Raimo Tuomela: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIALITY
Chapter 1
ACTING AS A GROUP MEMBER
I
INTRODUCTION
Much
of human life consists of acting in a group context. We are members of several
social groups – small social groups, organizations, nations, states, etc. As to
groups, some of them are capable of action, e.g. teams and task groups,
organizations, and states. Such group action is action as a group (in contrast
to the group members just acting separately and as private persons toward a shared
goal, for instance). Groups can only act through their members’ actions. To
give an example, a group of peace demonstrators gets the permission to march in
the streets but is later accused of demolishing property due to some members’
lack of commitment to the group’s rules. These kinds of situations indicate
that there is a need to take a closer look at what acting as a group member and
what group members’ collective commitment involve and presuppose. I will below
elucidate these notions in several different ways and try to show for which
situations the various analyses are adequate.
In
this book, the notions of acting as group member, we-mode, and collective
commitment (in the sense of the group members persistently having bound
themselves to something) are claimed to be crucial concepts for theorizing
about social life, although also concepts representing I-mode collective
intentionality are needed. In a preliminary way, it can be said that the
we-mode amounts to acting as a group member in the full sense requiring acting
for a group reason and being collectively commitment to what the group has
accepted as its ideas and views
(“contents”). There is some previous work on collective commitment, but there
seem to be no serious attempts to analyze the notion of acting as a group
member in detail.[1]
To be sure, social psychologists do use the notion but there seems to be no
analytic work on the notion itself in the literature.
Acting
as a group member intuitively contrasts with acting as a private person (at
least with respect to the group concerned). I will argue that an adequate analysis and
account of group life requires the use of the notion of acting (or, more
broadly, functioning) as a group member. In groups collectively committed to
preservation and furthering matters constitutive of their identity, this notion
in its standard sense amounts to the same as the notion of we-mode (viz. group-reason based) functioning and acting.[2]
Furthermore, collective identification (identification with one’s group)
amounts to functioning as a group member in its full, group-committal sense
(viz. we-mode functioning).
In
this book the following broad theses are crucial:
(1)
Central parts of the social world, including social groups (e.g. task groups,
affiliation groups, organizations, states), social practices, and social
institutions, conceptually (and, typically, functionally) require we-mode
thinking and acting (and thus we-mode concepts).
(2)
We-mode thinking and acting require, and are (conceptually and factually) based
on, thinking and acting as a group member and therefore thinking and acting for
a group reason. Indeed, we-mode thinking and acting can even be said to amount
to thinking and acting fully as a
group member.
These
theses have the obvious corollary thesis
(3)
Central parts of the social world, including social groups (e.g. task groups,
affiliation groups, organizations, states), social practices, and social
institutions, conceptually require acting as a group member as their
foundation.
In
this chapter I will directly discuss only (2). I have defended the broad thesis
(1) in the aforementioned works.[3] However,
I will defend (1) in later chapters and will in this chapter concentrate on
conceptually analyzing the notion of thinking and acting as a group member
(from here on I will often omit the “thinking as a group member” part, for the
sake of simplicity). This analysis will result in several notions of acting as
a group member, which all have a role to play in certain contexts. My second
important task in the present chapter is to analyze the notion of collective
commitment, viz. group members’ collectively binding themselves to an idea,
person, or action. In its weakest form collective commitment is only
instrumental or “technical” and not properly normative, viz. normative in a
moral, legal, or social sense. I will distinguish between several aspects of
collective (and also of private) commitment and show how these notions go
together with the various notions of thinking and acting as a group member.
As
claimed, the notions of having an attitude and acting in the we-mode (or group mode) are central for theorizing about social
(including societal) phenomena. The concept of we-mode in itself contains the
notion of group (and expresses the group-perspective) and is in this sense a
holistic institutional notion while ontically it can be regarded as
“inter-relational”, viz. in the sense of applying to interrelated group
members. In a way, thinking and acting in the we-mode basically amounts to
thinking and acting for a group reasons, viz. on a group member’s taking the
group’s views and commitments as his authoritative reasons for thinking and
acting as the group requires. For somewhat technical reasons I have, however,
chosen to start from the notion of a “thick”, togetherness “we” and the
involved “we-mode group”, characterized most centrally in terms of the group’s
“ethos”, viz. its constitutive goals, values, standards, and beliefs. After
that I will proceed to functioning (thinking
and acting) as a group member. The analysis of we-mode functioning is
based on (1) as well as on collective acceptance and collective commitment. In
the case of many groups, one can link (1) and (2) by the requirement that
membership in the group entails that a member ought to promote (or at least
obey) the ethos of the group, where obedience in the standard sense means
satisfying the ethos, viz. making or keeping it true as the case may be and
doing this for the right reason (the group reason in question).[4] If
and when the members jointly intend to satisfy the ethos they are collectively
bound (committed) to it, because intention can be taken to entail commitment in
the relevant sense. More broadly, one
can say that the we-perspective in its full sense is a kind of conceptual
module that contains several interconnected concepts. These concepts include
especially the thick notions of “we” and group as well as we-mode thoughts (e.g. “We will perform a joint action X
together”) and reasons (“I am doing X because our group’s doing Y requires
it”), collective acceptance (e.g. “We accept that these stones mark the borders
of our territory”), and collective commitment (especially to the group’s
ethos).
Collective
commitment is the central “glue of social life”, and especially much so when
based on mutual attraction between the group members and attraction to the group as well. Collective
acceptance will be understood in the sense elucidated in some earlier work[5] The basic idea is that collective acceptance
amounts to coming to hold (to be committed to) and holding a shared
“we-attitude” by the participants in question. The we-attitude here is, broadly
speaking, either a “we-proattitude” (in most cases below a we-intention) or a
“we-belief”. Roughly, a person has a certain we-attitude ATT if he has the
attitude ATT and believes that the others in the group also have or tend to
have ATT and that this is mutual knowledge (see Chapter 3). We-attitudes and
collective acceptance can be either in the we-mode or in the I-mode (in spite
of the perhaps misleading term “we-attitude”). A we-mode we-attitude involves a
thick, togetherness notion of “we”
(cf. “We together intend to do X”, “We believe that p as a group”, with the
group’s commitment to these) while a we-attitude in the I-mode only involves a thin notion of “we” (e.g. “we” as “you
and I”). As to its content, the we-mode we-perspective consists precisely of
we-mode attitude contents such as those just mentioned. Having the group
perspective in the thick sense means the disposition to think and act in the
we-mode (instead of the I-mode) in group contexts (the starting point is “We
will do X together” rather than “I will interact with you in order to bring
about X”).
To
give a quick survey of the topics treated in this chapter I give here the
titles of the sections to give initial guidance to the reader, although I
emphasize that at least up to section V the sections need to be read
consecutively: II Social Group,
Group’s Realm of Concern, Intentional Horizon, and Ethos, III Acting As a Group
Member in the Core Sense, IV Varieties of Acting As a Group Member, V
Collective Commitment, Ethos, and Presupposed Collective Action, VI Why Require
Collective Commitment?, VII The Constitution of Commitment, VIII Commitment and
Acting as a Group Member, IX Conclusion.[6]
The present chapter is central for the theory to be created in the early
chapters of the book. There is rather much concept analysis and classification,
and the later chapters will make important use of these analyses.
II
SOCIAL GROUP AND ETHOS
The
notion of a social group is central in this book, and in this section I will
discuss both of we-mode and I-mode social groups, with an emphasis of the
we-mode groups. The discussion begins by an analytic discussion of some notions
that are needed as a background for the further developments in this book.
I
will below concentrate (but not exclusively) on we-mode social groups based on
voluntary membership. Voluntary membership involves that the person signing in
as a member of the group ought to endorse the basic goals and values, norms,
standards, beliefs, etc., briefly the “ethos”,
of the group and to act accordingly. In this kind of group a member cannot in
general be coerced to stay in the group. In contrast, there are groups with
involuntary membership. Thus, one is typically born into a society, nation, and
state. One can in principle exit one’s society and state, but not one’s nation.
Thus we have to distinguish between the right or possibility to voluntarily
enter a group and that to voluntarily exit it. These notions do not entail each
other.
I
will also assume that there is internal freedom from coercion in the group.
That is, the members’ decision making should not be coerced but must express
their intentional agency and free will. Of course, in the context of group life
and joint action the participants will have to partially give up their own
authority to the group, but this should happen basically without (much) internal coercion. I will also assume
that the groups under discussion are free from external coercion in their decision-making and group acceptance. A
group can be forbidden to exist, forbidden to act (e.g. due to its subversive
activities), or it can be coerced to stop acting when engaging e.g. in illegal
or asocial activities. These possibilities will not in general be allowed
below.
Let
me now proceed to a brief discussion of the notions of the realm of concern
and the intentional horizon of a group. These are needed for the central
notion of the ethos of a group. I assume that at least in principle all
of these three items are up to the group to determine within a given
environmental setting, and this entails that the group is an autonomous one.
Accordingly, these items are taken to be based on group acceptance, thus on
group members’ collective acceptance in the sense that such and such things are
collectively taken to belong to the group’s realm of concern, intentional
horizon, and/or ethos.
The
realm of concern of a group will
consist of a class of topics that the group has collectively accepted as its topics of concern, viz. as matters of
interest to the group, which, furthermore, are considered in a group context. Roughly speaking, a
certain topic can be considered either in a group context, public for the group
members, or privately, not open to group members. When people act as group
members this can only take place by their acting in the socially and
normatively right circumstances. For instance, acting in a group position
(task) and thus performing one’s work duties requires that such circumstances,
partly defining the group context, are present (see Section IV). Accordingly, a topic of concern can be
regarded as a content, or an element of such a content, thought and spoken
about in group contexts – as opposed to private ones. Thus a broad range of
items can in principle be involved as contents or elements of contents – e.g. objects, properties, states of
affairs, and so on.
Topics
of concern then are contents and can be contents of attitudes. I will here
concentrate on propositional contents only, and will thus deal with
propositional attitudes. I take the intentional horizon of a group, g, to
consist of the subset of topics in its realm of concern that it de facto has some specific attitude
about (except for the assumed collective acceptance). For instance, the
attitude can be belief, intention, (having a) goal, wish, etc, but as a group
attitude it must be (normally voluntarily) collectively accepted, even if the
individual attitudes on which the group acceptance is based need not be voluntarily
held.[7] The ethos
of group g in its strict sense is defined as the set of its constitutive goals, values, beliefs,
standards, and norms, which give the group motivating reasons for action, to
some degree at least.[8]
Briefly, the ethos directs the group members thoughts and actions toward what
is important for the group and is expected to benefit it. Examples range from a
state’s constitution to a university’s goal to provide higher education and
promote scientific research to a stamp collector club’s ethos to facilitate its
members’ stamp collecting. When there is no clear-cut distinction between the
constitutive and non-constitutive goals, beliefs, standards, etc. we can take
the ethos in a wider sense to consist of the central goals, beliefs, standards, etc., centrality basically
defined in the partly circular terms about the group members’ collective
acceptance of what is central. In my
present setup the ethos forms a subset of the intentional horizon of the
group. The ethos constitutes the content aspect of the identity of the group.
To give a simple example, the group might have as its constitutive goal (ethos)
to make their village (named a, possibly the only element in the domain and the
central object type topic here) wealthy and beautiful. In general, the ethos
can be taken to have the world-to-mind direction of fit of satisfaction, viz.
not only constitutive goals, intentions and standards but also constitutive beliefs have the kind of
satisfaction condition requiring collective action to make them satisfied or to
maintain or uphold them.[9]
In
all, I assumed above an antecedently given realm of concern, analyzed either as
a class of predicates or as the class of possible state descriptions formed in
terms of them. The intentional horizon is the subclass of the realm of concern
about the elements of which the group in actual fact has specific intentional
attitudes. Finally, the ethos is the typically much more specific subset of
those state descriptions (or, states of affairs extra-linguistically speaking)
which are constitutive (or central) for the group and are capable of
representing its reasons and (possibly external) motivating states.
As
will be clarified in Chapter 6, collective acceptance basically amounts to
coming to hold and holding a relevant shared “we-attitude” with collective
commitment.[10]
The we-attitude can be in the proattitude family (including e.g. proattitudes,
intentions, and promises) or in the belief family (actually belief understood
as acceptance and not “experiential” belief); or somewhat more generally, the
we-attitude can have the world-to-mind or the mind-to-world direction of fit of
satisfaction.[11]
As noted, in the case of a collectively accepted ethos the we-attitude will
have the world-to-mind direction of fit of satisfaction.
To
discuss we-mode groups in some detail, a central assumption that I will make is
that the members of a group share an ethos that consists of contents such as
goals, beliefs, values, standards, norms. These content categories are assumed
to be known before, and thus their directions of fit of semantic satisfaction are
assumed to be known. For instance, the belief that the earth is round means
that the content “the earth is round” is believed by some agent. The truth of
this belief state amounts to its content (the earth is round) being true, and
this content is true if and only if the earth is round. Now, when a group’s
ethos contains the belief that the earth is round we have to deal with the
group’s satisfying the ethos and acting on it. How does an agent act on the
belief content that the earth is round? He makes appropriate inferences and
acts in the right way (e.g. plans to sail around the globe, etc.); and ditto
for the false belief that the earth is flat. Here the person’s disposition to
act on the belief is at stake, and it has the world-to-mind direction of fit.
So, in general, considering a certain ethos E consisting of goals, values,
beliefs, standards, etc. we can generally say that the content of the group is basically
constituted by its acceptance of E . Upon analysis, this amounts, roughly, to
the members’ collective acceptance of E, where the collective acceptance has
the world-to-mind direction of fit. (Here I ignore the operative-nonoperative
distinction needed for structured groups, see esp. Chapter 6.) However, this
collective acceptance can be assumed to involve collective commitment to
satisfy the ethos with the right, viz. world-to-mind direction of fit, and it
thus basically amounts to the joint intention to satisfy the ethos. (However,
in some cases where E consists only of a belief, only separate intentions as
group member need to may be involved.) Collective commitment to E also involves
that the members are socially committed to each other to do their parts of
satisfying and, in many cases, of maintaining E (see the account later in this
chapter).
The
collective acceptance of an ethos basically results in the members’ forming a we-mode
group. Social groups as discussed in this chapter will be assumed to have the
capacity to organize themselves into acting groups. It is accordingly assumed
that at least in autonomous groups the members are obligated to further and
promote (at least obey) the ethos of the group, that a group can commit itself
to action. This requires that its members can collectively commit themselves to
doing something together and accordingly that the members will understand and
mutually believe (at least in a de dicto
sense) that they are members of the group with a certain ethos – be the group a
permanent one or only a group of people acting together on a specific occasion
and be the descriptions under which the members take themselves and others to
be members of the group vague intensional ones. Being a member can then be
taken to presuppose mutually recognized commitment to the group itself. This
must include also commitment as a group member to the ethos.
