Collective intentions and collective intentionality - Criticisms and Reconstructions

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 2003  by L. A. Zaibert

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The Construction of Social Reality is a very important book. It is important both in itself, and (perhaps even more) in relation to the rest of Searle's previous work. The new phase of Searle's work that this book inaugurates attempts to extend to the analysis of social reality Searle's early views on intentionality, on the naturalistic fallacy, and on a host of other subjects. In the "Introduction" Searle apologizes for a "certain amount of repetition" in the original chapters of the book, that is, in those chapters where he seeks to develop "a general ontology of social facts and social institutions"(Searle 1995: xii). (1) I shall ignore here the repetitions that Searle mentions. Rather than focusing on what Searle addresses in excess, I shall focus upon what Searle fails to address.

Accounting "for our social reality within our overall scientific ontology," Searle tells us, "requires exactly three elements. The assignment of function, collective intentionality, and constitutive rules" (CSR: 13). Moreover, among these three crucial elements of social reality, collective intentionality seems to play a protagonist role, for Searle also tells us that "the central span on the bridge from physics to society is collective intentionality" (CSR: 41). Yet, Searle says little of substance about collective intentionality in The Construction of Social Reality. His scanty remarks are limited to generalities. To tell us that "the capacity for collective intentionality is biologically innate, and [that] the forms of collective intentionality cannot be eliminated or reduced to something else" (CSR: 37), or that one could defend the notion of collective intentionality without being "committed to the idea that there exists some Hegelian world spirit, a collective consciousness, or something equally implaus ible" (CSR: 25), is, even if true, of not much help. Of course, Searle's views on intentionality as expressed in his classic and sophisticated Intentionality, and the views on collective intentionality put forth in his less-felicitous "Collective Intentions and Actions" of 1990 can be thought of as carrying the theoretical freight missing in The Construction of Social Reality. (2) But they do not carry this freight, or so I shall argue.

There are two clusters of reasons explaining why Searle's notion of collective intentionality is inadequate to do the job for which it was designed. The first has to do with problems inherent in the theory of individual intentionality even before the attempt to extend it into a "general theory" (CIA: 401) is made. The second relates to the problems that arise precisely when we attempt to move from individual intentionality toward collective intentionality. Yet, the problems that I wish to point out in both cases have to do with certain characteristics of one specific intentional state: intentions.

To be sure, Searle clearly establishes that there is no special connection between intentions and intentionality: "the obvious pun on 'Intentionality' and 'intention' suggests that intentions in the ordinary have some special role in the theory of intentionality" (I: 3). But although intentions play no special role, Searle does believe that they have a special structure.

I

The Uniqueness of Intentions

SEARLE HAS DONE A GREAT SERVICE TO contemporary philosophy of mind by distinguishing intentions from other mental states and by emphasizing, more eloquently than other contemporary authors, their uniqueness. It is therefore surprising to witness the turn that he has taken in The Construction of Social Reality. For in focusing on collective intentionality, Searle now lumps together those very same mental states that in the past he had tried so very hard, and with much reason, to differentiate. When examining the limitations of attempts to analyze all intentional states in terms of "beliefs and desires," Searle once liked to point out that "perhaps the hardest case of all is intention" (I: 34); appropriately, he devoted a special chapter to the intentionality of intentions in Intentionality. The enterprise of reducing intentions to beliefs and desires is not just difficult; it is, Searle correctly concluded a few years ago, an enterprise that is doomed to fail.

The conditions of satisfaction of beliefs and desires alike are states of affairs, but the conditions of satisfaction of intentions are actions. The condition of satisfaction of a desire or a wish could be an action but it need not be. And although actions might bring about changes in states of affairs, and although they might themselves constitute states of affairs, it is obvious that states of affairs are not in every case actions. Intentions are linked to actions in ways that differ from those in which beliefs or desires could be related to actions. People can desire whatever they please, including things that are beyond their control, such as a beautiful day, but they cannot intend things beyond their control; it makes no sense to say that someone intends that there be a beautiful day.