Collective Intentionality — In the philosophy of mind and social ontology, collective intentionality designates the capacity of groups of agents to share intentional states — beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions — that are in some sense the property of the group as such, and not merely the aggregate of the individual states of its members. The term we-intention goes back to Wilfrid Sellars, while the contemporary debate was inaugurated by Raimo Tuomela and Kaarlo Miller. The central question is whether collective intentionality is irreducible to individual intentionality or can be analysed as a set of coordinated individual mental states. John Searle, in The Construction of Social Reality (1995), holds that it is a primitive biological feature: “we intend to win this game” does not reduce to a sum of I-intentions accompanied by mutual beliefs, and it is the foundation of institutional facts, created when a group collectively assigns status functions according to the formula “X counts as Y in the context C” — so a piece of paper becomes money. Raimo Tuomela distinguishes the we-mode, in which an agent acts taking the group’s reasons as their own, from the I-mode, in which they merely cooperate out of self-interest. Margaret Gilbert, in On Social Facts (1989), introduces plural subjects, formed by a joint commitment that generates mutual obligations. The topic is decisive for social ontology and confronts methodological individualism, while also raising the question of collective moral responsibility.
Searle: We-Intentions and the Construction of Social Reality
John Searle, in The Construction of Social Reality (1995), proposes that collective intentionality is a primitive biological feature of human beings — it cannot be reduced to bundles of individual intentions, even when each individual is aware of the others’ intentions. The logical structure of we-intentions (we-intentions) is irreducible to that of I-intentions: “we intend to win this game” is not equivalent to “I intend to win this game + I believe that you intend to win this game + I believe that you believe that I intend to win this game + …”. The infinite regress of individual beliefs never captures the fact of genuinely collective intention.
For Searle, collective intentionality is the foundation of institutional reality — the reality of money, marriages, property, governments, and national borders. These are institutional facts created by the collective assignment of status functions: through an implicit collective declaration, a piece of paper becomes money, a person becomes president, a goal becomes valid. The logical structure is “X counts as Y in the context C”. All institutional reality presupposes collective intentionality.
Tuomela: We-Mode and I-Mode
Raimo Tuomela (The Philosophy of Sociality, 2007; earlier works from the 1980s) proposes a distinction between acting in the we-mode and acting in the I-mode. In I-mode, an agent acts as a group member but has individually relativised reasons — they do X because it benefits the group and, consequently, themselves. In we-mode, the agent acts as part of a group qua group — their reasons are the group’s reasons, not individual reasons that happen to converge. Tuomela argues that genuinely collective social action requires the we-mode, which involves acceptance of group norms and goals as such.
Gilbert: Plural Subjects and Joint Commitment
Margaret Gilbert (On Social Facts, 1989; Joint Commitment, 2014) proposes the theory of plural subjects: a group forms a plural subject when its members are jointly committed to doing something as a single body. This joint commitment is irreducible to individual commitments and creates obligations and entitlements among group members — obligations of loyalty, of non-abandonment, of acting in accordance with the joint goal. Gilbert applies this analysis to collective beliefs, social norms, shared emotions, and political authority.
Implications
The debate about collective intentionality is fundamental for social ontology and the philosophy of social science: it determines whether a purely individualistic explanation of social phenomena is possible (the methodological individualism of Weber, Popper, and Elster) or whether groups, institutions, and social structures have an irreducible ontological status. It is also relevant to moral and legal philosophy: if groups can have intentions, can they also bear collective moral responsibility?
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