable of sustaining the individual in the collective. (shrink)

We argue that conceptual analyses of collective action should be informed by game-theoretic analyses of collective action. In particular, we argue that Ariel Rubenstein’s so-called ‘Electronic Mail Game’ provides a useful model of collective action, and of the formation of collective intentions.

This thesis provides a novel account of arrogance and applies it to both individuals and collectives. In Chapter 1, I introduce and summarise the main aims and contributions of the thesis and note its omissions. In Chapter 2, I introduce a variety of plausible examples of individual arrogance and survey extant philosophical accounts of the trait. I argue, contra two contemporary accounts, that arrogance is an essentially interpersonal vice. I also argue for the novel view that arrogance can (...) not only involve feelings of superiority to or uniqueness from others but also feelings of similarity. In Chapter 3, I elaborate a novel approach to arrogance, understood as principally involving making undue assumptions of license. I explain how this account can disaggregate moral and epistemic forms of arrogance and argue that even highly domain-specific manifestations of arrogance can be conceived of as character traits. In Chapter 4, I use the analysis developed in earlier chapters to assess how we should understand the arrogance of groups. I argue that claims of group arrogance found in the extant philosophical literature involve sub-agential groups that are not paradigmatic group agents. An account of collective arrogance that caters to such groups is therefore required. The chapter proceeds to argue that prominent approaches to collective epistemic vice do not adequately account for these cases. In Chapter 5, I aim to fill this gap in our understanding by offering a novel account of collective arrogance. I argue that the dispositions of sub-agential groups can be understood in terms of the social norms that operate within them; that social norms underlie the arrogant dispositions of putatively arrogant groups. I conclude, in Chapter 6, by summarising the thesis’ key contributions and considering some of the questions that they raise for future research. (shrink)

Can collectives be wise? The thesis that they can has recently received a lot of attention. It has been argued that, in many judgmental or decision-making tasks, suitably organized groups can outperform their individual members. In this paper, I discuss the lessons we can learn about collective wisdom from the emerging theory of judgment aggregation, as distinct from the literature on Condorcet’s jury theorem.

: In this article we shall deal with the construction and defense of subjective identity as a topic at the intersection of psychology and anthropology. In this perspective, defense mechanisms are seen as falling along a spectrum that stretches from the individual to the collective level. The individual mind is the sphere of the intrapsychic defenses and the interpersonal maneuvers to which each of us appeals, in the relationship with other people and with one’s own environment, to defend one’s own (...) self-describability and, indissolubly, the solidity of one’s own self-conscious being. At a social and collective level, on the other hand, the individual self-protective structures are supported by cultural interventions that organize and intersubjectively “domesticate” our subjectivity and our feeling of being-there. Keywords: Autobiographical Reasoning; Defense Mechanisms; Grief; Narrative Identity; Ontological Insecurity Meccanismi di difesa: dall’individuale al collettivo Riassunto: L’articolo si occupa di costruzione e difesa dell’identità soggettiva come tema all’intersezione di psicologia e antropologia. In questa prospettiva, i meccanismi di difesa si dispongono lungo uno spettro che dal livello individuale conduce a quello collettivo. La mente individuale è la sfera delle difese intrapsichiche e delle manovre interpersonali a cui ognuno di noi fa ricorso, nella relazione con gli altri e col proprio ambiente, per difendere la propria autodescrivibilità e, inscindibilmente, la solidità del proprio essere autocosciente. Al livello sociale e collettivo, invece, le strutture autoprotettive dell’individuo sono sorrette da interventi culturali che organizzano e “addomesticano” intersoggettivamente la nostra soggettività e il nostro sentirci esistere. Parole chiave: Ragionamento autobiografico; Meccanismi di difesa; Cordoglio; Identità narrativa; Insicurezza ontologica. (shrink)

Creation, collection and retention of knowledge in digital communities is an activity that currently requires being explicitly targeted as a secure method of keeping intellectual capital growing in the digital era. In particular, we consider it relevant to analyze and evaluate the empathetic cognitive personalities and behaviors that individuals now have with the change from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication online. This document proposes a cyber-humanistic approach to enhance the traditional SECI knowledge management model. A cognitive perception is added (...) to its cyclical process following design thinking interaction, exemplary for improvement of the method in which knowledge is continuously created, converted and shared. In building a cognitive-centered model, we specifically focus on the effective identification and response to cognitive stimulation of individuals, as they are the intellectual generators and multiplicators of knowledge in the online environment. Our target is to identify how geographically distributed—digital—organizations should align the individual’s cognitive abilities to promote iteration and improve interaction as a reliable stimulant of collective intelligence. The new model focuses on analyzing the four different stages of knowledge processing, where individuals with sympathetic cognitive personalities can significantly boost knowledge creation in a virtual social system. For organizations, this means that multidisciplinary individuals can maximize their extensive potential, by externalizing their knowledge in the correct stage of the knowledge creation process, and by collaborating with their appropriate sympathetically cognitive remote peers. (shrink)

