Abstract
Many social and collective properties and notions are collectively man-made. The collectively constructed parts or elements of the social world include general social institutions such as natural languages, legal systems, and financial notions such as money. Similarly, more specific social institutions such as the school, church, government, leadership, and authority are collectively created and maintained. The resulting collectivity and sociality features (ontically: ideas in people’s minds plus their collective activities) characterize the man-maintained parts of the social world.
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Notes
Note that there is no conceptual gap between the intention to accept and (mental) acceptance itself, while there is a big enough conceptual gap between intention to accept and overtly showing acceptance for making failure of action possible.
My central considerations rely on collective acceptance for the group involving collective commitment (going beyond the aggregation of private commitments) to what has been accepted. I wish to point out that there are cases of collective acceptance for the group involving only private commitments. Suppose thus that it is mutually believed — in a private, tacit sense — by the Finns that they are the toughest people in the world. This kind of collective acceptance based on mutual private belief only entails private commitments, but it could still be for the group and even be a reason for collective social action. There is also collective acceptance which is not for the group. For instance, the group members might all accept to go picking mushrooms and accept it as true that everybody will go, without accepting all this for the group. There might be mutual knowledge about this in the group, but the group members would compete for the mushrooms. This can be regarded as collective acceptance in the I-mode without collective commitment to the accepted activity. We may consider the items in a group’s intentional horizon (IH) from the point of view of collective acceptance (CA), forgroupness (FG), collective commitment (CoCom), and we-modeness (WM). Verbally, claim i) says that we-mode acceptance amounts to collective acceptance with collective commitment, and ii) says that collective commitment in the context of collective acceptance entails collective acceptance for the group. We may also assume that we-modeness of CA in this situation entails we-modeness of the content and, less problematically, conversely; and thus we have: WM(g,s) ↔ CA(g,s) & CoCom(g,s). Of the 8 possible combinations the first one, viz., CA & FG & CoCom is equivalent to WM and is the combination our Collective Acceptance generally deals with although it can tolerate CA&FG&-CoCom. Of the other combinatory possibilities only CA&-FG&Cocom,-CA & FG & CoCom, and-CA &-FG & CoCom are not possible, if we take collective acceptance (CA) to be collective social action or disposition to collective social action in the sense of Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela (1997).
Here is an informal sketch of a proof for (CC), improving on the proof in Section 2.V, essentially from the ideas of the Collective Acceptance account with the collective commitment assumption (rather than via the (ET*) criterion) applicable to the group members (“us”, “for our group”), the Forgroup operator applying to all the premises and conclusions below (I draw on Tuomela and Balzer, 1997): 1) Forgroup(We will achieve goal G). (From the analysans of (CA) 2) p is collectively available for the use of all group members. (From the meaning of the predicate ‘Forgroup’) 3) In particular, assume p = We will achieve goal G is true for the CA-reason (viz., that G has been collectively accepted as a goal for the group and that thus 1)). Then, if G is satisfied for the group, the corresponding ig-goals G1 of the group members are satisfied. 4) So, for the CA-reason it is true that if G is satisfied for the group then G1 is satisfied for every group member i. 5) For the CA-reason it is true that G1 cannot be satisfied for any group member i unless G is satisfied for the group. 6) For the CA-reason it is true that if G1 is satisfied for a group member i then it is satisfied for any other group member j, viz., G1 is satisfied. 7) Therefore, goal G satisfies the Collectivity Condition (CC). I will not here further comment on the premises and the steps of the proof. On the whole, this argument is perhaps somewhat shallow as very much is built into the premises. Yet it has the significance of spelling out in more detail the importance of (CA) for collectivity in the case of goals and — in effect by the same token-joint and collective intentions.
My view of proper social norms has clear affinities with Hume’s views: “This convention is not of the nature of a promise: For even promises themselves, as we shall see afterwards, arise from human conventions. It is only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to regulate their conduct by certain rules.... When this common sense of interest is mutually express’d, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be call’d a convention or agreement betwixt us, tho’ without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are perform’d upon the supposition, that something is to be perform’d on the other part. Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention tho’ they have never given promises to each other... In like manner are languages gradually establish’d by human conventions without any promise. In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteem’d sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times their value.” (Hume, 1965, p. 490)
It can be noted here that Searle’s (1995) basic formula for collective acceptance in the context of social institutions is “We accept that S has power (S does A)” (Searle, 1995, pp. 104, 111). This is understood to be implicitly entailed by my central acceptance sentence “We collectively accept s”, but what is explicitly accepted in my account is the proposition s (e.g., s = squirrel fur is money) and not the underlying powers, rights and duties, concerning the possessors of squirrel furs and other members of the group.
The above general view of norm obeying as acting for the right reason can be sharpened. For such a detailed analysis, see Tuomela (1995, pp. 45–50).
My basic thesis (FNO) is compatible with what Rawls (1971, 1993) says about institutional cooperation relative to the basic structure of society — see Chapter 13 for comments and references.
Recall (from Chapter 2) that a fixed-point analysis of mutual belief and other collective attitudes allows that the agents have the mutual belief in question but only a vague idea of it, so that nothing like a potentially infinite hierarchy of nested beliefs need be involved in the case of ordinary, less than fully rational agents.
Here is a piece of anecdotal evidence from Germany. During a longer stay in Munich I found that one can buy newspapers from special boxes with a slot for money. One is supposed to insert the right amount of coins into the slot, from which no money can be retrieved. On the other hand, one can also get the paper from the box without paying for it. (I have been told that similar boxes exist also in many other cities including Melbourne, where they are known as “honesty boxes”.) The presupposition underlying this institution seems to be that people cooperate to an extent sufficient to make selling the paper in this way commercially feasible. It is not hard to imagine other locations on Tellus in which this would not work: Not only would the papers soon be stolen but the cash box would be smashed and the money stolen as well.
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Tuomela, R. (2000). Cooperation in Institutional Context. In: Cooperation. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 82. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9594-0_6
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