A
thick notion of “we” serves to generate a we-mode
group, one which the members construct for themselves and where there is
not only the obligation to obey the ethos but in which indeed a functionally
substantial number of members are collectively committed to obeying the ethos.
Violators can be tolerated to some extent, but wholesale violation is blocked
in order to keep the group functional. In contrast to the we-mode group, in an I-mode group the members are assumed to
be only privately (viz. as private persons) committed to an ethos (cf. “I as a
private person intend to help starving people”). Accordingly, an I-mode group
is not, or need not be, capable of acting as a group, although the members may
act towards the same goal. (Cf. some people going to Alfonzo’s for lunch without
this aggregative action being based on their shared collective intention to do
so but only on their private intentions with the same content.)
As
indicated, the following epistemic condition must also be satisfied because of
the required feature that a we-mode group is capable of action: The members of
a we-mode group must at least believe or be disposed to believe that they are members
of the group (under some description of membership) and also that the other
group members (non-circularly identified) belong to the group, and they must also
believe that the others believe so of themselves and of them. Generally put,
there must be a mutual belief of these group elements for the group to function
properly. If you and I form a group for exchanging stamps, each of us must
believe that he is a member and that the other is a member; otherwise our group
cannot act and e.g. announce that we will organize a stamp exhibition. More generally,
the Finns must share the belief that they are members of this nation under some
relevant description, e.g. under the description of being speakers of the
Finnish language.
A
we-mode group thus is a social group that necessarily involves that the members
collectively accept an ethos. The acceptance need not reflected upon but can be
only a something that is seen in their actions and inferences. The right
functionality is in principle to be required, but the cognitive burden on the
members accordingly is not very big. Note that a member’s participation in
collective acceptance presupposes that a sufficient number of other members
also participate for the group to be able to function adequately. If a members comes
to believe that the group does not accept the ethos or that a substantial
numbers of the members do not accept it, he has a reason to retract his
acceptance.[12]
The collective acceptance in the we-mode case has to involve the idea of one’s
accepting to do one’s part of the group’s satisfying (and currently
maintaining) the ethos. The attitudinal and, especially, actional part
structure related to accepting and satisfying the ethos is thus assumed to be
involved in the we-mode case. The part structure is essential to the we-mode
case and indeed involves the idea of functioning as a group member in
the full sense. The social commitment involved in the resulting collective
intention and commitment that the we-mode collective acceptance analyzed in
terms of shared we-mode we-acceptance entails relies on the part structure
being in place. When the part structure is normatively codified by social norms
and rules, we are dealing with a (normatively) structured group.
In
all, the collective acceptance of the ethos in general involves the state of
the members’ jointly intending to satisfy (and uphold) the ethos, thus viewing
the group as it were an agent and having views and acting. Collective
acceptance has the world-to-mind direction of fit and this involves for the members the
acceptance to do one’s part of the group’s satisfying (and upholding) its
ethos. The group is viewed as having authority to give the members reasons to
think and act.
My
account of we-mode groups, or core we-mode groups at least, is internal. External
criteria may be present and may be required in addition, but the core notion is
internal. Some external criteria, like objective requirements for membership,
can be “built” into the ethos, other external requirements related to what
members of various out-groups have to believe of the we-mode in-group members
seems not to be conceptual necessities (cf. secret groups of which outsiders know
nothing). Membership is defined in terms of the ethos, E. To be a group member ideally
requires the acceptance of E.
Let
me accordingly reformulate the above account of a we-mode group in a way making
the artifact nature of we-mode groups clearer: [13]
A
collective g consisting of some persons (or in the normatively structured case
position-holders) is a (core) we-mode social group
if
and only if
(1)
g has accepted a certain ethos, E, for itself and is committed to it. On the
level of its members this entails that a substantial number of the members of
g, including its specially authorized operative members (if any), when
functioning as group members have accepted E as g’s (viz., their group’s,
“our”) ethos and are collectively committed to it, with the understanding that
the ethos is to function as giving authoritative reasons for thinking and
acting for the group members.
(2) every member of g ought to accept E (and
accordingly to be committed to it as a group member) at least in part because
the group has accepted E as its ethos.
(3)
Necessarily, the members collectively accept (with collective commitment) E as
g’s ethos if and only if (it is correctly assertable for them that) E is g’s
ethos.
(4)
It is a mutual belief in the group that (1), (2).
Clause (1) entails that a we-mode group (in
contrast to an I-mode group; see below) is a collective artifact and indeed an
institutional entity, as will be argued in Chapter 8. Acceptance as a group member will be analyzed in Chapter 6, and I will not
here clarify it. A we-mode group is capable of action in virtue of the
collective commitment to the group ethos (this contrasts with an I-mode group).
The ontology of social groups will be discussed in Chapter 6.
Let me note that the present account of course assumes
that the group members have some mastery of the concepts involved, e.g. they
must know what it is for a group to have an ethos and what it is for them to be
collectively committed to the ethos.
To
illustrate, let us consider the simple case where all the members are operative
ones and the group is a small group consisting only of a few members. We
consider a small stamp collectors’ group. In the above terminology, this a
collective g defined in terms of the ethos E = our goal is to collect stamps
and further our stamp collecting. We can thus write g = g(E). Clause (1) can be
taken to fulfilled – if the group members are taken to be collectively
committed to E (which I assume). Because the membership in g is defined
basically in terms of E, one cannot be a member unless one accepts E, so one
ought to accept E and be committed to accepting it as long as one is a member.
So clause (2) is fulfilled.
In order to comment on clause (3) we
can refer to the Thesis of Collective
Acceptance (to be discussed in Chapter 8). The central idea here is to argue
that in a sense we-mode groups are collectively constructed. In my technical
development I will identify a group with its ethos and say that the ethos is
not the ethos of a we-mode group unless
it is collectively accepted to be its ethos.[14] We
now regard g merely as a collective in some sense which initially falls short of
the full we-mode sense and ask under what conditions g would be a we-mode
group. g is assumed to be a collective with ethos E (so far not necessarily an
ethos collectively accepted with collective commitment). Let us now take s = E
is the ethos of g (or equivalently s = the ethos E of g is assertable or true).
A simple example would be E = the constitutive goal of g is collecting stamps. We
arrive at the result (in congruence with the CAT thesis of Chapter 8) that the
members of g collectively accept for the group that E is the ethos of g (thus
their ethos qua members of g) but that it is necessarily the case that the
members collectively accept (with collective commitment) that E is the ethos of
g if and only if (it is correctly assertable for them that) E is the ethos of
g.
The
conceptual necessity in clause (3) of our group definition might be seen as a
problem. Can’t a group have a certain ethos unless the group members have
collectively accepted the ethos (e.g. the goal of collecting stamps) for the group?
Well, if we think that there are sufficient external criteria for grouphood
(here for the existence of the ethos E for the group), then (3) is not
fulfilled. However, if there are not sufficient external criteria (although
possibly a necessary external criterion is in place) the we-mode account gets
support. Suppose the group is a secret group in a country where stamp
collecting is strictly forbidden. Then the criterion of (we-mode) grouphood
might be internal only: The central basis of grouphood then is collective
acceptance of E with collective commitment and the entailed mutual belief about
collective acceptance – cf. clause (4).[15] The
group would here be one which exists speak only for us and between us. Not all
we-mode groups need perhaps be based on purely internal criteria, though, but only
what I technically call a core we-mode group. Note that a core we-mode group
might consistently include a certain procedure for accepting members specified
in its ethos (e.g. that the governing board of an association makes such
decisions on the basis of applications).
Next,
we relax the ideas that every member need take part in the collective
acceptance (in (3)) and in the mutual belief (in (4)).[16] As
long as there is enough collective acceptance in the group that g is a group
with ethos E (and that this involves that all members ought to accept and be
committed to E as a group members) for the group-level ascription that the
group g accepts comes out true, that will suffice. Thus “g accepts E” and “a
substantial number of the members of g accept E” can be regarded as more or
less functionally equivalent with respect to g’ actions (see Chapter 6 for a
more precise account).[17] If a
group involves an authority structure with a division of its members into
authorized operative and non-operative members that might suffice as long as
the nonoperatives “hang along” and function as if they were taking part in the
group acceptance (see Chapter 6 for an account). In their case also the
conceptual demands might be relaxed (their understanding of what an ethos is
and what it requires of them might be limited, etc.).
The
mutual belief in (4) need not be taken to amount to the full iterative account.
If the iterative idea is used, there are ways of limiting it to so as not to be
cognitively demanding (see Tuomela, 1995, Chapter 1, and Chapter 3 of this
book). Note, furthermore, that g is typically described in intensional rather
than extensional terms, and the group members’ descriptions might differ
substantially from each other. Still they could hardly differ very much
extensionally, it would seem. My above point concerns the criteria of grouphood
and group membership. Note that this is different from the feature of how
correct or erroneous their actual classification of individual people into
group members and non-group members are.
We
have the corollary of the present account that a we-mode group is capable of
action as a group. This is because the ethos in general has the world to mind
direction fit and is in this sense goal-like. Briefly, collective acceptance
then involves or may involve the joint intention to satisfy the ethos (and what
it entails). Because of the collective commitment to the ethos (that is part
and parcel of the collective acceptance) the agents are organized for joint
action, and they can accordingly act jointly in a way which makes it right to
say group g performed an action. (Collective acceptance in some cases amounts
to collective belief rather than collective intention, but the capacity for
forming also a joint intention is there.)[18]
Notice
that the members who are collectively committed to the ethos, will act
appropriately as group members (see Section III for we-mode acting as a group
member) and hence they will trustfully cooperate with each other (see the
precise argument in Appendix 3 of Chapter 7 for this).
As
my main focus in this book will be on we-mode groups I will be brief on I-mode
groups. Consider this account:
A
collective g consisting of some persons is an I-mode social group
if
and only if
(1) the members of g (privately) accept some
goals, beliefs, standards, etc. as constitutive for the collective, forming the
collective’s ethos E, and accordingly are committed to E at least in part
because the others in g (privately)
accept E, and this is mutually believed in g.
(2)
the members of g share the beliefs that they themselves belong
to g and that the others believe that
they belong to g, under suitable, perhaps collective descriptions of
membership.
Note
that the social condition in clause (1) that the members accept the ethos in
part because the others do also holds in the we-mode case, although in that
case this condition is a consequence of the fact that the members take the
group’s acceptance of E as their reason for accepting E in the cases where E
has already been accepted as the group’s ethos. This point thus concerns those
who have not yet accepted E, and a central case in point is where the group has
a long history and those who originally established E for the group may not any
more exist as group members.
III
ACTING AS A GROUP MEMBER IN THE CORE SENSE
In
any we-mode group, the members may perform freely chosen actions qua a group member under some provisions. These actions --
or, more broadly, activities, including mental ones – must belong to the topics
of concern of the group in group contexts, as opposed to private contexts, and
they must be collectively accepted (or at least collectively acceptable) as actions correct for a group
member to perform, or they must at least be actions that the group is
responsible for (see the analyses
below). As indicated, such actions must be (rationally) collectively accepted
by (or acceptable to) the group. This acceptance can be either normative,
group-binding group acceptance or we-acceptance by the group members or their
majority.[19]
The acceptance (or the resulting “acceptance belief”) here could its pure form be
the following kind of we-acceptance
within the group, g: Everyone accepts a topic, T, to be a topic of concern for
g, and believes that everyone in g so accepts and also believes that this is
mutually believed in g.
In
general, when speaking of collective acceptance I will assume that the
participants collectively commit themselves to what they collectively accept. Indeed,
this can be regarded as a conceptual truth
about we-mode collective
acceptance as contrasted with I-mode collective acceptance (cf. Chapters 2, 3).
In the ethos case collective acceptance in the we-mode amounts to the group
members’ collectively accepting a certain ethos for g and being collectively
committed to it.
In
the case where actions are under consideration, a topic within the action realm
of g’s concern consists of content-satisfying or content-maintaining actions or
activities considered in a group context. I will below concentrate on the
action case.
The
ethos serves to constitute the group in the sense of giving the group its
content, so to speak. It also specifies and makes possible actions that qualify
as actions as a group member. As a consequence, it becomes true that an action
is action as a group member if and only if it is collectively accepted by (or
is collectively acceptable to) the group members as an action that promotes, or
is at least weakly conducive to, the satisfaction and maintenance of the ethos
of the group, and where the ethos is at least a partial reason for the action
in question. With some qualifications making room for dissidents, this is what
my analyses below will elucidate.
I
will assume here that the notion of ethos conceptually presupposes that the realm
of concern of the group is given. This assumption makes it easier to account
for the group’s changing its ethos and identity and for comparing different
(and perhaps competing) groups concerned with the same kinds of topics. Furthermore, the notion of the realm of
concern is required for elucidating acting as a group member (cf. especially
the dissidence sense to be defined in Chapter 10). The ultimate conceptual explicans here is
(rational) collective acceptance. The realm of concern, the intentional horizon
of the group, the ethos, and acting as a group member all ultimately depend on
collective acceptance.[20]
The
general case to be considered is that of a normatively structured group with
positions (the unstructured case can be regarded as its special case with no
specific positions over and above group membership). I will first classify the
types of actions within the action realm of a (structured) group’s concern.
These actions will all be collectively acceptable and mutually knowable as
being at least weakly ethos-promoting and, most centrally, is performed in part
because of the ethos (in the reason sense of ‘because’). Here are four action
classes that I take to be jointly exhaustive:[21]
(1)
positional actions (related to a group position or role), which include (i)
actions (tasks) that the position holder in question ought to perform, perhaps in a special way, in certain
circumstances and (ii) actions that he may
(is permitted to) perform in some circumstances;[22]
(2)
actions which constitutive and other group norms and group standards (e.g.
norms and standards which are not position-specific) require or allow;
(3)
actions and joint actions that are based on situational intention formation
(e.g. agreement making) that has not been codified in the “task-right system”
of g or the group norms of g but which still are consistent with actions in (1)
and (2) and are ethos-promoting;
(4)
freely chosen actions or activities (and possibly joint actions), which are not
incompatible with actions in classes (1) – (3); these freely chosen actions
belong to the realm of concern of g and are rationally or reasonably
collectively accepted by, or acceptable
to, the members of g as ethos-promoting actions.
