First Person Plural Authority

This paper examines the ways in which group speech acts involve speakers. Against the view that groups need spokespeople speak for (or on behalf of, or in the name of) them, I argue that groups can speak for themselves. Group speech acts are a special type of joint intentional action. Groups speak when they express their illocutionary intention. Group illocutionary intentions are collective intentions of their members, and they are collective in virtue of the members' plural pre-reflective self-knowledge of what it is theytogether want to say. It is only in virtue of the groups' ability to speak for themselves that they can authorize individual spokespeople to speak for them. 1

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2018

This article explores the particular structure of a collective perspective-the perspective of two or more persons referring to an object, which is sometimes called a "we-perspective." The phenomenon in question seems to be present in various forms of social activities: for instance, in joint action such as when two persons are going to the cinema together to watch a film; or in collective attitudes, when two persons are both intending to go to the cinema together. While the question of what structure underlies an individual perspective of one person has for a long time dominated many discussions in the philosophy of mind (especially debates on self-consciousness and of intentionality) the collective perspective of several persons has become a target of philosophical interest especially in the past few years. Current debates are mainly concerned with the question of what feature may be responsible for the "collectivity" in collective perspectives. 1 In search of an explanation a number of approaches have concentrated on features of the content, the mode, or the subject of collective attitudes. These approaches all have yet in common that they focus on the structure of (more or less) explicitly expressed attitudes of groups. Hans Bernhard Schmid has recently introduced an argument into the discussion that turns to implicit and pre-reflective underpinnings of a collective perspective. According to his claim, central features of a collective perspective are to be explained by an underlying pre-reflective awareness of plural subjectivity. 2 He argues that an explicit representation of "we" that is manifest in collective attitudes and cooperative behavior presupposes a "pre-reflective plural self-awareness," an implicit "sense of us." Schmid construes his argument in analogy to approaches to individual self-consciousness, according to which the capacity of explicit self-representation requires a prereflective or primitive self-awareness. 3 Overall, I am sympathetic to the general idea of analyzing the structure of a given phenomenon in terms of a relevant implicit mode of awareness. However, I think that Schmid's account is problematic in various respects. I will mainly argue that his description of the phenomenon raises difficulties and has some implausible consequences in view of the target features of groups and collective attitudes. (i) In the first part of the article I will sketch the general motivation for explaining the collective perspective of two or more persons. (ii) After presenting Schmid's argument for plural self-awareness, (iii) I will construe two

The aim of this work is to introduce some notions of Commitment as a descriptive ontology crucial for the understanding of groups' and organizations' functioning, and of the relations between individual agents and collective activity. Some of the basic ingredients of such notions are identified and some steps are made towards their definition. In particular, it is claimed that a notion of Commitment is needed as a mediation between the individual and the collective one. Before constructing a notion of "Collective or Group Commitment" a notion of "Social Commitment" is to be defined. "Social commitment" is not an individual Commitment shared by many agents; it is the Commitment of one agent to another. The normative contents (entitlements / obligations) of this social relation are stressed and its connections with individual intentions and collective activity. On that basis, a notion of Organizational Commitment is proposed, that could account for the structure of stable Organizations. Commitment is a crucial notion both to analyse the structure of Organizations and to support cooperative work, but a deeper analysis is needed, connecting agent's mental states with social relations and structure.

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2018

The article deals with the question of whether the particular structure of a collective perspective may be explained in terms of a tacit, pre-reflective awareness of jointness. Schmid's recent approach argues for the assumption of a plural self-awareness that underlies collective attitudes and cooperative behavior. Drawing on semantic arguments as well as empirical data from developmental psychology, Schmid's view will be criticized for having implausible consequences. Instead, it will be argued that an appropriate description of an implicit awareness of "we" has to meet several adequacy conditions such as a tacit self-other distinction, pre-intentional reciprocity and commitment. A minimal framework of mutual awareness of each other as conscious agents supplemented by a "feeling of commitment" will be outlined.

