GRoup thinking: new fOUNDationS

ended

This project builds new foundations for collective attitudes and representational states: group belief and group desire. The platform is the PI’s recent advances in the metaphysics of representation for individual representational states, where he develops and defends a substantive, realist interpretationism: (i) what it is to believe/desire that p is for the selected interpretation to attribute that belief/desire to them; (ii) the selected interpretation is that which makes the subject most reason-responsive, given the way they act and the evidence available to them. This project leverages this work to construct a common structure for the metaphysics of group representation and individual representation, isolating parameters that differentiate the cases and theorizing the distinctive ingredients of the group case. The first phase of the work places group representation in context, studying the theoretical deployments of group attitudes, and dependencies between accounts of individual representation, group representation and linguistic representation. The second phase lays the basis on which interpretations of individuals and groups are selected---individual and joint action, and individual and joint evidence. An account of such facts must be given prior to and independent of belief and desire, on pain of circularity in the overall account. The third phase examines the relation between foundations of representation and metaphysics of persistence---required if the basis for interpretation is to be modally and temporally extended. The fourth shows how key issues in the theory of normative reasons will impact the metaphysics of content, given appeal to reasons responsiveness at the heart of the account. The fifth phase identifies the boundaries between realist and anti-realist accounts of group thought.