Acting
as a group member in the core sense
is to act intentionally within the group's realm of concern, promoting (furthering)
the satisfaction and maintenance of the ethos, viz. the central, constitutive
goals, values, standards, beliefs, norms, elements of the history of the group.
The ethos is supposed to give the members a reason for action when acting as
group members. The core sense will below be divided into what may be called “standard” acting and “weak” acting as a group member. We-mode action entails action in the standard
sense and I-mode action entails action in the weak sense.[23] Not
that in a we-mode group some amount of I-mode action as a group member can be
tolerated, depending on group functionality. (Later, in Chapter 10, I will
also, in addition, be concerned with the so-called “dissidence” sense of acting
as group member.)
If
there is collective acceptance of the ethos, it will be upheld and maintained
by the participants by means of actions falling within (1) - (4) (recall the
world-to-mind direction of fit). In this sense the ethos is taken by the
members to be the group’s ethos and to be constitutive of the group. If they jointly intend to maintain and satisfy
the ethos, they are collective committed (bound) to it. If they only separately
intend to maintain and satisfy it, they are accordingly (only) privately committed
to it.
The
elements of the ethos are constitutive of the identity of the group, or at
least of its group-internal or “groupjective” identity. The group’s
groupjective identity may also reflect
objective features that are not up to the group to determine, e.g. the special
nature of the members. These features may still be taken into account in the
ethos in terms of the group’s mutual belief. Note that e.g. a state in general
qualifies as a group in the present sense. Basically, its constitution amounts
to its ethos (or at least part of it). At the other extreme, if two or more
agents have accepted as their joint task to carry a table upstairs, this task
group has as its ethos basically the goal of carrying the table upstairs.
To
comment on the above action classes, the actions may also be based on the
group’s non-constitutive goals
(etc.), thus goals that are not central to the group’s identity. Still the
actions will at least in an indirect sense be taken to be ethos-promoting.
Actions in class (1) are typical positional actions, and subclass (ii) of (1)
consists of actions that the holder of a position may choose from. The
task-right system specifying (i) and (ii) is based on obligations and rights
related to positions.[24] Actions
in classes (2) - (4) can occur also in the positional case.
In
class (2) we have actions that concern all group members. To take an example,
members of a religious organization may be supposed to engage in certain
activities on Sundays and respect certain moral norms and etiquette for
dressing. As for (3), the organization may have to react to some special habits
of certain newcomers of an unusual ethnic origin. Class (4) in the religious
organization could contain demonstrative actions, e.g. TV appearances, directed
against a war or for the freedom to consume certain drugs.
Action
as a group member can be either successful or unsuccessful. What is required is
that the group member will intentionally attempt to act in a way that he takes
to be within the group's realm of concern without violating the group's ethos.
The ethos is at least an underlying or a “presupposition” reason for the
member's action. It need not, however, be a salient motivational reason as
especially classes (3) and (4) indicate (cf. also criteria (iii) and (iv) below). The notion of ethos
can be understood in a wide sense in which every group can be taken to have an
ethos, which may consist just of some basic shared ends or beliefs that are
possibly unreflected and not clearly articulated.
As
said, full success in action will not be required. There may thus be failures
due to false beliefs about the group's norms and standards, due to lack of
skill, or due to environmental obstacles. Acting as a group member in the core
sense is equivalent to acting intentionally in an “ethos-promoting” sense in
terms of performing actions falling into one of the classes (1) - (4) – or at
least attempting so to act. (One cannot non-intentionally act as a group
member, although one can non-intentionally conform to the ethos.) The actions
in classes (1) - (4) need not (especially in case (4)) be strictly contained in, or specified
by, the ethos; it suffices for my present
purposes that they at least weakly promote the maintenance and satisfaction of
the ethos and are consistent with it. That they promote the ethos is at least a
partial motivational reason for these intentionally performed actions. By my wide
ethos-promoting (or “ethos-respecting”) action – concerned either with maintaining the ethos or with the satisfaction of its content – I will
mean an action satisfying one of the following criteria (i)-(iv):
(i)
An agent intentionally promotes the ethos by acting with the aim and correct
belief that his action will promote the ethos. The agent’s motivational reason
for performing the action here can be taken to be the mentioned aim in
conjunction with the belief.
A
trivial example related to a task group: Two agents plan jointly to paint a
house. The ethos consists basically of the goal of having the house painted by
them. Both agents perform their shares of the painting with the correct belief
that his part performance will promote the goal of the house getting painted.
Next consider an institutional example. Suppose the ethos of the group involves
protection of the environment, a conscientious agent may throw the wrap paper
of his lunch into a wastebasket with the aim and belief that the ethos thereby
gets promoted in the satisfaction sense.
(ii)
The agent intentionally performs a certain action in part for the motivational
reason that he (correctly) believes it is what the ethos requires or allows or
is “probabilified” by, but he may lack the aim to truly promote this ethos.
This agent is a mere “rule-follower”.
For
instance, the agent throws the wrap paper of his lunch into a wastebasket
believing this is required by the ethos, but not specifically aiming that the
ethos thereby gets promoted. The ethos required his action, and obeying it was
a part of his reason, but he did not specifically aim at promoting the ethos.
(iii)
The agent performs a certain action in the wide intentional sense that he does not perform it non-intentionally and performs it in part for the “presupposition”
reason that he at least tacitly correctly believes that the ethos requires or
allows or is “probabilified” by it, but he did not consciously aim at the
promotion of the ethos.[25] The
agent might routinely throw the waste paper into the basket or refrain from
violating the traffic rules.
(iv)
The agent conforms to a rule or a standard of action by intentionally acting “correctly”
(e.g. “ I stop at red signal because it is the socially correct action” instead
of “I stop at red signal because this is what the ethos requires). He acts in
part for the reason that it is the “right thing” to do but not for the reason
that his action is required by the ethos. Still, the non-accidentally performed
action – a kind of “pattern-governed” action – accidentally is (directly or
indirectly) required or allowed by, or (probabilistically) conducive to, the
ethos of the group.
For
instance, a person may obey the traffic rule of not crossing a street on red
light as a kind of intentional routine or “pattern-governed” action.[26] Here
the agent on purpose conforms to the traffic rule because of having been
trained to do so, but he does not do it for the reason that the traffic rules
(assumed to be entailed by or to specify the ethos) require him to stop. While
he stops in part because he has been “conditioned” to stop at red light, he
still takes his action to be the right thing to do.
All
the senses (i) - (iv) amount to more than mere accidental compatibility with
the ethos. Indeed, if the group members intentionally respect the ethos by
their actions in the group context in any of these senses and indeed are
correct in their relevant beliefs (concerning the “external” success conditions
of the ethos), then the ethos will be objectively promoted at least to some
extent. However, ethos-related goals and intentions need not become satisfied
(in cases (iii)-(iv)); and the beliefs and standards involved in the ethos,
while they will not be contradicted, will not be actively professed and used as
premises in practical and theoretical reasoning. As to we-mode acting as a
group member, strictly speaking (ii) – (iv) are not possible at all. They
represent borderline cases, but, depending on how “truly” in (ii) is understood
this case might be a we-mode case. Similarly, in the we-mode case, the collective commitment toward the ethos in
(iii) and (iv) is either presuppositional and thus weak (case (iii)) or opaque
and weak in this sense (case (iv)). In some cases, then, all of (ii)-(iv) might
apply both to we-mode acting and to the – somewhat “easier” case – of I-mode
acting as a group member.
One
may also speak of functioning as a
group member, where functioning is broader than acting. Functioning here also
includes having propositional attitudes as a group member. We have in effect
already encountered this notion when assuming that the group members must have
collectively accepted its realm of concern, its intentional horizon, and its
ethos, because collective acceptance means coming to hold and holding a
relevant we-attitude. While our earlier treatment of the notion of the realm of
concern was conducted in terms of “contents” in a broad sense, in my above characterization of acting as a group
member we concentrated on classes of actions. Given the earlier notion of
content, we can deal with (propositional) attitudes similarly. Thus, we may
speak of attitude contents and actions within the realm of concern of group g,
and in the above classification we may include also attitudes in addition to
actions. The important thing to notice here is that those attitudes (say
beliefs or hopes) are in the group context (in contrast to a private context)
and that they are based on acceptance
and thus on something that one can
acquire by means of one's intentional action in group contexts.[27]
Let
us note that the notion of acting as a group member in the case of class (4)
occurs within the scope of collective acceptance, viz. a we-attitude of a
suitable kind. The circularity involved here is not vicious, as shown elsewhere.[28]
As
will be seen in detail in Chapter 6, collective acceptance can be regarded as
coming to hold and holding a relevant we-attitude, viz. the members
collectively accept that p if and only if they accept that p, believe that the
others in the group accept that p and also that this is mutually believed in
the group. In the case of the ethos it must always have the world-to-language
direction of fit of semantic satisfaction.[29]
Collective acceptance involves either collective or private commitment (to the
accepted item), because collective acceptance entails the intention to have the
accepted content (e.g. goal) as a group content, and this intention in the
usual sense involves a commitment, which in turn is entailed by collective
acceptance in the ethos case. Said in my more technical terminology, collective
acceptance can be in the we-mode or in the I-mode. I-mode collective acceptance
amounts to an aggregate of private acceptances, and here a content (e.g. a
goal) is not accepted as a group content but, contingently, everybody accepts
the content as his content, but possibly for the use of the group.
On
the level of the group, so to speak, functioning as a group member (viz.
functioning as a group member with collective commitment to the group) is
generally, with some exceptions, we-mode functioning, based on we-mode
collective acceptance, as will be argued later. This applies to we-mode groups.
However, without destroying the group’s ability to promote its ethos, there may
even in a we-mode also be group be members functioning in the I-mode in an
ethos-respecting way, although all members cannot – on both conceptual grounds
concerning what group notions are and on functional grounds – all the time act
only in the I-mode. When functioning as a group member in the standard or we-mode
case, the agent functions on the basis of collective commitment and group
reasons (e.g. “On the basis of our collective commitment, I perform my action
at least in part because that is the group norm, or that is what the group
requires of me, or that is the right thing to do in our group, etc.”). I will
below emphasize the importance of we-mode collective acceptance for we-mode groups
which can “think and act” as groups, and I require we-mode acceptance at least
in the case of a substantial part of the authorized “operative” members who
represent the group. In the case of non-operative members I-mode acting as a
group member can well be the case. As to I-mode groups, in them the members are
acting as group members in the weak, I-mode sense.
Collective
we-mode acceptance of the ethos basically amounts to joint intention. This of
course presupposes that the members have adopted the “we-perspective” that conceptually
requires that the group members are disposed to think of themselves as parties
of a “we” that intends, believes, and acts for the use of the group. What is more,
the members are required to have collectively accepted the ethos with
collective commitment. Under favorable conditions, this becomes manifest as
their thinking and acting as a group.
In
this book commitment primarily means being bound to something. It is generally attitude-relative
(e.g. joint intention involves collective commitment). It need not be properly normative,
assuming that proper normativity is moral, prudential, or some other related
kind of normativity. However, a commitment is trivially “instrumentally” or
“technically” normative in the sense that e.g. achieving a goal “requires”
taking certain action. Furthermore, in the case of collective commitment a kind
of social normativity is nevertheless involved in the sense that acting
as a group member requires thinking and acting in certain ways. There need be
no clear “oughts” and “mays” involved but there are at least social
expectations and pressures with normative force, and the source of such
normativity is “group-social” (viz. social in the group sense). Such
normativity is part and parcel of the conceptual framework of group concepts
and concerns all group activities involving a rich, togetherness “we”. The
“oughts” and “mays” involved in contexts in which many persons act together or in
some other way function as group members are at bottom based on the concept of
togetherness (“groupness”). Thus, when acting together one ought to do one’s
part and one has the right to expect that others do theirs, and this normativity
is conceptual in its nature – it belongs to the “logic of group concepts”, so
to speak. When group members are involved in acting together to bring about a
state X, they are collectively committed to X on the basis of their joint
intention to achieve X (intention is here taken to entail commitment). This
collective commitment involves as its central element the idea of the the group
members’ being collectively committed to each other as group members to achieve
X together (and hence to participate in the joint acquisition of X). Each
participant is thus committed as a group member (in the full, we-mode sense) to
each other member to participate in the joint performance of X, and is hence
committed as a group member to perform his part of X. In the group belief case
(e.g. “we believe that the earth is flat”) the members are collectively
committed to respecting the content of the belief and acting accordingly.[30]
Group-social
normativity as such is not moral in a strict sense, although typically the
moral dimension is present because if the participants intentionally let the
others down they harm the others in an “internal” moral sense. But this “internal” moral aspect
is to be distinguished from the meant conceptual source of normativity.
Furthermore, there is not either “external” morality necessarily involved, e.g.
immoral Mafiosos can be collectively committed to murdering. Group-social
normativity is also to be kept analytically separate from normativity based on
both individual and collective (or group) rationality, although of course such
rationality requirements normally are applicable. Furthermore, group-social
normativity is not properly institutional either, because social participation norms
or other proper social norms need not always be involved to ground normativity.
However, under the broad view of institutionality to be accepted in Chapter 8
we can equate group-social normativity and institutional normativity.[31]
I
take commitment to be an agent’s state of his being bound as a result of the
act of committing (binding) oneself.
Forming an intention is the central, but not only, way of committing
oneself, the resulting commitment being attitude-relative. (I will speak of
commitment entailing something and being entailed, and this is to be understood
in the same sense as in the case of e.g. intentions.) When people collectively
accept to perform an action X together as a group, they collectively (jointly)
we-intend in the we-mode to perform it for the use of the group, viz. for “us”,
being collectively committed to do what they collectively intend.[32] In
contrast, in the I-mode case they may collectively in an aggregative sense
accept to perform X privately; here they we-intend only in a weak I-mode sense
and are privately committed to what they intend. Their aggregative acceptance
of action performance consists of each participant’s private acceptance of it,
either for the group or for himself. (Here “private” is used to denote thoughts
and activities that a person only personally is engaged in rather than as a
full-blown member of a group.)
I will
use the following specific terminology about commitment: A group g is committed (or g-committed) to p, and in that case typically the group members (or
almost all of them or at least of its operative members) are collectively committed qua group members (or, as I also say, we-committed in the we-mode) to p. This
we-mode we-commitment involves that such a member (e.g. a position holder) is
committed qua a group member to the non-accidentally shared content p for the
use and benefit of the group and believes that the others are similarly
committed and that this is mutually believed among the participants of the
collective commitment. As will be seen
in Section VI, members who thus have collectively committed themselves to p are
socially committed to each other to appropriately participating in the
performance of the joint project they are engaged in.
