Collective acceptance, social institutions, and social reality - Criticisms and Reconstructions

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 2003  by Raimo Tuomela

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The Collective Acceptance Account of Collective Sociality

MANY SOCIAL AND collective properties and notions are collectively man-made. There are two important features of the collective creation of some central aspects of the social world that have previously been emphasized in the literature--by such authors as Barnes (1983), Bloor (1997), Kusch (1997), and Searle (1995). The first feature is that of the performative character of many social notions. The second is the reflexive nature of many social concepts. My account adds to this list a third feature, the collective availability or "forgroupness" of collective social items.

I will argue in this paper that sociality is in many cases created through collective acceptance. I have elsewhere created a "Collective Acceptance" account of sociality and social institutions (see Tuomela and Balzer 1999, and Tuomela 2002a). The first section of the present paper will present this account. The second and third sections introduce some new features to the account. The fourth section discusses social institutions. The fifth section considers Searle's theory of social institutions. Section VI applies the account to the problem of the ontology of the social world. On a general level, the basic problem to be discussed in this paper is what collective acceptance can achieve concerning ontological matters. I will try to show that it can serve to make relevant parts of the social world objective and ontologically real in a sense not relying merely on "epistemic objectivity" (in Searle's (1995) sense).

According to the Collective Acceptance account of (collective) sociality--developed in Tuomela and Balzer (1999)--certain entities get their social status by being collectively created. For example, many kinds of physical entities--for instance, squirrel fur in the case of medieval Finns--can "in principle" become money. This occurs through the members of the collective in question "performatively" accepting it as money. As soon as they cease to collectively accept it as money and to mutually believe that it is money, squirrel fur loses its status and function as money.

We must distinguish between (a) collectively creating an idea, (b) collectively holding and maintaining it, and finally (c) collectively realizing it or carrying it out. Collective acceptance relates to (a) and (b) in the first place. I argue that those collective social reasons, viz., reasons for which collective social actions in general are performed, are special kinds of "we-attitudes" (cf. below and Tuomela 1995: ch. 1; Tuomela 2002a: ch. 2). (1) Collective acceptance basically amounts to the participants' coming to hold and holding a relevant we-attitude. The we-attitudes (social reasons) that are needed for collective acceptance basically belong either to the intention-family or to the belief-family of attitudes. My account concentrates on intentional achievement actions, but it must be remembered that neither coming to hold a we-attitude nor holding a we-attitude need be intentional actions. Thus, in principle, an agent can acquire a belief that, for instance, there is a tree in front of him, without his reflection and intentional action. Thus, an agent can accept something as correct without having intentionally arrived at this kind of acceptance state. I will below concentrate on acceptance beliefs, which are states of acceptance of a content (sentence, proposition) as correct (or true), while mere believing is a state in which the agent experiences something as true or real (cf. Cohen 1992; Tuomela 2000b). Typically such a state of acceptance is produced by the mental action of acceptance and is, furthermore, based on the agent's reflection of what is being accepted and often also on relevant evidential considerations--e.g., other group members' acceptances. While individual acceptance typically--although not always--is intentional, collective acceptance, when intentional, need not be collectively intentional in the strong sense of being based on a joint intention to accept. Instead, a group may intentionally accept the proposition and may be connected only in terms of their mutual beliefs.

Acceptances as states (viz., as states normally resulting from acceptance action) are basically dispositions to act in accordance with the contents of those states, these contents serving as reasons for those actions. Whatever else those reasons may include, intentions and beliefs of a relevant kind must always be involved (this is a generally accepted fact about reasons for action). Thus the account of acceptance in the sense of holding a we-attitude of a relevant kind can concentrate on intentions and beliefs: intentions and beliefs must accompany wants, wishes, fears, and whatever can motivate action, simply because the concept of action is based on the idea of doing something at will under the guidance of beliefs. In general, I argue that the question of how much intentionality and of which kind there must be in each particular case is to be decided largely on the basis of the collective outcome--what kinds of activities result from collective acceptance and the maintenance of what has thus been accepted. Trivially, people must be able to do with money what we generally do with it and the same goes for schools, churches, governments, and so on.