Collective Intention And Cooperative Action

In recent years, collective intention has been one of the main issues in analytic philosophy, and more and more philosophers, especially in the English-speaking countries, have turned their attention to this issue. With the development of philosophy of mind and philosophy of action since 1970s, the dominant concerns in this approach is that what the nature of collective intention, and how to analyze it with the theory of intentionality that we already have. In his famous article "collective intentions and actions", John Searle defends an account of collective intention that is a particular type of one’s intention, in summary, which has three distinct characters that are irreducibility, primitiveness and biological origin. Searle attempts to develop a general theory of collective intention, but it seems just a beginning of this discussion, after his works, lots of researchers have been putting forward their own opinions, some of them disagree with Searle’s account, and the primitiveness is the most controversial point. In other words, the main questions are what the role of collective intention is, and what the relation between individual intention and collective intention is. It is hard to give an appropriate answer depending on the present theory of intentionality, thus in this sense we should explore some new approaches. Game theory, especially some results of empirical research in experimental economics, may be a good choice. According to the theories of behavioral economics and experimental economics, the understanding and model of collective intention will play a very important role in the theory of cooperative action.The title of this dissertation is "Collective Intention and Cooperative Action", which indicates that the thesis focuses on two main issues, one is collective intention, and the other is cooperative action. The first four chapters concentrate on the argument of collective intention, which consists of several sub issues, like the uniqueness of intention, the relation between intention and collective intention, the relation between collective intention and collective intentionality, the relationship between collective intention and collective action, the "Ⅰ-mode" approach to the ontological structure of intentional state in collective action, and the "We-mode" approach to the ontological structure of intentional state in collective action. Base on these discussions, I develop a model of the ontological structure of intentional state in collective action named "practice-depended transition model". The other three chapters focus on the explanation of cooperative action. Because the key point of understanding of the nature of collective intention is cooperation, and game theory gives us lots of models of cooperation and coordination. So the latter half of paper demonstrates some games from game theory to shed light on the nature and mechanism of cooperative action, and give an account of the internal theoretical connection of the two main issues. It concerns with two aspects-the theory and the experiment-to show the nature of cooperation. The first part of the discussion depends on some models of cooperation in game theory, and the second part depends on some empirical results in experimental economics. Meanwhile, the theory of collective intention discussed in the first four chapters will still be the foundation of chapter 5 and chapter 6. Based on the discussions in the first 6 chapters, chapter 7 gives out a set of necessary conditions of cooperative action, and a group of rules of reciprocate behavior.Chapter 1“The Uniqueness of Intention”is mainly about that intention is a unique intentional state at the same level as belief and desire, thus can not be reduced into belief plus desire. As collective intention is one special kind of intentions, a theory of collective intention has to be based on an ontological account of intention, so the uniqueness of intention will be the foundation of the argument of the ontology of collective intention. In the tradition of philosophy of action, researchers used to see intention as a summation of belief and desire, but in recent years, more and more researchers including Searle disagree with the point of view above, the non-reductive analysis of intention become popular.In chapter 2 "Several Basic Issues Relevant to Collective Intention", I discuss three issues as follows:the transition from intention to collective intention, the relationship between collective intention and collective intentionality, and the relationship between collective intention and collective action. In the first part, this thesis gives out two different modes of transition: simple view and complex view, the latter one uses the concepts of intentionality and collective intentionality as connections, which shows to be a more appropriate answer to the question of this issue; in the second part, the paper clarifies the differences of the nature and purpose of collective intention and collective intentionality; in the last part, the paper defines collective action as action of more than two agents together, which should be a foundation of understanding collective rationality.In chapter 3“‘Ⅰ-mode’of Research of the Ontological Structure of Intentional State in Collective Action”, I focus on a possible approach:“Ⅰ-mode”approach to collective intention. The main point of "Ⅰ-mode" is that the individualism plays an important role in the theory of collective intention, while the latter is meaningless in ontology. In this case, "Ⅰ-mode" regards the collective intention simply as a summation of individual intention and individual belief. The argument in this chapter goes as follows: Firstly, I analyze the instrumentalist understanding of the collective intention and the Gilbert’s argument for "collective mind", and points