Already several times in these blogs I have talked
about group intentions. A group intention was seen as a kind of agreement of
several persons about doing something together. We could call this a joint
commitment, for instance as Margaret Gilbert does. In such a joint commitment
we as individuals have the same intention as we have as a group. If we as a
group want to walk together, usually it means that I want to walk with you and
you want to walk with me (this case is often discussed by Gilbert). Or if we
want to paint the house together, the normal sense is that I want to paint a
part and you want to paint a part (a case discussed by Michael E. Bratman).
However, does what we want to do as a group always correspond to what we want
to do as individuals, or at least to what the majority of the group members
wants to do? In discussing this question, again I make use of the argumentation
of List and Pettit, just as I did in my last blog.
Last week we have seen that sometimes a government has
to decide against what it has promised, simply because it didn’t get an
unequivocal mandate from the electorate. Now I want to adapt the example I have
used there and see what happens:
Tom, Dick and Harry are making a walk through the
countryside and have to cross a pasture with cows. Then Tom says: “I think that
we can better walk round the pasture for I see a bull over there.” Dick agrees,
but then he says: “I cannot see it well, but I think that the bull is tied to a
pole, so let’s cross the pasture anyway. I am tired and want to be home as soon
as possible.” “You are wrong”, Tom replies, “and even if the bull is tied up, I
don’t want to take the risk. What do you think, Harry?” Harry, a farmer, says:
“As far as I can see, the bull runs free, but if we keep our distance, we don’t
need to be afraid. Maybe the bull will look at us, but he will keep away. So,
let’s take the shortest path and cross the pasture.” And so they do but is it
really what they want to do? In order to find it out, let me present the
conversation in a schematic way:
afraid
for bulls bull is tied wants to walk
wants
to avoid the bull to a pole through the pasture
Tom yes
no no
Dick yes
yes yes
Harry no
no yes
Majority yes no yes
In the case presented here, Tom and Dick have been
reassured by Harry that nothing will happen, anyway. We can say then that they
have changed their opinions and, even though they are still afraid of bulls,
they see no need to avoid the bull in the pasture (as long as they don’t come
too near to it). But what would Tom, Dick and Harry have decided if Tom and
Dick hadn’t believed Harry that the bull would keep away from them? Of course,
Harry could have said: If you are scared, we can better walk round the pasture.
But suppose he hadn’t say that and he couldn’t convince the others that the
bull wasn’t dangerous. In that case we see that the majority of this group of
walkers thought that the bull was not tied to a pole and that the majority of the walkers wanted to avoid the bull in
that case, so they did not want to walk through the pasture.
Nevertheless the group as such did want to walk through the pasture, and so
they would have decided if they had voted about the question or if a “common
feeling” had said them that it was that what the group wanted.
The upshot is that it can happen – and I think it
often happens – that “the group” intends and so decides what its individual
members certainly do not want to do. What we do is not always what we want to
do, even if we have a choice.
For this blog I have made use of Christian List and
Philip Pettit, Group Agency. The
Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013; pp. 43-47.
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