In
the case of normatively structured groups (with “task-right systems” and
positions defined on the basis of them), in order for the group to be committed,
the operative members or a substantial part of them can be required to be
we-committed in the we-mode for the group. The operative members are members
who have the authority (generally from the group members) to decide and/or act
for the group. However, my formulations below will best suit the cases where all
group members are operative members with their authority derived simply from
their membership.
Viewed
slightly differently, a we-commitment can be taken to be in the in the we-mode
when it satisfies the “Collectivity Condition” saying that, in virtue of the
participants’ collective acceptance of a goal or view, etc. as the group’s goal
or view, it is necessarily the case that the accepted proposition is true or
correctly assertable for the group if and only if it is so for any member of
the group.[33]
The Collectivity Condition guarantees that the participants “stand or fall”
together with respect to the satisfaction conditions of p. It can be proved
that a commitment satisfying the Collectivity Condition is in the we-mode, and
conversely.[34]
In contrast, I-mode we-commitments are private commitments that do not satisfy
the Collectivity Condition.[35]
IV
VARIETIES OF ACTING AS A GROUP MEMBER
As
said, in addition to the core notion
of acting as a group member characterized in Section III, for some purposes
other notions are needed, and I will discuss them below.[36]
We will also need a wider notion that can be called acting in a group
context. This notion will not be much used here, and thus the following loose
characterization will suffice here.
Acting in a group context means acting in the public domain of
the group, as opposed to acting in the private sphere related to matters that
can be have some causal significance for the group’s functioning. For instance,
this kind of action can have consequences for the “social atmosphere” in, and
the cohesion of, the group. Put slightly differently, people act in a group
context when they act within the framework of the group, thus action in group
positions or the performance of group tasks are cases in point.[37] The
class of actions in group contexts contains actions pertaining to the topics of
concern of the group, viz. the constitutive topics of interest of the group.
While then all acting as a group member (in one of my senses) is acting in a group context, the
converse obviously is not true.
Here
are two specific examples. A group, having finished a job that belongs to its
topics of concern, decides to go swimming or to get some other kind of recreation
that clearly does not fall within the topics of concern of the group. This
action does not involve action as a group member but it is still acting in a
group context and may causally affect the social atmosphere in the group. My second
example is one where the social group is a club and where a club member
spontaneously cleans the floor of the clubroom, with the others’ possibly
silent acceptance. Depending perhaps somewhat on what the club is about, this
need not be acting as a group member, but it is at least acting in a group
context. It is also positively causally relevant to group life (and is thus
“pro-group” action).[38]
Let
us first consider a weak notion of acting as a group member. This notion is
based on the group members’ sharing the ethos but being only privately (and not
collectively) committed to it. Thus there may be a group of women who grow
flowers in the village commons and intend to make their small village look
beautiful in this and perhaps other ways. Each of them is only privately committed
to making the village beautiful and they mutually know or believe that the
others are similarly committed. The participants’ actions here may but need not
be interdependent in other ways. The group under discussion is an I-mode group.
In a weak, I-mode sense we here have action as a group member (based on I-mode
collective acceptance):
(a)
An
action X performed by some member or members of g is an action as a group member in a weak sense if and only if X is
performed in the group context in the core sense (X belonging to one of the
action classes (1)-(4)) in part for the reason of promoting the shared ethos,
E, of g that they hence (privately) ought to promote (at least obey) and to
which they are privately committed.
Here
obeying (thus promoting) the ethos means satisfying it either by making it true
(cf. goals) or keeping it true by acting on it (cf. beliefs and standards. Group
g can be either and I-mode or a we-mode group.
In
the present case E is not collectively accepted in the we-mode and accordingly
the present case can, for convenience, be called I-mode acting as a group member (although, strictly speaking,
definition (IMR) of Chapter 2
explicating the I-mode is not yet entailed). (In this book, “private” and
“I-mode” thinking and acting amount to almost the same, the only difference
being that the former need not be intrinsically related to any group while the
latter is.)
(b) An action X performed by some member or
members (or authorized representatives) of group g is an
action as a member of g in the standard
sense if and only if (i) either the members of g rationally (reasonably)
collectively accept for the group with collective commitment that X is an
action in one of the senses (1) – (3), (ii) or the action X falls in class (4)
(and is thus reasonably collectively acceptable as an action within the realm
of concern of g and indeed as an action as a group member), X here being assumed to be performed in part
for the reason of promoting the ethos, E, of g that the group is committed to and
that they hence ought to promote (at least obey) and to which at least tend to
be collectively committed.
(b)
can also, for convenience, be called the standard we-mode sense of acting as a group member (although the precise
definition (WMR) of the we-mode in
Chapter 2 might fail to be satisfied). This is the sense in which the members
in a we-mode group as supposed to act as group members, but it may be noted
that we-mode groups can tolerate some I-mode acting as a group member and even
action deviating from what the ethos prescribes or recommends (see Chapter 6).
The “ought” in (b) expresses the group’s authority to give reasons for the
members to think and act in ways compatible with the group’s commitment to its
ethos. The group’s commitment will mean that the members, or their authorized
representatives, together have originally formed the ethos for the group. While
the group is viewed as an agent here, no special ontologically suspect group
mind or group spirit is assumed.
In
general, the group members are obligated to perform actions within (1) - (4)
and actions that accordingly are required for their performance or are
otherwise ethos-promoting (these latter kinds of actions can be regarded as
falling within class (4)). Actions in a group context that are not even weakly
ethos-promoting do not count as actions as a group member in the standard or
weak sense.
The
content of collective acceptance in the present context is action X (action
that upon collective acceptance will be action as a group member), but this
collective acceptance will have to promote the ethos E (in one of our four
senses (i) – (iv)). Especially in the case of voluntary groups (groups
voluntarily entered) the signing for membership can be taken to entail the
acceptance of the obligation to obey the ethos. Thus, it is the normative task
of the group members to collectively see to it that E is maintained and
satisfied. In the case of acting as a group member in the standard sense, the
members will have to act intentionally with the right purpose, even if the
environment would not cooperate and even if the acting may be routine.
On
the other hand, one can obviously act within the realm of the group's concern
but fail to obey the ethos of the group. For instance, one can even perform treasonable
acts against the group and its ethos and be acting as a group member in the “dissidence”
sense to be discussed later in Chapter 10. The main idea is that even mere
group membership and acting as a member of a certain makes the group partly
responsible for a group members’ action even when it intentionally violates the
ethos.
When
a member acts as a group member in the above full sense (b) he can be said to
“represent” the group or act “in the name of “ the group. This is quite
analogous to the case where an attorney by his actions represents an agent
(viz. what the latter would rationally and justifiably do) in the court.
Generally speaking, in such circumstances acting as a group member is related
to the case where a group intentionally performs an action.[39] I distinguish
between two types of cases, differing in generality.
We
can, firstly, speak of promoting the ethos on a general level. Taking group g
to be capable of action qua a group, I assume that g intentionally sees to it
or brings about the satisfaction of E or at least tries to act so. We can also,
alternatively and equivalently, say that the action here is describable as g’s
acting so as to promote its ethos. This is the case when its members jointly
(try to) see to it or bring about that the ethos is promoted – based on their
joint intention “We together will see to it that E is promoted”. When they
together see to it that (“stit”) E is
promoted, every group member can be said to have a part or slice in this joint stit’ing. They may act separately or
jointly to this effect and use whatever “tools” (e.g. hiring agents to do
something) that are believed to be useful. Here the members’ part actions
simply are actions qua a group member in the standard sense and by these
actions they represent (or act in the name of) the group.
The
totality of the part actions, based on their jointly stit’ing E, collectively taken constitutes the group’s E-satisfying
and E-maintaining action. The group members can be regarded as “authorized”
(viz. collectively accepted) representatives of the group as long as they act
as group members in the standard sense. The group “acts through them” and,
conversely, they by their actions represent the group and thus the group’s
interests (ethos) and consequently their actions “weakly” represent what the
group does (or should E-correctly do) in the situation. The members’ part
actions amount to the full group action and by them the members also represent
the group’s interests and E-correct action (viz. the totality of E-correct part
actions).
Leaving
this big picture and concentrating on a small part of it, we arrive at our
second, more concrete level. Here we may assume that the group performs a
specific action, X, mutually believed to promote the ethos (recall Section III).
In this case there are specific operative members that carry out the task and
act so that the action X can be attributed to g on the basis of their together
intentionally seeing to it that X (or bringing about it). (Cf. the leaders of
the group acting making a deal in the name of the group; alternatively all the
members may act as operative members.) The operatives see to it, or bring it about,
that X and thereby by their actions they “strongly” represent the group,
provided that their actions indeed are “ethos-correct” and based on collective
commitment (giving functional unity to the group). Here each participant
performed a part or “slice” of his bringing about X and thus took part in
strong representation. Acting as group member in this strong representational
sense involving operatives’ actions amounts to successfully and correctly
acting in ways falling within the union of classes (1) - (4). Typically,
positional acting such as a professor’s giving a course qualifies as strongly
representational action performed by an operative member of a group (the
university). Thus, thereby an action as ascribable to the group, for the group
saw to it or, at least, enabled – and under a more general description required
– the professor to give the course. The members of the staff of the university
can be said by their actions to represent the university relative to its
normatively specified task, viz. providing education to the students.
The
non-operative members’ part actions represent the group in the same weaker sense of representation as in the
general ethos case, for, despite their role here, the non-operatives acted in
the standard sense of acting as a group member. Acting as a group member in the
standard sense is “group-authorized” action and the group can be said to act
through the members’ actions.
Note
that an action as a group member in the representation sense is an action as a
group member in the standard sense (thus mere representation), whereas acting
in the standard sense entails representation. Furthermore, because of not being
ethos-correct, an action can be acting as a group member in the dissidence
sense without being representational action at all. As to the private mode
sense (a), it is not implied by any of the other notions (nor vice versa).[40]
V
COLLECTIVE COMMITMENT AND ETHOS
This
section investigates the relationship between the ethos, collective commitment,
and group action. To begin, I consider a social group, g, with a certain ethos
(constitutive goals, values, beliefs, standards, norms, etc.). The content aspect of group g’s identity is
defined by its collectively accepted ethos, E. That this definition holds is a
constitutive principle for the group, and its collective acceptance, at least
if rationally made, already gives a kind of weak normative reason for
maintaining it. As all of the group’s constitutive principles, based merely on
collective acceptance, can be changed by the group, so the group itself can in
principle change its own identity, thus change E. (We assume here that g is in
this sense an autonomous group.)
Collective
acceptance of E by g obviously does not logically
entail that g ought to accept and
continue to accept E. But given that g’s
having E is like having a goal ( with the world-to-mind direction of fit of
satisfaction) it is simply rational
for g to try to satisfy E, and this involves the group members’ being
collectively committed to E not only on rational but also on group-social
grounds qua being group members. It follows that a rational group ought to
maintain “goal” E as long as no relevant changes have occurred. A rational
group is assumed to have based its acceptance of E on some reasons, and,
ideally, it will maintain E if and only if the relevant reasons stay the same.
There are two pairs of issues that have to be kept distinct. First, there is
the issue of maintaining versus changing E. Secondly, there is the issue of
obeying (and thus satisfying) E versus disobeying E. In principle, this gives
us four possible combinations, viz. maintaining-obeying, maintaining-disobeying,
changing-obeying, changing-disobeying, when we look at a group at differents
points of time.[41]
Below I will concentrate on the maintenance issue together with the entailed
technical obligation to obey. By promoting the ethos two things will be meant
below, either maintaining the ethos or satisfying (obeying) it.
Given
that the reasons for the maintenance of g’s collectively accepted ethos E do
not change, g ought to maintain it, if E is a standing “goal”. If, however, E
is a single-shot goal, then it will be discarded after it has been satisfied or
collectively accepted to be unsatisfiable (or something of the kind). Accordingly,
for any action X that is required by the ethos the group is not, ceteris
paribus, “as it ought to be” unless it performs X.[42] Here
one cannot strictly formally deduce, by modus ponens, conclusion “g ought to do
X” from the premises “if g has ethos E, then it ought to do X” and “g has E”.
The conclusion is premise-dependent and logically non-detachable, although it is
“practically” detachable (viz. the group is not as it should be unless it
performs X).
Accordingly,
if E is a standing goal, g’s acceptance of it premise-dependently entails that
it rationally ought to maintain it as long as the reasons for acceptance are
not changed. In effect this kind of normative premise says that we ought to
maintain our group (“us”), but it does not say for how long or in which
circumstances as only the (typically unpredictable) change of reasons for
acceptance matter. A condition reflecting this in a rational democratic,
self-determining group might amount to “given that the overwhelming majority of
group members accepts E as the ethos of the group”. Of course, it is not unconditionally true that
g ought to have accepted E as its ethos.
Accordingly, the obligation can be changed, and it can be rationally
changed if the group finds good reasons to do so – group identity need not be that tightly connected to the present
ethos.
This
kind of commitment to E involves rational persistence and resistance towards
change that is not present in e.g. desires and hopes, and the collective aspect
makes solo quitting reproachable in principle. There is a kind “intrinsic
resistance” on rational grounds against the group’s changing its constitution
(identity). Another route to rational resistance to change the group’s identity
may come from functional considerations related to the group’s particular
non-constitutive goals and aims. Suppose thus we are a group of musicians
forming a quartet and that we plan to arrange a concert on the fiftieth
anniversary of Sibelius’ death in 2007 and maybe have other similar plans.
Clearly, then we plan to maintain our ethos and our group – or there is strong rational-normative
reason for maintaining E – until that date. Thus, in our example the group will
persist and live with the identity involved in E due to collective acceptance
and the collective commitment involved. More generally, if collective
acceptance of the ethos E is to be rational in the present functional sense,
then, other things being equal, the group ought to keep E at least up to the
point of time that its action plans concern.
Both
the identity argument and the functionality argument bear an analogy to the
case in which the group members have mutually promised to keep their group’s identity
under such and such conditions (e.g. until 2007 in the case of our group of
musicians). Then as promising entails undertaking an obligation, the group members
collectively ought to maintain its ethos and identity at least as long as those
conditions obtain. This way of putting the matter indicates that we do not
derive the statement that it ought-to-be in the group that E is maintained from
the mere natural fact of collective acceptance of E, but rather we derive the
ought-to-be requirement from normative
(possibly only instrumentally normative) collective acceptance.