Philosophers of group agency have argued forcefully that we should view structured groups – with a hierarchy and decision mechanisms – as agents capable of rational and moral agency. These include, but are not limited to, corporations, universities, and states. Most theorists have maintained that moral agency allows groups to participate in our responsibility practices that are shaped by the reactive emotions. Part of this practice is an entrenched care for each other’s quality of will. Consequently, these theorists must also hold that groups are capable of a good or ill will. This dissertation argues that despite these aspirations, most theories of group agency fall short of providing a theory of a group or corporate will. It first surveys List and Pettit’s prominent, functionalist theory of group agency, as well as alternative accounts. Two desiderata for any adequate model of a corporate will are developed. The account must 1) be able to distinguish between group activity in which the group is not in control and autonomous group action and 2) explain why certain normative profiles and functional structures that distinguish corporations from universities and states can undermine a group’s capacity for moral agency and its capacity to manifest an autonomous will. After arguing that List and Pettit’s theory cannot meet these challenges, a positive proposal is developed that provides a successful answer. It extends List and Pettit’s functionalist picture with a collective version of David Velleman’s constitutive aim of agency: Self-Intelligibility. As part of this proposal, a novel way of capturing a group’s practical identity is developed that builds on the notion of constitutive rules to model social practices. The resulting constitutive theory of group agency is able to satisfy both desiderata and provides insights into how different types of corporate governance of public corporations undermine and enable their capacity for moral and autonomous agency

Erkenntnis 9, 79, 2014, pp. 1623-1639, DOI 10.1007/s10670-014-9632-y

"ABSTRACT Christian List and Philip Pettit develop an account of group agency which is based on a functional understanding of agency. They claim that understanding organizations such as commercial corporations, governments, political parties, churches, universities as group agents helps us to a better understanding of the normative status and working of those organizations. List and Pettit, however, fail to provide a unified account of group agency since they do not show how the functional side of agency and the normative side of agency are connected. My claim is that a constitutive account of agency helps us to a proper understanding of group agency since it ties the functional part of acting to the group agent’s self-understanding and its commitment to specific norms, principles and values. A constitutive model of agency meets much better what List and Pettit seek to accomplish, namely conceiving of group agents as artificial persons, constituted by normative principles and entertaining normative relations to others to whom they are accountable. "

Both in our roles as third party helpers and as students of negotiation, we have wondered why certain kinds of integrative negotiation opportunities are so rarely turned into successful agreements. Since, in a number of the cases we followed, mutual gains processes were used to conduct the negotiations, we began to think that there was some basic flaw in the process. These difficult cases shared a key element: there was a history of domination or oppression between the parties. We began to recognize that the dynamics of the dominator-dominated relationship were barring stable integrative agreements. Part of what was missing in the negotiation dialogue was an acceptance of each side’s sense of identity, especially as revealed in its interpretation of the past.

Proceedings of Londial

A theory of dialogue should link discourse interpre- tation to general principles of rationality and coop- erativity (Grice, 1975). The so-called ‘mentalist ap- proach’ treats dialogue as a function of the agents’ ...

Continental Philosophy Review, 2020

After taking into consideration the most relevant criticisms questioning the capacity of the thinking "I" to grasp itself in a transparent and undistorting way, I will ask what remains of first-person authority with regard to one's own identity. I argue that first-person authority is not to be abandoned, but rather reformulated in terms of public commitments that nobody else can take up in my place. After recovering the original meaning of Heidegger's claim "one is what one does," I turn to Arendt's performative disclosure of the "who" through political initiative and suggest reading the requirement of public exposure as a model allowing for a better understanding of self-identification. In order to discern more clearly the shape of this new paradigm of self-identification, I draw on Ricoeur's notion of self-attestation, Crowell's analysis of our "being-answerable" and Larmore's account of avowals in which we give ourselves a publicly binding shape. In synthetizing and prolonging the considerations of the abovementioned authors about the performative disclosure of the self, I demonstrate that one's identity-in the sense of ipseity-is both constituted and manifested by the commitments that the self endorses and for which it is held accountable in front of others.

Journal of Language and Politics, 2004

The purpose of this paper is to show the existing relationships between the concept of community and the linguistic forms used to convey or even to manipulate it. First of all, the limits and restrictions of any form of community will be defined. Second, one specific form of community will be selected for analysis. The community chosen will be the Parliamentary community, and the linguistic form singled out for study will be the first person plural pronoun “we”. We will try to discover any type of relationship between (a) the scope of reference of this personal pronoun and (b) the intentions of the person who uttered it. In this way, we can see whether there is any connection between personal identity (in terms of inclusion/exclusion from a group) and pronominal choice. This could also lead us to the discovery of any possible strategic use of this personal pronoun.