Phenomenology and Mind

No. 2 (2012): Making the Social World: Social Ontology, Collective Intentionality, and Normativity
Session 2. Collective Intentionality and Social Cognition

Subject, Mode and Content in “We-Intentions”

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  • Michael Wilby
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13128/Phe_Mi-19627

Published 2016-11-27

Keywords

  • collective intentionality,
  • joint action,
  • John Searle

How to Cite

Wilby, M. (2016). Subject, Mode and Content in “We-Intentions”. Phenomenology and Mind, (2), 78–87. https://doi.org/10.13128/Phe_Mi-19627
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Abstract

Propositional attitudes compose of three factors: subject, mode and content. With collective propositional attitudes there is dispute as to which of these three factors the collectivity aspect attaches to. For Searle the collectivity aspect comes in with the mode of the propositional attitude – it is a matter of two distinct individuals each having their own collective intention-in-action. I argue that there are ineliminable difficulties with the Searle’s individualistic analysis, and argue instead for the notion of a dual-subject mental state: a propositional attitude that, by its nature, takes two or more subjects.

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