The
above considerations based on the group’s identity (and thus, so to speak, on
group life versus death) gives a partial justification to the statement “It
ought-to-be the case in g that E, given that the group has accepted E and no
relevant change-inducing reasons have come up”. It follows that the group
members (both on rational grounds and on “group-grounds”) ought to perform
relevant world-to-mind activities related to the maintenance and upholding of
“E is g’s ethos” (e.g. the Wednesday Lunch Group ought in this way to maintain
its ethos “Our group meets for lunch every Wednesday”) and of course keep on
meeting as long as the “reason situation” does not change. The group members
thus ought to maintain E by their actions and, without further reason, to
refrain from changing the ethos e.g. to collecting stamps instead of lunching
together, and they ought to come to the lunch every Wednesday. Thus, the statement “Given that the reasons
for the acceptance of E by g are in place, it ought-to-be the case in g that E
is its ethos” can be taken to entail two different ought-to-do requirements for
the group members.
The
actions by means of which the group members try to satisfy and promote the
ethos are ones falling into the classes (1) - (4) of Section III. Also the
normatively required actions by the group members for maintaining the ethos as
the group’s ethos fall into these classes, especially (1) - (3). However, note
that e.g. defending the ethos against attempts to change it is a maintenance
action (e.g. maintaining it as the group’s ethos that they are to lunch
together on Wednesdays) that is to be distinguished from the actions that
satisfy the ethos (actually having lunch together on Wednesdays). Of course, it
is a contingent truth that satisfying actions contribute to the maintenance of
the ethos. It would be rational for the lunch group to give up its ethos and
the group would indeed disintegrate if hardly anybody ever came for lunch on
Wednesdays.
Recall
that collective commitment amounts to shared we-mode we-commitment: Ideally,
everyone in the group is committed to a joint “project” or action (assumed to
satisfy the Collectivity Condition) and believes that the others are similarly
committed and that there is mutual belief about this. Here commitment in a
single member’s case means that he has bound himself, both in his relevant
thoughts and actions, to the joint project (joint action) in question and
thereby to the others in the group relative to that project. At least if
rational he will also have the belief that the others or a substantial part of
them are similarly committed. This is we-mode commitment in the sense that the
person commits himself as a group member rather than privately. The person in
question is disposed to think thoughts of the kind “qua members of g we ought
to see to it that E” and, hence, “I ought to participate in our joint action
and owe this to the others, viz. I ought to do this, in part, for the reason
that the others rightfully expect it from me”.
There
is a difference between the cases where there is mutual knowledge and where
there is mere, possibly false, mutual belief about the existence of collective
commitment. In the former case the group members must somehow have made public
their intentions and commitments to the ethos and what it covers. In the case
of mutually believed collective commitment, the members might not know that the others are we-committed in
the we-mode. Hence they cannot justifiably sanction each other (when needed),
because they cannot be sure that the others indeed failed to do something (as
the putative violators might actually not have had the intention in question).
If there is mutually known collective
commitment, the group members will be publicly bound (within the group) to
maintain and satisfy the ethos and bear responsibility for these two matters
and hence for the group members’ acting correctly as group members. While with mutually believed collective commitment
we do get the right kind of collective maintenance and satisfaction behavior,
indeed group-binding group action, we do not yet have the publicity and thus the
objectively justified demands on the members that we would get with mutually
known collective commitment.[43]
As
seen, the (ought-to-be) norm that E ought to obtain entails – concerning its
satisfaction –that at least rational group members persist in holding it and
oppose change, given that the collective acceptance of E has been rational and
no important changes in the situation have occurred. This kind of satisfaction
must be distinguished from the satisfaction of the content of E. For instance
if E = G is a (constitutive) goal of g, then this content is satisfied by the members’
achieving G for the right reason, viz. precisely for the reason that G is the
goal of g. In all, both the maintaining of the ethos as the group’s ethos and
the satisfaction of the ethos require the right kind of obeying action, and
such action will be ethos-promoting action in the sense clarified in Section
III. To summarize my basic principles of
ethos maintenance and change, they can
be schematically put as follows for suitable rational reasons or conditions C:
(i) g may be externally and internally free
(autonomous) or unfree;
(ii) a free group g rationally ought to maintain its
ethos E, given reasons C (e.g. C might involve that the overwhelming majority
of the group members rationally collectively accept E as g’s ethos);
(iii) a free group g may rationally change E, given -C
(C as in (ii));
(iv) change of E or its substantial parts entails
change of identity of g, but the group rationally ought to keep its identity,
unless strong reasons for changing it emerge (such as -C in (iii));
(v) a free group’s commitments not related directly to
E may rationally require (ii).
Clause (iv) serves to justify (ii), and similarly do
the commitments dealt with in (v).
If
we are to have full-blown group action qua group action, joint intention and (we-mode)
we-commitment on the part of the participants are required. I will now consider
a weaker sense of group action or collective action that does not require joint
intention to promote the ethos or even acting for the reason that the group
ethos thereby gets promoted (this is what the I-mode sense (a) of acting as a
group member would yield). The group action that I have in mind does involve
collective commitment to the right kind of ethos-entailed action (and is thus
stronger than I-mode collective action), but it does not make the ethos a
reason for action. This kind of group action consists of the ethos-promoting
cases (iii) or (iv). Thus, the action need not amount to more than refraining
from action, viz. intentional omission to act in a certain way prohibited by
the ethos (this is case (iii) of promoting the ethos of Section III).
Considering
specifically this case, such action can be called presuppositional group action in the we-mode where the essential
thing is that the ethos functions as a kind of underlying presuppositional
reason for the participants’ action.[44] Here
the agent can pursue his own (further or immediate) goals as long as he does
not violate the ethos. There need be no common goal here. For example, not
violating the traffic rules is correct societal behavior, and the group members
do not strictly act together when driving in the traffic, although they can be
said together to promote (viz. maintain and satisfy) the traffic rules (part of
the ethos) – often non-intentionally (viz. not “under the right description”
while still intending to do what is right). As another, rather similar example,
consider the case of the Flat Earth Society where the group’s ethos includes
the belief that the earth is flat. Here we have shared we-mode action as a group
member, and such action is presuppositionally constrained (it cannot violate
the belief content that the earth is flat). Nevertheless, the actions need not
have the same goals. We still have presuppositional we-mode collective action
(viz. collective presuppositional non-violation of traffic rules when driving
and collective “flat-earth-respecting” activity, respectively).
In
the case of presuppositional collective action and practice, the actions involved
(be they separate or joint actions) typically respect the ethos only in the
sense that, while they are intentionally performed (or, in a still weaker case,
are not non-intentionally performed) they still do not involve the agents’
intention to maintain or to satisfy the ethos (even if that content or result
may come about in a known and even mutually known way). We may say that the
ethos is only a presupposition of action and its presuppositional reason. If
things start going wrong, and the agent gets social sanctions for his behavior,
he may realize that he does not operate according what is the right thing to do
in his group.
While
presuppositional collective action generally falls short of being group action
based on the joint intention to maintain and satisfy the ethos, it may still
well be based on collective commitment to act in certain ways that we as
theoreticians know to be the right ways according to the ethos. The result of
this kind of weaker group action is, nevertheless, that the ethos is maintained
and obeyed (satisfied), albeit not for quite the right reason. For instance,
the members preserve order in traffic by “presuppositional respect” of the
traffic rules. As noted, the participants are collectively committed to
relevant conformity but not to acting for the reason that the action is required
by the ethos. While they need not be paying attention to their being so
committed, there is still more here than the ethos getting promoted as merely
an unintended consequence of what the people do. We have an underlying
structure (e.g. the system of laws of a state) which allows us to say that the
group members together promote the ethos, albeit perhaps not intentionally. But
had they reflected upon the situation they might have formed the joint
intention together intentionally to promote the ethos by their separate
actions.
There
are various mixed possibilities that all serve to create the kind of behavioral order demanded by the ethos but
which fall short of being proper we-mode group action based on a joint
intention to maintain and satisfy the ethos. There can be a mixture of
participants acting in the weak I-mode sense of acting as a group member and
participants acting in the above presuppositional sense (involving one of the
cases (iii) – (iv) of promoting the ethos). Such a mixture may of course also
contain participants acting in the we-mode for the right ethos-based reason.
VI
WHY REQUIRE COLLECTIVE COMMITMENT?
In
this section I will try to pull together my various, interdependent arguments
for requiring collective commitment in the analysis of group action. I will present five interrelated but still
different arguments to support the view that the group perspective and
especially collective commitment as its essential ingredient is needed to
account for group action and group life in general (recall Section I for the
we-perspective notions).
The
following reasons for the assumption of collective commitment are central:
(1) Group membership. Group membership in
at least autonomous groups can be taken to entail the obligation to obey the ethos,
E. Thus if the obligation is accepted and endorsed by the group members they
are collectively committed to E and we are dealing with a we-mode group. In
other words, signing up for group membership at least in autonomous groups
entails the obligation in question, and a “good” member is supposed to endorse
the obligation and be we-mode we-committed to E. As we know, in actual practice
there are collective action dilemmas which are an obstacle to such endorsement (see
the discussion in Chapter 7). More loosely, taking part in group life as a
group member involves group-social expectations with normative character even
if no articulated “oughts” and “mays”
need be involved. Group members simply
qua a group members are collectively committed to group activities obeying and
furthering the ethos and, as a sign of this, they are subject to social
criticism by the other members if they do not properly participate.
(2)
Group identity. Related to
(1), we have a parallel argument in terms of the group’s identity. A group’s
identity consists mainly of the group’s ethos, E, to which the group members
ought to be committed as a group, and basically also the group members’
identity and interrelationships may be relevant to group identity, as the case
may be (see Chapter 6 for group identity). Sometimes it may also matter how the
external social environment views the matter: Do the other people accept a
collection of people as forming a group or not?
Without
shared we-commitment to the ethos there is not the kind of unity that group
identity functionally requires and without such ethos-generated identity the
group will not be able to function as a unity. The group members are attached
to the ethos by collective commitment, which is a kind of glue that keeps the
group together as a unit, each member thinking and acting with a we-perspective
(the group’s perspective) instead of an I-perspective. The we-perspective is
here grounded in the shared ethos to which the members are collectively
committed and involves strong collective sociality in the we-mode sense. Thus
it involves forgroupness as expressed by group thoughts of the kind “We intend
to do X” or “We believe that p” and collective commitment to these thoughts. In
addition, it also typically includes we-feelings,
viz. affective bonds, in many cases enhanced by rituals and accompanying music. [45]
Collective commitment is strengthened if an appropriate we-feeling exists in
the group.
If
there is not a substantial amount of collective commitment towards the ethos the
group risks losing its identity (or part of it) and falling apart into an
aggregate of independent actors furthering the same ethos. Collective
commitment functions to guarantee that the identity stays the same, or becomes
what the group wants it to become, and serves to unite the members around that
identity.
While
the ethos gives the “contentual” part of the identity of the group, collective
commitment per se, independently of
the nature of the ethos that it concerns, accounts for the cohesion and “causal
we-ness” in the group. As seen, the main work of mutually believed collective
commitment is to keep the group members together. This is the basis for the
(narrow) we-perspective, which accordingly here consists of the ethos,
collective commitment, and shared we-mode attitudes expressible by e.g. “We
will do X”, “We believe that p” (in contrast to “I will do X” or “I will do X
given that you do X”, “We all intend to do X”, etc, and ditto for beliefs).
Without collective commitment to E there is not either enough reason for
outsiders to hold these persons as constituting a group – in the sense of a
group capable of responsible action as a group – but only reason for holding
them as an aggregate of persons privately committed to the same ethos. Also
empirical research supports the idea that identification with a group and
commitment to it increases ethos-promoting action. Thus Marilynn Brewer argues
that when a collection of individuals believe that they share a common ingroup
membership they are more likely to act in the interest of collective welfare
than individuals in the same situation who do not have a sense of group
identity.[46]
I take collective welfare to include the ethos of the group, and this enables
us to say in view of the above result that identification with the group (most
importantly its ethos) does tend to yield ethos-promoting action – the group
norm obligating to promote the ethos indeed will be obeyed to a substantial
extent. Brewer also argues on the basis of empirical research that identification
with the ingroup can elicit cooperative behavior even in the absence of
interpersonal communication among group members. Functioning in ingroup
context, individuals develop trust and a cooperative orientation toward shared
problems. Here we have empirical support for the claim that in ingroup contexts
we-mode behavior tends to come about and to supersede I-mode activities.
When
a collectively committed group has some privately committed members, these
members are not full-fledged group members (in the standard sense). Privately
committed members may be strongly committed to E, but their commitment does not
add to the group’s identity but only to their own (social) identity without
“gluing” them to the other members. As to group action, these members (in a
weak sense) may walk out or do something wrong without less ado than in the
collective commitment case. These members are not full-fledged “arms and legs
in the collective body” in question. If, on the other hand, they are mutually
believed to be collectively committed, they are treated as full-fledged members
and tend to surprise the group when they act according to their own minds.
As
noted, group life, “groupness”, intrinsically makes the participants socially
committed.[47]
A we-mode we-committed person will be socially committed to the other group
members (to promote the ethos, etc.) both in a distributive and in a
non-distributive sense, viz. to the individual members and to the members
viewed as a non-distributive totality. Familiarly, often social commitments are
strengthened by moral considerations (avoidance of harm, reproach,
responsibility, etc.).
Social
commitment to others and to the group is the core of the reproachability
feature of collective commitment: a publicly we-committed member who leaves the
joint project or intentionally violates the ethos can be criticized by the
others, whereas if he had been committed only to himself he would have been
less criticizable socially for letting the others down. In the private case he
can only be criticized for not being a rationally stable person.
In
the collective commitment case a violator can be criticized for soloing instead
of acting qua a group member. Here a member has
given up his full authority over his own action to the group. In the
case of quasi-moral and moral commitment, the reproachability may justifiably
involve accusations of the person’s harming the others by acting in the wrong
way. However, such accusations are not warranted at least to the same extent if
the person in question is only privately committed. Collective commitment, in
contrast to private commitment, entails at least an instrumental obligation to
see to it (or bring about) together with the others that the ethos is upheld or
changed in the direction the group wants. The social aspect of collective
commitment gives us the other members’ partial
authority behind that obligation, as a participant is committed not only to
himself but to the others and to the group.
(The
following observation shows that mutual belief about collective commitment
suffices for actual collective commitment, assuming commitment to be a
persistent intention to participate: If there is mutual belief among a
substantial part of (the operative) group members to the effect that the whole
group as a group is committed in the world-to-mind fashion to ethos E, then
there is shared we-mode commitment (intention) to contribute to E by those
members and hence, assuming successful execution of intention, collective
action results. This result requires the additional, but highly reasonable
assumption in its antecedent that each member who believes that he is committed
also actually is committed.)
