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21Coordination problems and the evolution of behaviorBehavioral and Brain Sciences 7 (1): 106. 1984.
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470Collective epistemologyEpisteme 1 (2): 95--107. 2004.This paper introduces the author's approach to everyday ascriptions of collective cognitive states as in such statements as we believe he is lying. Collective epistemology deals with these ascriptions attempting to understand them and the phenomena in question.
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272Belief and acceptance as features of groupsProtoSociology 16 35-69. 2002.In everyday discourse groups or collectives are often said to believe this or that. The author has previously developed an account of the phenomenon to which such collective belief statements refer. According to this account, in terms that are explained, a group believes that p if its members are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. Those who fulfill these conditions are referred to here as collectively believing* that p. Some philosophers – here labeled rejectionists – have argued tha…Read more
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752Agreements, coercion, and obligationEthics 103 (4): 679-706. 1993.Typical agreements can be seen as joint decisions, inherently involving obligations of a distinctive kind. These obligations derive from the joint commitment' that underlies a joint decision. One consequence of this understanding of agreements and their obligations is that coerced agreements are possible and impose obligations. It is not that the parties to an agreement should always conform to it, all things considered. Unless one is released from the agreement, however, one has some reason to …Read more
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16Responses to Darwall, Watson, Arneson, and HelmreichPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (2): 525-538. 2023.
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14Precis of Rights and Demands: A Foundational InquiryPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (2): 493-498. 2023.
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Part III. Individual and collective epistemology. Social roots of human knowledge / Ernest Sosa ; Belief, acceptance, and what happens in groups : some methodological considerationsIn Jennifer Lackey (ed.), Essays in Collective Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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186Is an agreement an exchange of promises?Journal of Philosophy 90 (12): 627-649. 1993.This paper challenges the common assumption that an agreement is an exchange of promises. Proposing that the performance obligations of some typical agreements are simultaneous, interdependent, and unconditional, it argues that no promise-exchange has this structure of obligations. In addition to offering general considerations in support of this claim, it examines various types of promise-exchange, showing that none satisfy the criteria noted. Two forms of conditional promise are distinguished …Read more
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118Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and ConstraintsMind 111 (442): 399-403. 2002.
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8Review of Walter L. Wallace: Principles of Scientific Sociology (review)Ethics 98 (1): 180-181. 1987.
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77Social Rules: Some Problems for Hart’s Account, and an Alternative Proposal (review)Law and Philosophy 18 (2): 141-171. 1999.What is a social rule? This paper first notes three important problems for H.L.A. Hart's famous answer in the Concept of Law. An alternative account that avoids the problems is then sketched. It is less individualistic than Hart's and related accounts. This alternative account can explain a phenomenon observed but downplayed by Hart: the parties to a social rule feel that they are in some sense 'bound' to conform to it.
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Dialogue and Joint CommitmentIn Maura Priest & Margaret Gilbert (eds.), Les Defis de Collectif. forthcoming.
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238Social RulesIn Byron Kaldis (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, Sage Publications Ltd.. 2013.
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501Conversation and Collective BeliefIn Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo & Marco Carapezza (eds.), Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy, Springer. 2013.
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365Obligation and Joint CommitmentUtilitas 11 (2): 143. 1999.I argue that obligations of an important type inhere in what I call 'joint commitments'. I propose a joint commitment account of everyday agreements. This could explain why some philosophers believe that we know of the obligating nature of agreements a priori. I compare and contrast obligations of joint commitment with obligations in the relatively narrow sense recommended by H. L. A. Hart, a recommendation that has been influential. Some central contexts in which Hart takes there to be obligati…Read more
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197Game Theory and “Convention‘Synthese 46 (1). 1981.A feature of David Lewis's account of conventions in his book "Convention" which has received admiring notices from philosophers is his use of the mathematical theory of games. In this paper I point out a number of serious flaws in Lewis's use of game theory. Lewis's basic claim is that conventions cover 'coordination problems'. I show that game-Theoretical analysis tends to establish that coordination problems in Lewis's sense need not underlie conventions.
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111Socializing Metaphysics: The Nature of Social RealityRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2003.Socializing Metaphysics supplies diverse answers to the basic questions of social metaphysics, from a broad array of voices. It will interest all philosophers and social scientists concerned with mind, action, or the foundations of social theory.
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16Critical notice: Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (review)Noûs 33 (2): 295-303. 2002.
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268Vices and self-knowledgeJournal of Philosophy 68 (15): 443-453. 1971.Towards an account of character traits in self-Knowledge, With an assessment of the sartrean thesis ("spectatorism") that character trait concepts are fitted for other-Ascription rather than self-Ascription. The logic of ascriptions of evil character and specific vices is dealt with. The relationship of self-Ascription to self-Falsification and "seeing oneself as an object" is examined. Self-Ascription has peculiarities, But at most a very mild form of spectatorism is born out.
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256What is it to do something with another person? In the author's book On Social Facts and elsewhere, she has conjectured that a special type of commitment - joint commitment - lies at the root of acting together and many other central social phenomena. Here she surveys some data pertinent to this conjecture, including the assumption of those who act together that they have associated rights against and obligations towards each other. She explains what joint commitment is, how it relates to the da…Read more
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334Social convention revisitedTopoi (1-2): 5-16. 2008.This article will compare and contrast two very different accounts of convention: the game-theoretical account of Lewis in Convention, and the account initially proposed by Margaret Gilbert (the present author) in chapter six of On Social Facts, and further elaborated here. Gilbert’s account is not a variant of Lewis’s. It was arrived at in part as the result of a detailed critique of Lewis’s account in relation to a central everyday concept of a social convention. An account of convention need …Read more
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256Pro Patria: An Essay on PatriotismThe Journal of Ethics 13 (4): 319-346. 2009.This essay focuses on what patriotism is, as opposed to the value of patriotism. It focuses further on the basic patriotic motive: one acts with this motive if one acts on behalf of one's country as such. I first argue that pre-theoretically the basic patriotic motive is sufficient to make an act patriotic from a motivational point of view. In particular the agent need not ascribe virtues or achievements to his country nor need he feel towards it the emotions characteristic of love. Why should o…Read more
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5Larry May and Stacey Hoffman, eds., Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 13 (4): 168-170. 1993.
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200This is a review essay of Christopher Kutz's Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age, and Jonathan Bass's Stay The Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals. Topics addressed include the nature of collective intentions and actions, the possibility of collective guilt, the moral responsibility of individuals in the context of collective actions.
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