Federico Pollachini
University of Hamburg
Collective action is an important concept in social ontology and in philosophy of action. It is linked to both metaphysical and moral questions. For example, what does it mean for an agent to be involved in a collective action? What does it mean to be morally responsible for an action taken by a group to which we belong? To shed new light on these questions, I propose to define the actions of groups as causal mechanisms, as they are defined in the philosophy of science.
There are different definitions of mechanisms in the philosophy of science. However, they generally involve the following characteristics: mechanisms are behaviours of entities that can be described at two levels, a macro level and a micro level. The behaviour exhibited at the macro level, also called the phenomenon, can be described in terms of the causal interactions of the behaviours of the constitutively relevant parts (Craver, 2007). We can use the tool of causal modelling to identify the constitutively relevant parts and their activities in a mechanism (Gebharter, 2017). Causal models are mathematical models used to predict system behaviour through causal relationships embedded in the system. The suggestion is that causal models, or a modified variant of them called hybrid models (Blanchard and Hüttemann, 2024), can model not only the causal relationships between micro-level behaviours but also the relationships of constitutive relevance between the activities of the parts and the activity of the whole phenomenon.
I will show that the concepts of mechanism and causal modelling can be applied to the context of group action. More specifically, I will show that group actions share relevant characteristics with mechanisms in science. The presence of these common elements allows us to model group actions using the tools of causal models.
References:
Blanchard, T., and Hüttemann, A., (2024). “Causal modeling in multilevel settings: A new proposal”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 109, 433-457.
Craver, C., (2007). Explaining the brain, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gebharter, A., (2017). “Uncovering Constitutive Relevance Relations in Mechanisms”, Philosophical Studies, 174: 2645–2666.
Chair: Satbhav Voleti
Time: 03 September, 16:50-17:20
Location: HS E.002
SOPhiA 2026 