(3)
Responsibility. In order for the
group to be able to answer general demands, both group-external and group-internal,
for taking responsibility or being responsible, collective commitment must be
present (see Chapter 10). Generally speaking, collective commitment (or, in the
non-objective, “groupjective” case, the mutual belief that there is collective
commitment in the group) gives the group members authorization and justified
instrumental obligation to control the other group members’ relevant actions,
and thus they can be held responsible for wrongdoings (viz. actions by group
members that violate the ethos and what it derivatively covers). A group is
responsible for not having controlled its members’ action at least when there
is mutually believed collective commitment. When there are some members who are
not collectively committed (and this is mutually believed in the group) the
group takes responsibility for having allowed them to take part in group
action. The responsibility is based on the group’s commitment to see to it that
the ethos is upheld and promoted. This imposes “oughts” and entails “mays” – or
if you prefer, “duties” and “rights” – of at least an instrumental, E-relative
kind on the group members to help, control, pressure, etc. others when needed
so that achieving the end result in a joint venture is facilitated. Group
activities of this kind are in principle everybody’s business. A group member’s
action is “transparent” in the sense that it is open for scrutiny by the other
members. His action is not his private business.
(4)
Functionality. Without collective
commitment the group cannot de facto properly act and function as a group and
thus cannot properly fulfill its tasks and purposes. Part of what is involved
here over and above what aggregated private commitments give is the social
commitment involved in collective commitment: Being committed to each other,
the group members can better rely on the others to perform their respective tasks,
which especially in the case of interdependent and joint actions is central
(cf. below).
To
elaborate, a group cannot function as a group if the members are only privately
committed to E. One member may stop acting or act incorrectly if he changes his
mind about being privately committed to E. In general, the group needs good
reasons to believe that the members are collectively committed in order to dare
to act as a group. If all or most of the
members are only privately committed to E it would be like an armada of boats
without a commander of the armada. Each captain of a member boat is on his own
in his attempt to get to the end port E (or to an end furthering it). Those who
decide to take on other goals cannot be controlled or sanctioned for that on
(even instrumental) social grounds. Given that no extra assumptions concerning
the participants interconnection (such as specific agreement or plans to act
jointly) are made, merely privately committed members in interdependent I-mode
activities have a more possibilities to leave without criticism, as they have
kept their full autonomy to act in this situation. Other participants in the
situation may criticize quitters e.g. on grounds of lack of rationality or on
moral grounds, as they may lose their chance to arrive at their I-mode goals or
shared I-mode goal, but they know they have no
group-based authority behind their demands to make the quitters stay. On
functional grounds we need a group that acts in a coherent way through
coherently acting members all of whom participate in seeing to it that they get
to the same port. The mutually believed collective commitment gives this and
also in general seems necessary for it. The social commitment in the collective
commitment is the core of the glue that gives them shared authority over the
“oughts” and “mays” in question.
A special case of the functionality argument is given
by group goals and beliefs. Groups
may have goals and interests that the members do not have and which may even
conflict with the members’ goals and interests (cf. the positional model of
group attitudes in Chapter 6). When properly acting as group members they will
also collectively accept goals and views for the group that they would not
adopt or have if only acting privately. For such new goals and beliefs to
function properly for the group, collective commitment to them is required. The
present argument is not a direct argument for the requirement of collective
commitment, but it shows indirectly that also when the ethos of the group does
not fully coincide with the private views and ideas of the members, collective
commitment is a forceful, entailed companion of (we-mode) collective
acceptance.
(5) We-mode
instead of I-mode: As has already been argued and as will be further argued
in various chapters of this book, the we-mode (and a we-perspective) is often
superior to the I-mode (and an I-perspective) in the case of some task
performances (here assumed to be mode-independently described). This matter
relates in part to points of functionality (cf. argument (4)) but even more
importantly it connects to the basic conceptual framework adopted for
approaching the social world. As will be shown in more detail in the next
chapter the we-mode is irreducible to the I-mode, and thus there will be, as it
were, a choice between two fundamentally different ways of viewing persons in a
social context.
Consider
thus these two contrasting cases: We collectively accept and therefore I accept
“We together will see to it that X in order to uphold the ethos” (group or
we-perspective) rather than “I will see to it that X (e.g. act towards the
satisfaction of the ethos), given that the others or sufficiently many of them
also do X”. In the we-mode case, “we” is the intentional subject of attitudes
and action, while “I” is the respective intentional subject in the I-mode case.
The we-perspective expresses a voluntarily made non-contingent connection
between the group members: qua entering the group they necessarily are
connected as a “we” capable of joint thinking or acting. The we-mode thus
conceptually involves the group as an actor in the agents’ minds.
In
the I-mode case, I may interact with you and act towards the same goal to the
extent it is not too costly. However, in the we-mode case the cost argument in
general has much less bite. The group member acting qua a group member is
supposed not to think of his “fate” in private terms but only as a member of
the group (and thus the group’s successes). Collective commitment gives a
we-perspective: “Our group achieved something”. When acting in the we-mode, a
participant cannot as easily leave as in the case of private commitment when it
becomes costly for him to stay and participate, because he sees the project as
the group’s project (as our project)
rather than his own private one and is bound by his group-based commitment to
the others over and above the other ways (e.g. due to rationality, morality) he
may be committed. A participant cannot be jumping on and off or in and out and
only take part when it suits him. A group does not want to keep members who are
there to free-ride on the goodies, but are not going to pay the costs when the
going gets tough.
VII
THE CONSTITUTION OF COMMITMENT
As
seen, the social commitment involved in collective commitment (in my account assumed to be a conceptual ingredient
in joint intention) is in many ways central. But there are also
other constitutive elements in commitment. I will now classify and discuss them
briefly and later show the relevance of my classifications to acting as a group
member. Commitment will be characterized in terms of seven variables. Firstly,
obviously the subject of commitment is either a private agent or several agents
or a (structured or unstructured) social group. Secondly, one can be committed
to a propositional content or, if a more externalist language is preferred, to
a state of affairs or end, or – in derivative sense – to an item in such a
content (or state) such as an object (e.g. person) or property. Every such
commitment, nevertheless, entails a commitment to act appropriately. For
instance, an agent may be committed to good personal relations obtaining in his
group, and this entails that he at least in an instrumental sense ought to see
to it and, when obeying the ought, he will see to it that that end state
obtains. Seeing to it (stit) is an
action of a general kind. Accordingly, any commitment involves also commitment
to action of some kind, standard singular action (e.g. opening the window by
the committed person) or to a part of a joint action (e.g. painting the front
of the house in the case of some persons’ acting together to paint a
house). Commitment to a belief
analogously involves professing the belief and persistently acting on it. I list
the action in question as the third constitutive element of commitment (it can
be the same action as the one in the content of the commitment, if there is no
other content).
Fourthly,
commitment can be either private (in the sense of involving private authority
only) or collective (involving collective authority). A person has a private
commitment if he has mentally bound himself in a conative way to a
propositional content or an element – e.g. an object or property – involved in
such a content and is disposed to act so as to make the content satisfied. The
direction of fit of satisfaction here is world-to-mind. Thus the agent will
“conate” or intend to bring about a state of affairs or to keep a state of
affairs as it stands (or something related). The private authority aspect
entails – to use my terminology below –
that the agent is committed only to
himself and at least in part for
himself, taking “for” here to mean “for the benefit”. (If, however, “for” is understood
to mean the subject in question, in this case the agent is necessarily
committed for himself as well.) For
example, an agent’s intention to open the window typically involves a private
commitment and does his belief that there is a spruce over there.
In
contrast, a collective commitment – at least in its full sense – involves an
item collectively accepted by some persons as an item to which they as a group
are committed. Furthermore, the collective commitment is social in several
senses. The persons are committed to the others (and possibly to their group in
a more general, holistic sense) and the commitment is a we-commitment involving
the mutual belief that the others are similarly committed; more exactly, each
participant is committed to the item and believes that the others are and that
there is a mutual belief concerning this among them (see Chapter 3 for
we-attitudes). A collective commitment is for the group and typically (but not
necessarily) also public (relative to g). A typical example of a collective
commitment is that involved in a full-blown joint intention by some persons to
paint a house together or to perform some other joint action, one involving
parts or shares for the participants.
The
fifth constitutive feature is the mentioned one that the committed person can
be committed to himself, to the others, or to the group.[48] Here
commitment to the others can be considered both in the distributive and in the
non-distributive sense. The phrase “group” refers to the two components of the
ethos and the group members but in the case of social commitment only the group
member aspect is meant.
Commitment
to oneself and to the others were already discussed, but let me here make a
point about the social sources of commitment related to how violations are
sanctioned:
(a) The weakest case is instrumental only. For
instance, if A and B have formed a joint intention to paint a house together,
it might happen that A had misestimated his skills and ends up losing more time
on the job than was estimated in the joint plan and more than he really can
afford. Then he just informs B about the situation and is
not subject to more sanctioning than perhaps a charge of misestimation.
(b) In this case the reaction to violation has the
form ”violating behavior is socially inappropriate or incorrect”. There are
three sub-cases here:
(i)
The violating behavior breaches the ethos of the group (viz. against the basic
goals, values, standards, beliefs, norms, etc. of the group).
(ii)
The violation concerns the general conventions and customs of the society.
(iii)
The violation concerns the moral norms and principles of the society (or at
least against what is felt or believed to be morally right or socially
appropriate in the society).
In all of the b-cases there is also (instrumental or
technical) social commitment (case (a)) involved. This is because the very
nature of joint activities in general involves only shared control over the
outcome.
Commitment to one’s group involves supporting
and promoting the group’s ethos and also advancing its less central goals,
interests, standards, beliefs, etc. Thus a sports fan may be committed to a
sports club and promote its interests and goals. This includes also the non-constitutive
interests, goals, etc., of the group in addition to its constitutive ones (the
ethos). The main conceptual and theoretical difference between a commitment to
one’s group and a commitment to the members (qua members) of the group is that often
a group is a position-involving entity with a history and an open-ended future.
It can be an entity merely in the minds of
people but also a social system
consisting of agents and their interrelations as well as an ethos, etc.
(see Chapter 6). Thus, a social group at a particular moment involves more than
the set of its members, qua ethos-maintaining members, even under a
non-distributive interpretation.
Commitment
to the group entails commitment to its members. If I am committed to the group
(viewed as an entity with a certain ethos) to do my best, I must be committed
to the group members (collectively taken) to do my best. But being bound to the
group members qua group members in this collective and perhaps anonymous sense
(involving in principle also persons who are not presently members) can
conversely be taken to entail commitment to the group ethos as well –because of
the qua-relation. In general, commitment to the group increases group cohesion
(to the bond between the members and the members and the group) because it
involves not only the group members but also the group viewed as an entity to
which an ethos is associated.
It
is a problem whether “I am committed to you to do X” strictly entails “I am
committed to myself to do X”. My suggestion is that the entailment does not
hold, although it seems reasonable to accept that the related second-order
statement “I am committed to myself to carry out my commitment to you to do X”
is entailed. The following, however,
seems tenable: I intend to open the window if and only if I am committed to
myself, or the other(s) or to the group to open the window, where the ‘or’ is
an inclusive one. This equivalence lets us move back and forth between the
“to-person” language and the plain action-commitment language. Note that in the
case of collective commitment, a social
commitment to the group members, including
oneself, is entailed. Thus whenever I am committed to you to open the
window I am also committed to myself to open the window, given the assumption
of our being collectively committed to seeing to it that I open the window.
Accordingly, in the central cases dealt with in this chapter, the discussed
entailment indeed holds.
By
using the “to-person” terminology we get a unified terminological and logical
account. Furthermore, social locutions like “I promise to you to do X” suggest
that in the general case the “to-person” language should be used. Our above
equivalence shows that it does not add anything to the non-social case
expressed by means of action commitment only. My main reason for using the
to-person notion and terminology is simply that it is needed in the case of
full-blown collective commitment.
Sixthly,
an agent can be committed before oneself (or have only himself privately as his
“audience”), before the others in his group, or before his group. Thus, an
agent is committed only before himself if he secretly forms the intention to
achieve something (e.g. to help another person or to rob a bank). He is
committed before the others if the other members of his group or a subset of
them is his (public) audience, and he is committed before the group if he e.g.
declares in a newspaper that he will fight for a certain group (e.g. sports
team or country).[49]
Seventhly,
the item which the commitment is about (viz. a state of affairs or an action)
or the consequences of its being realized (e.g. a goal which is achieved) can
be for the purpose and use of the
committed agent only, for (all or some) other members in his group, or for the
whole group, understood as an entity.
Let
me now summarize the present account of commitment. We are concerned with a
member of group g who is acting as a group member in one of our earlier senses.
There are seven variables – some of them with non-exclusive values. Using
shorthand, they can be written as follows.
(1)
agent: (a) single, (b) several agents collectively, (c) social group
(2)
content: (a) propositional content or, in a derivative sense, state (b)
non-propositional element, such as object or action, of a propositional content
or state of affairs (e.g. ethos, country, swimming)
(3)
action: (a) single, (b) joint (c) group action
(4)
authority: (a) private, (b) several members collectively, (c) group
(5)
agent-object of commitment: (a) oneself, (b) others in g, (c) group
(6)
audience: (a) before oneself, (b) before others in g, (c) before group g
(7)
purpose: (a) for oneself, (b) for others in the group, (c) for the group.
So,
commitment can be symbolized by the following seven-place relation COMM:
COMM(agent,
content, action, authority, object, audience, use).
In
plain language this reads: In being
we-committed an agent is committed to a certain content, to perform a type of
action, with a certain authority, to an agent-object, before a certain
audience, and for the use of some person(s) or group. I claim that in the
case of commitment in a social situation our seven variables will all apply in
the sense that one or more of the values (disjuncts) will obtain. For instance,
in (2), (a) and (b) both hold true in many cases, similarly in (3), (4), and
(5) both (b) and (c) are often both satisfied. As to (4), one may be both
privately and collectively committed (viz. “we-committed”) concerning the same
action (making (a) and (b) both hold true). On the other hand, e.g. within (3),
the conjunction (3)(a) & (3)(b) is trivially inconsistent. Similarly one
may study which value combinations concerning different variables are possible.
For instance, (3)(c) & (4)(a) is an inconsistent combination. I will not
here systematically study all these relationships but only make a few more
remarks about interesting possibilities.
The
commitment content in (2) was assumed to entail an action. This entailment may
lead e.g. to conditional action prescriptions, such as “Perform X when
conditions C obtain”, and the entailed actions may be complex ones. What
follows concerning (3) is that the agent possibly need not actually act at each
point of time when he is committed to something (as the conditions for acting might
not obtain).
