COLLECTIVE INTENTIONALITY V

MAIN THEMES

The main (but not the only) theme of the Helsinki conference is collective responsibility, and part of the conference will be devoted to this theme.

There is a growing interest among moral philosophers, philosophers of action and social action, and philosophers of the social sciences more generally in the topic of collective responsibility, typically, collective moral responsibility. This interest is part of the more general trend of broadening the scope of morality to collectives (e.g. small-scale groups, business corporations, and nation states). Until lately almost all Western moral philosophers have approached the subject of responsibility with the assumption that the only interesting and important things to be said on that topic must be about individual human beings. If ascriptions of moral responsibility appeared to be about groups, organisations or corporate bodies, they were considered either nonsensical or reducible to statements about individual human beings.

However, the societies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been and are facing important ethical problems that are extremely difficult to analyse with the conceptual tools of strictly individualistic moral philosophy. Fortunately, philosophers of the social sciences, especially of social action and collective intentionality, have developed new theories about collective and social action and conceptual tools to deal with the problems of collective and corporate agency during the last two or three decades. These theories and conceptual tools can be fruitfully used in scrutinising the problems of collective responsibility. Thus, there are practical and philosophical reasons that explain the growing interest in the topic of collective responsibility. Accordingly, the interest in collective responsibility is not limited only to philosophers; social scientists, political theorists, and legal theorists are working on the topic as well -- not to mention the obvious layman interest in the topic. Collective responsibility is an interdisciplinary topic par excellence. 

The philosophical discussion and debate on collective responsibility can be characterised in terms of the following exemplary set of research problems: Is there a plausible sense of collective responsibility that cannot be expressed exhaustively by speaking of merely individual responsibilities? To what kinds of groups we can correctly ascribe responsibility? Is it only organised collectives with an internal decision structure that can bear moral responsibility? Are there conditions under which moral responsibility can be ascribed also to non-organised groups or ''random collections''? Can moral responsibility be properly ascribed to collectives in their own right, or is collective responsibility reasonably ascribable only to individuals (perhaps collectively)? Is collective responsibility always distributive? This list evinces that the philosophical research on collective action and collective agency, that is collective intentionality broadly understood, is of utmost relevance for studies of collective responsibility. Thus, it is no surprise that such prominent figures in the field of collective intentionality as M. Gilbert, P. Pettit, R. Tuomela and S. Miller have made important contributions to the philosophy of collective responsibility. The question of collective responsibility has also emerged recurrently over the years at the collective intentionality meetings, and now collective responsibility has been chosen for the specific theme of the Helsinki conference.

Besides analyses of collective moral responsibility, also papers addressing issues such as collective judicial, causal, epistemic etc. responsibility fall under the theme of collective responsibility.

In addition to the special theme of the fifth conference on collective intentionality, collective responsibility, the organisers welcome also papers relating to any aspect of the theory of collective intentionality (broadly construed). Thus, the conference is expected to include papers that criticise and develop further the available philosophical accounts of collective intentionality and address the conceptual interrelations between the notions of collective acceptance, belief, agreement and joint commitment as well as collective emotions and actions. Also papers on general social ontology and epistemology that are informed by the recent developments in the theory of collective intentionality are most welcome to the conference.

Moreover, it is likely that the recent trend of the theory of collective intentionality spreading from philosophy to the neighbouring social sciences will continue at the Helsinki conference. Accordingly, the organisers expect to receive a number of high-quality papers from social, cognitive and computer scientists as well as psychologists that address the prospects and problems in applying the philosophical theory of collective intentionality to the different special sciences.