In this article we focus on the emergence of biological individuality by association, trying to formulate some theoretical conditions to think about the process of collective individualization. The starting point of our analysis is the notion of “major evolutionary transition.” A major evolutionary transition is the result of the integration of a multiplicity of initially independent biological entities that, by managing to organize their interactions, become a collective of components having an identity oriented towards a common goal. When biological organisms (...) are concerned, a major transition corresponds to a phenomenon of fusion between them. We shall argue that the emergence of a new biological level of individuality implies the establishment of constitutive relationships between individuals that change their status as autonomous entities. As a result, the emergence of a new type of entity in the living world implies that individuals enter into relationships that intrinsically transform them, a transformation sufficient for a “whole” to become a “part” that forms another “whole”, that is, a new level of organismality. (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)

Many contemporary forms of oppression are not primarily the result of formally organized collective action nor are they an unintended outcome of a combination of individual actions. This raises the question of collective responsibility. I argue that we can only determine who is responsible for oppression if we understand oppression as a matter of social practices that create obstacles for social change. This social practice view of oppression enables two insights: First, that there is an unproblematic sense in which groups (...) can bear irreducible collective responsibility for oppression. Second, that there are derived forms of individual responsibility for members of dominant groups. (shrink)

It is widely believed that what distinguishes the social cognition of humans from that of other animals is the belief–desire psychology of four–year–old children and adults (so–called theory of mind). We argue here that this is actually the second ontogenetic step in uniquely human social cognition. The first step is one year old children's understanding of persons as intentional agents, which enables skills of cultural learning and shared intentionality. This initial step is ‘the real thing’ in the sense that it (...) enables young children to participate in cultural activities using shared, perspectival symbols with a conventional/normative/reflective dimension—for example, linguistic communication and pretend play—thus inaugurating children's understanding of things mental. Understanding beliefs and participating in collective intentionality at four years of age—enabling the comprehension of such things as money and marriage—results from several years of engagement with other persons in perspective–shifting and reflective discourse containing propositional attitude constructions. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of Zeynep Tufekci’s capacities approach to social movements, which explains the strength of social movements in terms of their capacities. Tufekci emphasises that the capacities of contemporary social movements largely depend upon their uses of new digital technologies, and of social media in particular. We show that Tufekci’s approach has important implications for the structure of social movements, whether and what obligations they can have, and for how these obligations distribute to their members. In exploring (...) these implications, we develop a tripartite taxonomy of social movements. Each type of social movement in the taxonomy corresponds to a different type of group: social campaigns, social struggles, and social agitations. We show that all three types of social movement can bear obligations in virtue of their capacities. Finally, we argue that a surprising upshot of the obligations of social movements is that members of oppressed groups can have obligations to resist their own oppression in virtue of being members of social movements. (shrink)

This paper argues that a class of popular views of collective intention, which I call “quasi-psychologism”, faces a problem explaining common intuitions about collective action. Views in this class hold that collective intentions are realized in or constituted by individual, mental, participatory intentions. I argue that this metaphysical commitment entails persistence conditions that are in tension with a purported obligation to notify co-actors before leaving a collective action attested to by participants in experimental research about the interpersonal normativity of collective (...) action. I then explore the possibilities open to quasi-psychologists for responding to this research. (shrink)

Collective rationality in its ordinary sense is rationality’s extension to groups. It does not entail efficiency by definition. Showing that it entails efficiency requires a normative argument. Game theorists treating cooperative games generally assume that collective rationality entails efficiency, but formulating the reasoning that leads individuals to efficiency, and verifying the rationality of its steps, presents challenging philosophical issues. This paper constructs a framework for addressing those issues and reaches some preliminary results about the prospects of rational agents achieving (...) efficiency in coalitional games. It concludes that only under strong idealizations does collective rationality entail efficiency. (shrink)

According to the three-tier hierarchy of motivational potency in the self system, the self can be divided into individual self, relational self, and collective self, and individual self is at the top of the motivational hierarchy in Western culture. However, the motivational primacy of the individual self is challenged in Chinese culture, which raises the question about whether the three-tier hierarchy of motivational potency in the self system can be differentiated in the collectivist brain. The present study recorded the event-related (...) potentials (ERPs) to evaluate brain responses when participants gambled for individual self, for a close friend (relational self), or for the class (collective self). The ERP results showed that when outcome feedback was positive, gambling for individual self evoked a larger reward positivity compared with gambling for a friend or for the class, while there is no difference between the latter two conditions. In contrast, when outcome feedback was negative, no significant effect was found between conditions. The present findings provide direct electrophysiological evidence that individual self is at the top of the three-tier hierarchy of the motivational system in the collectivist brain, which supports the classical pancultural view that individual self has motivational primacy. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 24, Issue 2, pp 300 - 317 This article examines R. Zvi Yehudah Kook’s reading of two earlier thinkers who were influential in the formulation of his thought—the Maharal of Prague and R. Avraham Azulai. I argue that his creative and unique reading of these texts exemplifies a fascinating dialogue he held with earlier sources, which he interpreted and infused with his own theological postulates. Here I explore his theory of the unique nature of the Jewish soul, (...) in both its collective and individual manifestations. The connection between R. Zvi Yehudah’s approach to interpreting earlier Jewish theological texts and that of his father, R. Avraham Itzhak HaCohen Kook, will also be discussed. (shrink)