The
last variable (7) is the purpose variable. In its strong, or “rational”
version, use means not only what one is permitted and, in some cases, required
to use, but also the kind of use which will further the purposes and interests
respectively of the single user (case (a)), of the group members (case (b)) or
of the group (case (c)); and both (b)
and (c) must be simultaneously the case. As to (c), “for the group” can be
related to various kinds of commitment. In collective we-mode commitment it is
a constitutive part of the commitment, for such collective commitment has a collective
or “jointness” content or entails such a content satisfying the Collectivity
Condition discussed in Section III. This jointness content basically boils down
to our jointly acting together towards something for our group’s use and
benefit. In private commitment the forgroupness feature makes the commitment for
the group (or equivalently “pro-group”).
There
are some other obvious interpretations and qualifications concerning our
variables – e.g. in (5) a group can be taken to be committed to itself, to
other groups or to some individuals, or to a group of groups (cf. the EU).[50]
VIII
COMMITMENT AND ACTING AS A GROUP MEMBER
Below,
I will reconsider the cases of acting as a group member. I distinguished
between several notions or senses: acting qua a group member in a weak, I-mode
sense, standard sense, dissidence sense (possibly with incorrect action), and
(strong) representation sense. The task ahead is now to say what kinds of
commitment are possible in these cases. Here
is my concise and rather obvious account, given my earlier extensive discussion:
Acting qua a group member
in the standard sense:
(i)
Ideally, there must be collective commitment to ethos E (to uphold E together
with others) and thus to intentionally act in accordance with E, viz. to obey E
or at least try to obey it. Thus the action classes (1) - (4) of section III
are included; these classes also contain unsuccessful intentional attempts to
obey E. (In weaker cases at least a substantial number of the operative agents is
assumed to obey E by performing actions falling within classes (1) - (4).)
(ii)
Collective commitment involves social commitment: the group members are not
only committed to themselves but committed to each other and to the group to
uphold E (and to act in ways falling into one of the classes (1) - (4)).
(iii)
There is commitment to support E and other, non-constitutive interests, goals,
standards, values, beliefs, norms, etc., and accordingly there is commitment to
perform actions in classes (1) -(4) in our classification of Section III.
(iv)
In relation to above point (ii), the committed actions should be transparent,
out in the open, as knowledge of them is gratis shareware in the group. Thus,
they cannot be private secrets. They are open for the others to monitor,
because the action is part of the group’s action or group activities (more
generally). Each (operative) group member is committed to the others and to the
group when he acts, which means he has given up part of his authority over his
own action. His action is not entirely his own business. He is committed to the
others to do what he ought to do -- basically to see to it that E is upheld or
to act with this effect, and if there are nonconstitutive goals, they should be
collectively observed as well. This entails that he should also monitor what
the others are doing. The responsibility is shared for maintaining the ethos by
E-congruent actions (and possibly other acceptable group actions) and for the
consequences all this has for a third party (audience, external observer).
Especially, the group’s responsibility to an external audience becomes a costly
burden for a group that does not see to it that its members are sincerely
collectively committed to E and that incompetent and oppositional members are
kept in control, helped or dismissed. “We did not know for sure whether they
were collectively committed” is not an acceptable excuse. They should have found out. Commitment
“before” others is thus recommendable.
(v)
Forgroupness, as discussed in the previous section, is a feature of the
collective commitment to E and E-congruent actions (viz. actions falling within
the classes (1) - (4) of Section III).
(vi)
Commitment to the group in general (involving its ethos, structure, history,
expected future, past, current, and perhaps future members) can be ideally
required: it adds strength to the “to”, “for”, and “before” aspects of
commitment. (E.g. one can thus be committed to a country, university, or firm.)
Acting as a group member in the representation sense. Recall the standard
sense for what kinds of commitment are required, as they apply here as well.
While in the case of acting as a group member in the standard sense mistaken
actions are acceptable, for acting as a group member in the strong
representation sense correct actions for the right reason (viz. actions obeying
the ethos) are required.
Weak sense of acting as a
group member. This is the I-mode case with (a) private commitment to E, (b)
private commitment to oneself or the others
or possibly to the group, (c) private commitment to E and to actions conducive
to E, (d) commitment before others or only before oneself, (e) the commitment
is (in part) for the group or merely for oneself.
Acting as a group member
in an organization. Finally, let us briefly consider a special but typical group,
viz. an organization such as a university or a business company. Such an
organization has a certain ethos, basic goals, values, standards, etc. These
give the content of the organization. Apart from its content, an organization
basically consists of a set of positions that are normatively interlocked to
each other. Specifically the interrelations between the positions contain power
relations and informational relations. (E.g. a position holder can have the
power to order the position holder of another position to do something within
the ethos-induced domain and different position holders may have, and have the
right to have, differing amounts and kinds of knowledge concerning the
organization’s activities.)
When
the organization makes decisions, it makes them in virtue of its authorized
operatives’ (typically joint) decisions and when it acts, it performs its
actions in virtue of its possibly different authorized operatives’ actions. The
operative members may vary from occasion and task to another, and they may also
include non-member operatives on some occasions. Thus when a business company
does something X, e.g. decides to start selling a new brand of goods or builds
a new house for its own use, the operative members are presumably different and
possibly not group members at all. The Hobbesian Author behind the company’s
actions is constituted by the shareholders. They collectively have the power to
select a governing board for the company and derivatively they have the power
to select the functional position holders from the CEO down to a salesperson
and truck driver. We can say that the Author (viz. the group formed of the
shareholders) is a core level group in an organization while the functioning
operatives (the CEO, various kinds of managers, workers, and what have you)
form its hired personnel and indeed a group taking care of the daily affairs of
the organization. It is in virtue of their action that specific actions are attributed
to the organization, for in general they in daily life represent the
organization. Thus the hired personnel can be seen as part of the group in a
wide sense.
In
a business company, with some exceptions such as family enterprises, all the
position holders are hired ones (the shareholders are not position holders in
the organization itself). Even though they
are hired, when performing company jobs they will act in the codified or
institutionalized we-mode that the company charter and other ethos-principles
involve. So company functions will in general involve (codified) we-mode
activities. This means that there is also a codified social commitment between
the position holders: a position holder may be responsible to another one (if
they are interlocking positions or are somehow in suitable power relation to
each other). In any case a position holder is socially committed to the company
to performing his tasks. All the position holders that are hired by a company
can be operative members or, when they are not members, operative “agents” for
some tasks. However, hired agents that are not position holders but only
temporarily connected to the organization for some tasks are not operative members but only the company’s ”means”
or ”tools”. As seen, the ultimate core of an organization is constituted on the
one hand, by its owners (if it has owners in the legal sense) and, on the other
hand, by its positions that constitute the organization. The owners determine
(often via suitable operative members) the ethos (and thus the general content)
of the organization, and the position holders act to achieve and/or maintain
it, we may say. Some of the position
holders may in fact have as their task to reformulate the ethos within certain
boundaries.
What
kinds of commitment are there in an organization? There is codified we-mode
collective (and social) commitment that involves the position-holders binding
themselves qua position holders to the organization to perform certain tasks
and indeed to obey the task-right system pertaining to their positions. This
codified collective and social commitment is constituted by the obligations and
rights involved in the organizational norms. In addition, there will be
uncodified we-mode collective and social commitment involved in the freely
chosen joint and jointly accountable activities that the position holders
choose to do (but which still are promotive of the organizations’s ethos). The
we-mode activities and commitments that we are considering here of course need
not be in agreement with what the position-holders might have privately
preferred in those situations (maybe they would have privately wanted to spend
the day on the beach, etc.). However, the more ”genuine” (viz. in the sense of
backed by private preferences and wants) the we-mode activities and commitments
are, the better the organization is likely to function in the long run.
IX
CONCLUSION
In
this chapter two central social notions, thinking and acting as a group member
and collective commitment, have been investigated in detail. The present study
of the first of these notions is – as far as I know – the first systematic work
on the topic. Ethos-related acting as a group member is a central notion that
obviously must be understood when speaking of the “we-perspective”, group life,
and of social life more generally. Thus, not only philosophy of sociality,
philosophy of social science, political and moral philosophy but also the
various social sciences need this notion and should benefit from these analyses
and arguments.
Collective
commitment is the other “we-perspective” notion studied in the present chapter. I have argued for its importance as
representing a kind of social glue needed for group members when thinking and
acting as a group. In contrast to some other studies my most elementary notion
of collective commitment is not normative in the moral or quasi-moral sense but
is group-socially “normative” and intention-relative.[51] Thus
the present treatment covers more ground
than the previous accounts do. Group-social normativity is not moral and
“proper” normativity but it can be viewed as institutional normativity broadly
understood.
© Raimo Tuomela 2005
[1] As to collective commitment, see e.g.
Castelfranchi (1995), Cohen, P. et al. (1997), Gilbert (1989, 2000), Tuomela,
(2000a, 2002a).
[2] See Tuomela
(1984, 1995, 2002a, 2002b).
[3] See
especially Tuomela (2002a).
[4] One can thus say, somewhat
loosely, that collective identity and group normativity work hand in hand to bring about cohesion and
cooperation in a group. Neither of them has priority. (Of course, there may be
pre-existing social norms that apply
more generally also to other groups, but that is a different story.)
[5] See especially Chapter 5 of Tuomela (2002a).
[6] Some sections in the present chapter draws on the joint
paper Tuomela and Tuomela (2003). I gratefully acknowledge Maj Tuomela’s
permission to use that material. Instead of mixing the use of “I” and “we” in
the case of authorship I normally use “I” in the present chapter.
[7] To give a simple example,
our group might have as its topic of concern round (P) objects and their color,
assuming for simplicity’s sake that red (Q) is the only color that can be
involved. The group might believe that there are only round and red objects (x)
and non-round and non-red objects but that there are no mixed cases. The
intentional horizon in the present linguistic setup consists of those state
descriptions in the set {+-P(x) & +-Q(x)} that the group has attitudes
about (viz. P(x) & Q(x) and -P(x) & -Q(x)). The intentional horizon is
a subset of topics of the realm of concern of g (which allows all the four
logically possible state descriptions).
[8] My notion of
ethos is partly but only partly technical. Thus, the first meaning given to the
word ”ethos” in the Webster’s Third International Dictionary is this: the
guiding beliefs, standards, or idelans that characterize or pervade a group, a
community, a people, or an ideology.
[9] Here is a more technical
account of the present notions: When considering the notion of topic two dimensions
or aspects of the problem must be distinguished. First, there is the question
of whether a topic is something purely conceptual (e.g. linguistic) or whether
it is something “out there” in rerum natura. The second aspect concerns whether
a topic is something like 1) a collection of a) (real) objects or features
(something extra-linguistic) or b) predicates (linguistic things) or whether it
is 2) a) a state of affairs (something that obtains or can obtain or be the
case) or a b) proposition or sentence which expresses a thought, says something
about the world. Let us consider two monadic features or predicates P and Q.
Here P and Q (e.g. ‘round’ and ‘red’) can be taken to represent topics (often
in relation to the respective negations -P and -Q). P can be a sortal or noun
predicate or it can be a predicate expressing an attribute of an object
understood in an ordinary sense. We can here sometimes take the set {P, -P} to
represent a topic or, in some other cases -- especially if P is a sortal
predicate (say ‘lion’ or ‘house’) – the topic could be simply P, viz.
P-objects. Similarly Q, or sometimes, {Q, -Q} can be taken to represent another
topic. This would be a linguistic construal of the notion of a topic
representing an aspect or feature of some entity. The corresponding
extra-linguistic construal would speak of the sets of objects that our
predicates P and Q express (in various circumstances or “possible worlds”).
Next consider the construal of a topic as a set of contents. In the linguistic
construal we are basically dealing with the sets {P(x), -P(x)}, where x ranges
over a certain domain of objects and P(x) and -P(x) are open sentences with x
technically as a placeholder for names of the objects in that domain of
individual objects (the negation -P of P
is included as a simple conceptually
implied feature). We of course operate similarly with Q. When combining our two
predicates we operate with open state descriptions of the kind that the open
sentences in the set {+-P(x) & +-Q(x)} represent. Thus the combined topic
(combining the predicates P and Q) would correspond to dealing with all the
combinations of round, non-round, red, and non-red, objects, putting the matter
in extra-linguistic terms. (In addition or in the place of P and Q we might
also have simply the class of objects represented by x to be a topic of
concern.) We can also say that we deal with all those possible states of
affairs (or perhaps elements in them) as the topic or perhaps exclude some
combinations a priori on some grounds. What is central though, is that a topic
in general does not take a specific stand concerning the world and say that the
world is precisely such and such (viz. it does not pick out only one state or
state description).
In
our simple case, I propose that the realm of concern of a group then can be
regarded as the set of sets {{P, -P}, {Q, -Q}} (or in the simpler version {P,
Q}, viz. as the set of the topics the group has) when viewed in the group
context. Alternatively, which from my
standpoint does not make much difference, it can be regarded as the set
{+-P(x) & +-Q(x)} of state descriptions or as the states that they are
satisfied by. In a more elaborate treatment one may consider defining the topic
of concern of a group in terms of all the Boolean combinations of the
predicates (here P and Q) in question. The predicates in question, here P and Q
(or in the extra-linguistic treatment, the properties, types of sets of
extensions that they express) can concern states, events, or actions (and
possibly other ontological kinds). In
my later discussion I will largely
concentrate on action predicates.
Suppose
now {+-P(x) & +-Q(x)} represents the antecedently assumed, collectively
accepted realm of concern of a group g.
Then I say that the intentional horizon of g consists of the subset in its
realm of concern about the elements of which it de facto has, some voluntary
attitude about. For instance, the attitude can be belief, intention, (having a)
goal, wish, fear, etc. Our group might believe that there are only round and
red objects and non-round and non-red objects.
As the intentional horizon in the present setup consists of those state
descriptions in {+-P(x) & +-Q(x)} that the group has attitudes about, it is
a subset of the realm of concern of g.
[10] Collective acceptance
basically is voluntary and intentional acceptance, but some of a group’s and a
group member’s values may be ingrained and may even be based on a less than
fully intentional learning process (e.g. because of having been taught by
parents or other individuals) leading to suitable “pattern-governed behaviors”
exhibiting the values, beliefs, etc. in question (see Tuomela, 2002a, Chapter
3). Thus, although collective acceptance basically is intentional, in some
cases it is not intentional under the right description, so to speak, as a
child may learn some of its values and beliefs under more concrete
descriptions. (See Tuomela, 2002a, Chapter 5, for collective acceptance.)
