Raimo Tuomela

(1940 - 2020)

The paper studies cooperation as joint action, where joint action can, first, be conceptualized either individualistically in terms of the participants' individual goals and beliefs that the joint action is taken to serve. This is individualistic or ‛I-mode’ cooperation. Special version of it is ‛ pro-group I-mode’ cooperation, where the goals are shared. Second, cooperation can be of the kind where a group of persons act together as a group in terms of the non-aggregative ‛ we’ that they form. The results of the paper support the conjecture that we-mode conceptualization and an account of cooperation is needed to complement the individualistic (pro-group) I-mode account(s) in social science theorizing and experimentation.

It is argued in this paper that there can be both normative and nonnormative, merely factual group beliefs. The former involve the whole social group in question, while the latter only relate to the distributions of personal beliefs within the group. The paper develops a detailed theory, called the positional account of group beliefs, to explicate normative, group-involving group beliefs. Normative group beliefs are characterized within this approach in terms of joint acceptances of views by the group members — or their representatives — acting in their right positions and tasks, and in a sense creating group commitments for all the members to accept (and keep accepting) the view in question. Also aggregate accounts of group belief are considered in the paper, especially the shared we-belief approach. Such aggregate accounts purport to account for merely factual group beliefs.

The paper is a reply to the critical reviews of the author’s A Theory of social Action by Anton Leist, Marvin Belzer, and Julian Nida-Rümelin in this journal. As to Leist’s main criticisms, which concern the notions of social action, social practical reasoning, individualism, and social norms, they are argued to be incorrect and unjustified. Belzer’s criticisms are on the whole well taken, and in fact all of them have been noted by the author in his later work.Belzer does not, however, consider these newest analyses and improvements. Nida-Rümelin presents some comments on the relationships between collective preferences and we- intentions. These points are correct.

The paper is a response to some critical points and omissions in John Wettersten’s review of my recent book The Philosophy of Sociality: The Shared Point of View (Oxford University Press, 2007). I point out in this short paper that the reviewer has not discussed the most central notions in the book relating to its "we-mode" approach, i.e. collective acceptance, group reasons, the collectivity condition, collective commitment and their role in accounting for e.g. cooperation, social institutions, cultural evolution. I also clarify the ontological commitments of my broadly naturalistic approach and show e.g. that we-mode social groups do exist as social systems but not a full-blown collective agents, although it is conceptually and instrumentally central to view them as collective agents. Also questions of we-mode versus I-mode explanations of collective action are considered in the paper