Sharon Casu
University of Fribourg
In this talk, I will present a challenge to collective intentional action, starting from action theories developed during and after the second half of the 20th century. I will presuppose that cases of collective intentional action and of individual intentional action are both instances of intentional agency, i.e. the two notions aim to refer to the same general phenomenon.
In light of this, I will claim:
1. that wildly different theories of action (Anscombe 1957, Davidson 1963, Hornsby 1980, Bach 1980, Ruben 2003, Alvarez 2008) all consider mental states – in particular beliefs, knowledge, desires, or emotions – to be necessary for intentional agency, although their role might vary according to the theory;
2. that what is also necessary for intentional action is that the agent is conscious of their mental state, and in some cases (e.g. belief) endorses the content of that mental state, as Overgaard and Salice (2021) have argued;
3. that as the latter have also shown in their discussion of belief, to be conscious of a mental state in a way relevant for action is to be phenomenally conscious of that mental state.
I will then turn to collective intentional agency in order to raise the following question: are collectives capable of being phenomenally conscious (i.e. of experiencing their “mental” states) so as to act intentionally?
Pacherie (2017) and List (2015) among others have suggested that there can be no collective phenomenal consciousness. While Pacherie offers a minimalist conception of collective mental states that define them as mental states shared by individuals, this is not sufficient for collective intentional agency, since these states would still be experienced by the individuals and not the collective as an entity.
I will conclude by presenting the three different paths available to the proponents of collective intentional agency: a) provide a strong argument for the existence of collective phenomenal consciousness; b) reject the different theories of intentional action philosophers have presented so far; c) abandon the task altogether. I suggest that the last option is the most promising one.
Chair: Aaron Wirt
Time: September 7th, 10:40-11:10
Location: SR 1.003
SOPhiA 2026 