In Chapter 6 below the following account of collective
acceptance (CA) will be defended:
CA(g,p)
<-> SWA(A1,…,Am,p,df) & Cocom(A1,…,Am,
Stit(g, Premg(p, df))) /pr MKWH(A1,…,Am,p,df)
Here SWA means shared we-attitude, Cocom collective
commitment, and Stit(g, Premg(p, df))) seeing to it that in the
group p is premisible, all this under conditions of mutual understanding of
what p’s direction of fit of satisfaction (df) is. We can now read the
analysans somewhat loosely as “the members of g share the we-acceptance that p
(where the we acceptance and the attitude it generates is either an intention
or a belief, or more precisely an attitude with wtmdf or mtwdf) and are
collectively committed to seeing to it that p is premisible, in conditions of
shared we-knowledge what the df of p is”.
When the only aspect of the acceptance state that matters is its
direction of fit we get this:
CA(g,p)
<-> Cocom(A1,…,Am, Stit(A1,…,Am,
Premg(p, df))) /pr MKWH(A1,…,Am,p,df)
This account then does not speak of any specific mental
state but it only says that the members A1,…,Am of g are
assumed to be collectively committed to see to it in the right way (viz. in
terms of action obeying the direction of fit associated with p on that
occasion) that p is premisible, given the mutual understanding and knowledge
about p and its direction of fit here. The right way in the case of joint
intention is one with the world-to-mind direction of fit, then instead of Cocom
we have joint intention (or, better, Ersatz joint intention, as the
other mental aspects than commitment have been omitted).
[11] See Searle (1983, 2001)
and Chapter 6 below for these notions.
[12] See the Bulletin Board View of Chapter 4.
[13] There are of course
higher-order groups like organizations which can be regarded as collections of
interrelated groups and societies which are collections of organizations (cf.
Bates and Harvey, 1995, also see my related discussion in Tuomela, 1984). In
this book I will, however, keep things simple and except for a few remarks on
higher-order groups deal only with the most basic case of first-order groups.
[14] More technically, we make
use of the CAT thesis of Chapter 8 to make the present internalist and
constructivist idea more precise. Here is my verbal formulation of it:
Collective
Acceptance Thesis (CAT): A proposition s is collectively social (or expresses a collectively social or institutional state
of affairs) in a primary sense in a group g if and only if (a) the members of
group g collectively accept s for the group, and (b) necessarily, they
collectively accept s if and only if s is correctly assertable for the group members
functioning as group members.
[15] See Tuomela, 2002, Chapter 5, for this.
[16] There is no mutual belief
requirement concerning the theoretical requirement (3). Perhaps it could be
required for the sophisticated members of g but hardly all the members, especially
not in the case of large groups.
[17] There may be partial circularity here, but notice that often the group ethos has been priorly accepted and even when currently accepted not all members’ need at least initially participate in the acceptance. Even in those cases where the members’ acceptances constitute the group’s acceptance, each member’s acceptance will have to be reason-based on the other members’ acceptances qua group members.
[18] Thus we have arrived
basically very close to the account of “functional” groups that I gave in
Chapter 4 of Tuomela (1995).
[19] Cf. Tuomela (1995),
Chapter 7, and (2002a), Chapter 5.
[20] My present account is
somewhat idealized. In a more realistic account – especially in the case of
large groups such as nations – it seems plausible to think that there may be
complementary knowledge of the ethos and, in general, of the culture of the
group (e.g. ”you know a part of it while I know another part of it, etc.”).
Furthermore, as will be seen later, in principle my account accepts also
unconscious intentional and non-intentional acceptance, although this aspect
will not be much emphasized in this book.
[21] Cf. Tuomela (2002a, 2003a).
[22] The present class of
actions in a group context and especially the notion of the right circumstances
is discussed in Tuomela (1995), Chapter 5, in detail. There the phrase “the
right social and normative circumstances” for positional action was analyzed in
detail. While space does not here permit a fuller discussion, let us draw on an
example used in that context. Consider
I
wish to note that in principle also role behavior related to positions can be
included in class (1). What were called “position-related role” actions in
Tuomela (1995), Chapter 8, thus become included here. (For instance, giving
public lectures might thus be such an extra-duty action related to a
professor’s position.) Furthermore, it can be noted that class (4), to be
defined below, in addition can be taken to include “ role” actions also
investigated in my work (cf. a
“mother-type’s” role actions).
[23] See Chapter 2 for my technical explicates of
we-mode and I-mode action.
[24] The norms involved here be
rule norms and/or proper social norms – see. Tuomela, 1995, Chapter 1.
[25] See Tuomela (2002a),
Chapter 4, for presupposition reasons and routines.
[26] See Tuomela, 2002a, for
this kind of intentional pattern-governed action as distinct from
non-intentional Sellarsian pattern-governed action. Also case (iii) may be
regarded as a strong kind of pattern-governed action.
[27] See Chapters 4 and 6 below as well as Tuomela
(1992, 2000a).
[28] See Tuomela (2002a), Chapters 5 and 6, for
discussion and Balzer and Tuomela (1997b) for a logical way to get rid of the
apparent circularity.
[29] However, e.g. the realm of concern can be
taken to be based on a we-belief with the mind-to-world direction of fit.
[30] See Tuomela, 2002, Chapter 5, for discussion.
[31] Let me note that a conceptual
group-social ought concerns group concepts in a general sense independently of
their specific factual and extra-logical content. For instance, in a chess game
or in an organization or, more generally, institution there are some oughts and
mays serving to define the game or organization, or even what it takes to carry
a table upstairs, etc. These constitutive oughts can also be called
institutional. The central point here is that they presuppose the conceptual
group-social oughts in our precent focus. As to group-rationality, if a group
acts rationally as a group it will strive to satisfy its ethos and to reach its
other goals. Briefly put, it will act for its benefit. In such a context, the
members ought on group-rational grounds to perform their parts and do other
relevant things. These group-rational oughts also presuppose the conceptual
ones. Moral group oughts relate to the good of the group and try to prevent
something bad happening to it, and it also requires that the group members not
harm each other in contexts where they are performing their group tasks qua
group members. Also such moral group norms presuppose the conceptual
group-social group norms and thus work only given the background of the
conceptual group notion “logic”.
[32] See the CAT formula in Chapter 7 and in
Tuomela (2002a) as expressing we-mode collective acceptance.
[33] See e.g. Tuomela (2002a), Chapter 2.
[34] See the appendix to
Chapter 7 for a proof.
[35] As to the current
technical literature on joint commitment, there are not many accounts
available. In Chapter 4 I will comment on the recent theory by Panzarasa et al.
(2002).
[36] The general view expressed
in this chapter bears similarity to the social psychological “social identity”
theory and its refinement the “self-categorization” theory in spite of
conceptual and terminological differences. The main concern in social identity
theory is the social identity of persons (cf. Turner, 1987, Hogg and Abrams,
1988, 2001, Hogg and Tindale, 2002, Turner and Reynolds, 2003). This theory defines
social identity as those aspects of an individual’s self-concept which are
based upon social group or category membership together with emotional,
evaluative and other psychological correlates, e.g., the self defined as male,
European, Londoner, etc. The most distinctive theoretical feature of the
self-categorization analysis of group formation and group cohesion is the idea
that these depend upon the perception of the self and others as a cognitive
unit (in contrast to non-members) within the psychological frame of reference,
and not upon mutual interpersonal attraction and need satisfaction. (Turner,
1987, p. 64)
The
central – and recently empirically debated – hypotheses of this theory
(according to Turner, 1987, p. 36) are, firstly, that people are motivated to
establish a positively valued distinctiveness for groups with which they
identify in contrast to relevant out-groups, and, secondly, that when social
identity in terms of some group membership is unsatisfactory, members will
attempt to leave that group (psychologically or in reality) to join some more
positively distinct group and/or make their existing group more positively
distinct. According to the self-categorization theory, the group has
psychological reality in the sense that there is a specific psychological
process, viz., self-categorization or self-grouping, which corresponds to and
underlies the distinctive features of group behavior (Turner, 1987, p. 66).
This suggests that acting and functioning as a group member (in the sense discussed
in this book) is closely related to taking oneself to have a certain kind of
group identity in the sense of the self-categorization theory.
The
basic reason for acting as a group member and broadly speaking within the
we-perspective is that social identification with the group under suitable
conditions of salience leads group members to act as group members. Most
centrally, Turner argues that the cognitive process of depersonalization
enables the shift from personal to collective identity: One’s unique
characteristics fade from awareness and one defines oneself in terms of
stereotypical group characteristics (Turner, 1987, Chapter 3).
Depersonalization in turn produces acting as a group member (in my terminology). Group cooperation and positive
sentiments towards the group and other members occur because identifying with
others leads to a “perceived similarity of interests and goals” (shared ethos,
in my approach). There will also be
conformity because of the resulting adoption of shared group norms regulating
action (cf. the function of collective commitment in my approach). Thus it can be said that it is a
consequence of depersonalization that group members come to see themselves as
parts of a group, “we”. Turner et al. also try to clarify the underlying causes
of depersonalization and claim that it is the result of the interaction of
three factors: the relative accessibility of a category (where the category
roughly corresponds to a non-normative part of the ethos in my sense), its normative fit (corresponding,
roughly, to the normative standards in a group ethos), and its comparative fit
(reflecting a comparison between “us” and “them”, viz. in-group versus
out-group).
[37] See Tuomela, 1995, pp.234-241, for a
discussion of this notion under the label “right social and normative
circumstances” for action.
[38] Acting in a group context
may also involve subconscious acting – e.g. on the basis of ingrained
subconscious group beliefs. Yet the acting must be performed intentionally,
although its belief-related reason remains unconscious at the time of acting.
Thus when asked, the agent in question is taken to be disposed to admit that he
meant to do what he did (successfully or not) or at least that it was not
something he did unintentionally.
[39] See Tuomela
(1989) and (1995), Chapter 6, for a detailed account.
[40] Baltzer (2003) discusses
the important features of anonymity and interchangeability of members in the
case of large groups. He also emphasizes that in such groups every member
represents the group and every other group member. I agree with his main
points. Nevertheless, I wish to emphasize that the notion of acting as a group
member of course applies equally well to large as to small groups. Furthermore,
the point about representation also applies to small groups.
In
contrast to large groups, in small groups members tend to have many more
private social relations with each other than in large groups. For instance, in
the case of a family, these private social relationships are so strong and
important that they may be taken to partially define the notion of family (or
at least are typically central in the case of particular families).
[41] I wish to thank Kaarlo
Miller for emphasizing to me especially the change-obedience combination.
[42] See Broome (2000).
[43] In stronger cases with
public multilateral intention expression (non-normative case) we get a better
doxastic ground for group action and in the case of the participants’ having
made an agreement to act in a certain way (this includes the case of normative
acceptance of a joint plan) we get even a group-binding obligation. Even in
this last case we might not get normal “positive” group action but only
omission action. In this sense we might not have full group action based on a
joint intention or a shared collective goal.
[44] “Collective
pattern-governed behavior” in the sense of Chapter 3 of Tuomela (2002a) is a
case in point.
[45] Collective rituals such as dancing and
singing together are central. For the centrality of shared melodic singing and
rhythmic moving of one’s body, see e.g. Storr (1993), esp. Chapter 1. Here is
what Richman, 1987 says (quoted in Storr, 1992, p. 7): ”Music is the ’language’
of emotional and physiological arousal. A culturally agreee-upon pattern of
rhythm and melody, i.e., song, that is sung together, provides a shared form of
emotion that, at least during the course of the song, carries along the participants so that they
experience their bodies responding emotionally in very similar ways. This is
the source of the feeling of solidarity and good will that comes with choral
singing: people’s physiological arousals are in synchrony and in harmony, at
least for a brief period.” The emotion
here could indeed be a we-feeling of solidarity construed as a we-attitude in
the sense of this chapter (”I am proud of this group and believe that others
also are and that this is mutual belief in the group”).
Similar
considerations but with greater force and in more detail are to be found in the
recent paper by Steven Brown (2000). Here is a direct quote of what he takes to
be his central argument (pp. 257f.):
“The human capacity to make
music is a group-level adaptation that evolved, in large part, by group
selection. What his implies is that the group, more so than the individual, is
the appropriate level of analysis in thinking about the fitness consequences of
music. Music’s fitness advantages come about from its ability to promote
group-wide cooperation, coordination, cohesion, and catharsis, and this
operates to increase both the absolute and relative fitness of groups. It
functions to promote group welfare and group warfare. The fitness benefits of
music-making at the group level far outweigh the costs of individual
participation in musical activities; music is, on balance, a low-cost system
for the individual. There is little conflict between within-group and
between-group fitness consequences, and little motivational conflict between
self-interest and musical participation. Music has a host design features that
strongly reflect its role in group function, the most prominent being pitch
blending and isometric rhythms. Finally music functions as a type of neural
“reward” system, serving to emotively reinforce cooperative behavior during
group ritual activities. Music evolved as ritual’s reward system.”
Brown’s ideas about group
evolution in this context – and he means mainly biological evolution – may seem
controversial, but all that he says above is music to my ear and rings true.
[46] See Brewer (2003), esp.
pp. 30-31, for a review of relevant research.
[47] This kind of commitment notion is also
discussed by Gilbert (1989, 1996) and Castelfranchi (1995), although their
notion is based on obligation and seems thus to be properly normative.
[48] Cf. Castelfranchi (1995) as well as Conte and
Castelfranchi (1995) for related distinctions and points.
[49] Castelfranchi (1995)
speaks of a ”witness” when I speak of the ”audience”.
[50] As to intentional
violators (members of g), the following kinds of commitment are possible in
their case. There may be private commitment to the topic of concern of g while
there is no commitment to the group’s ethos (a violator might be a rebel
purporting to change the group’s ethos). Hence there is no commitment to
ethos-congruent action or type. However, a violator may be committed to himself
to act for himself in ways related to the topic of concern of g (and perhaps to
his “modified” ethos), but that commitment need not be more than commitment
before himself and only for himself. There is possibly no commitment to the group
or to the other group members, although a violator may be committed to the
group, apart from the aspect of its ethos that he purports to violate. When the
violator is still committed the bulk of the ethos he is a reformist but he is a
revolutionary if he is committed to an essential change of the ethos. Recall
that the two variables of obeying-violating and maintaining-changing allow for
four possible cases. All these would warrant discussion but I will not here go
deeper into the matter.
[51] My account thus contrasts with those of e.g. Gilbert
(1989, 1996) and Castelfranchi (1995).