Collective Intentionality In Social Cognition

Social cognition focuses on how individuals understand others and survive and thrive through cooperation with other individuals.A further question is whether the collective formed by the connection of multiple individuals has intentionality.And how does this collective intentionality lead to some kind of collective action? In the past ten years,the research on these issues related to collective intentionality has attracted more and more academic attention.This paper takes the problem of collective intentionality as the research object,clarifies the core connotation of the concept of collective intentionality through combing the development of the concept of collective intentionality.On this basis,this paper further explores the relationship between collective intentionality and individual intentionality and its role in collective cooperative action from the two approaches of individualism and holism.Specifically,individualism advocates to discuss collective intentionality from the starting point of individual intentionality,believing that collective intentionality,like individual intentionality,can only exist in the brain of an individual.Holism,on the other hand,claims that after the formation of the collective,the collective becomes the subject of the collective intentionality,and the collective becomes an indivisible whole.Members of the collective coordinate with each other and perform their respective duties.Although the physiological basis of any mental phenomenon can only be the brain,it is the collective intentionality owned by many collective actors in social life,which cannot be simply regarded as a theoretical fiction or the accumulation of individual intentionality.Therefore,the collective intention cannot be reduced to individual intention.On the basis of combing two different approaches of individualism and holism and their theoretical positions,this paper explores how the collective acts as the carrier of collective intentionality and becomes the undertaker of collective action.Further,if the collective has the intention state,what is the implementation mechanism of the collective has the intention state?Can this intention be reduced to an individual intention state?By examining these problems,this paper finally defends a non-reductionist individualism.That is to say,collective intentionality is the basis for the execution of collective action.It is ultimately based on the neural mechanism of individual brain,but it cannot be reduced to individual intentionality.