We are witnessing some incredibly baffling problems in the world today. It seems that as the countries of the world become more "civilized", more "democratic", societal problems and conflicts just get worse. The theme of this essay is that many of these problems are a result of an inherent and unavoidable paradox involving the conflict between the needs of the individual and the needs of the society that the individual is a member of. This class of problem, often called "Social (...) Dilemmas", while not unknown in the academic community has received little public attention. Yet these dilemmas may present insurmountable barriers to a peaceful world and harmonious societies. (shrink)

In this paper the author deals with collegial judicial decisions as a form of human action. The scope is, however, limited to three questions: What is the structure and the status of the general theory of action; Is this theory applicable to such performative acts as judicial decisions; and finally, Is it possible to speak about action in connection with collective agents such as collegial courts? The author defends the thesis that general theory of action as such is applicable to (...) collective action, too, because the difficulty is not in the structure of that theory, or in its “individual character,” but specifically in the notion of “collective will.” This kind of “will” is epistemologically always a result of a political procedure, and speaking about the “collective will” presupposes the analysis of these procedures, because in practice they and only they formulate “collective motives,”“collective beliefs” and the like. (shrink)

While collaboration has always played an important role in many cases of discovery and creation, recent developments such as the web facilitate and encourage collaboration at scales never seen before, even in areas such as mathematics, where contributions by single individuals have historically been the norm. This new scenario poses a challenge at the theoretical level, as it brings out the importance of various issues which, as of yet, have not been sufficiently central to the study of problem-solving, discovery, (...) and creativity. We analyze the case of collective and web-based proof events in mathematics, which share their temporal and social nature with every case of collective problem-solving. We propose that some ideas from cognitive architectures, in particular, the notion of codelet—understood as an agent engaged in one of a multitude of available tasks—can illuminate our understanding of collective problem-solving and act as a natural bridge from some of the theoretical aspects of collective, web-based discovery to the practical concern of designing cognitively inspired systems to support collective problem-solving. We use the Pythagorean Theorem and its many proofs as a case study to illustrate our approach. (shrink)

Climate change can be construed as a question of collective responsibility from two different viewpoints: climate change being inherently a collective problem, or collective entities bearing responsibility for climate change. When discussing collective responsibility for climate change, “collective” can thus refer to the problem of climate change itself, or to the entity causing the harm and/or bearing responsibility for it. The first viewpoint focuses on how climate change is a harm that has been caused collectively. Collective action problem refers to (...) an aggregation of individual actions which together produce an outcome that is not intended at the level of an individual action. It cannot be solved by any one agent acting unilaterally. Instead, climate change action must be enacted and supported by numerous agents. The second way to conceptualize climate change as a question of collective responsibility focuses on the collective entities that bear responsibility for climate change. As a global problem, climate change is linked to the realm of international politics, where states, governments, and intergovernmental organizations are the main collective entities. Other important agential collectives in terms of climate responsibility are corporations, including carbon majors who have produced the bulk of emissions. Climate change has also been theorized as a structural injustice, which combines elements from both the viewpoints on what is collective about responsibility for climate change. (shrink)

The potential upscaling of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies to meet states’ net-zero targets may enable individuals to remove emissions by purchasing carbon removal certificates. In this paper, I argue for two concepts of individual responsibility to capture the moral responsibility of individuals to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through CDR technologies. The first is that of liability, a direct responsibility to remove carbon in order to minimize one’s carbon footprint. The second is a shared political responsibility (...) to remove carbon that individuals have by virtue of being part of weak collectives responsible for mitigating climate change or by virtue of participating in structures that contribute to climate change. I argue that the concept of shared political responsibility can be used to determine how CDR technologies should or should not be implemented. Finally, I discuss how these two responsibilities are related. (shrink)

The evolution of complex life forms, such as multicellular organisms, is the result of a number of evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs). Several attempts have been made to explain their origins, many of which have been internalist (i.e., based largely on internal properties of these life form's ancestors). Here, we show how an externalist perspective, via the ecological scaffolding model in which properties of complex life forms arise from an external scaffold, can shed new light on the question of ETIs. (...) Ultimately, we anticipate progress in the field will occur by recognizing the importance of both the internalist and externalist modes of explanation for ETIs. We illustrate this by considering an extension of the ecological scaffolding model by niche construction in which particles modify the environment which later becomes the scaffold giving rise to collective-level individuality. (shrink)

The set-theoretic and individual-theoretic analyses of collections make the same mistake: their ontologies are far removed from language. Our basic notion, the collector, has a clear linguistic counterpart: the definite article. Our theory furnishes a theory of definite descriptions as a special case. We use 3-valued valued logic in order to come to grips with the existential presuppositions of the collections.