out that neither of them is appropriate for the research. Then, in detail, I analyze some of the dominant theories of“Ⅰ-mode”- the model of Tuomela and Miller, the planning theory and "SCA" mode of Bratman. And by the end of this chapter, it comes to a conclusion that "Ⅰ-mode", as an approach, fails to reveal the "collective" character in collective intention. Therefore, an alternative approach would be necessary.Chapter 4“‘We-mode’of Research of the Ontological Structure of Intentional State in Collective Action”is mainly about the very alternative approach-"We-mode", which continues with the argument in chapter 3. In this part, the primary theory comes from Searle’s argument on collective intention. And the argument in this chapter goes as follows:At the beginning, it centers on the elaboration of Searle’s argument for the biological naturalism and individualism in the philosophy of mind. As Searle emphasized, individual consciousness can be and can only be relevant to his/her own mind, which indicates that Searle’s argument have nothing to do with the reduction analysis mentioned in chapter 3. Searle says, as I paraphrased, just like "individual intention", collective intention, ontologically, should be a primitive state of intention. I agrees with Searle on his conclusion, however, his reasoning can not be seen as satisfying. In sum, based on the comparative analysis of both of two approaches, I put forward a new understanding in ontological structure of collective intention——practice-depended transition model. In addition, I point out that the very "reduction" is meaningless, for the reason that both collective intention and individual intention exist in the mind of agent, and the agent switches between the two according to the practical situation. In the end, I point out that the key point of understanding of collective intention is utmost relevant with the understanding of the cooperation in collective action.The first four chapters can be seen as a theoretical construction, which center on the collective intention and some other relevant issues. In contrast, in chapter 5 "Game, Cooperation and Collective Intention", I pay attention to the argument on action instead: Firstly, chapter 5 introduces the research from philosophy to economics, in which game theory supplies plenty of valuable research materials, for instance, the argument in chapter 5 rest on the analysis of the "prisoners’dilemma" and some other models in game theory. On the bases of the analysis, I point out that collective intention provides an alternative approach to the analysis of the models mentioned above, which can make a guarantee to an optimal solution of the games. In connection of the theory of collective intention with that of cooperative action, I advance an explanation of the collective rationality, that virtually collective rationality is the rational principle based on the collective intention.In chapter 6 "Empirical Research of Collective Intention:An Experimental Economics Approach", I further the analysis of the theory advanced in chapter 5, and brings in the new results in experimental economics, which makes a new way to the empirical research in the philosophy of action. At first, I provide a comprehensive summary of the research in experimental economics and behavior economics, and then I indicate that both of them have the similar research object with philosophy of action, which provides the possibility of the interaction of these theories. In the second, I quote two examples in behavior games-public goods games and utilmatum games, and it shows that the result in simulated experiments of the two games are quite different from the result predicted in traditional game theory. The difference points to the importance of collective intention, and also provides the empirical evidence of the conclusion on collective intention in this thesis.In chapter 7 "The Cooperation in Collective Action", on the basis of the presupposion and preparation in the first six chapters, I give my own explanation of collective action, which can be summarized as a set of necessary condition of cooperative action. Further more, I discuss the internal mechanism of cooperative action, especially, it elaborates the concept of "reciprocity" with the help of the theory of evolutionary biology. By the end of this thesis, in the way of testing my explanation the application of the set of necessary conditions to the common examples in collective intention theory verifies the explanation of the set of necessary conditions of cooperative action.In sum, this thesis centers on the two issues:“Collective Intention”and "Cooperative Action". It begins with the discussion on the collective intention, along with several relevant issues, and gives my own explanation of collective intention, together with a structural model of intentional state in collective action. For the importance of the "cooperative" in the understanding of collective intention, I discuss the cooperation on the basis of collective intention theory, which is associated with the traditional games and its results in game theory. To a certain extent, the theory of collective intention is connected to the theory of cooperative action. In addition, the theory of collective intention provides a necessary theory for the understanding of coordination problem in games, and also the empirical result in game theory provides new evidence for the theory of collective intention theory in this thesis. Then, I advance a "practice-depended transition model" of the intentional state in collective action, and emphasize the importance of cooperation in understanding collective intention. Furthermore, it provides a set of necessary conditions of cooperative action, which completes the argument on the two issues-"Collective Intention" and "Cooperative Action"-separately and cooperatively.