Thomas Szanto

Husserl on Collective Intentionality

Unlike Husserl’s theory of empathy and intersubjectivity, his theory of collective intentionality has hardly been studied. In this paper, I shall address this neglected but important aspect of his phenomenology. I will argue that Husserl’s contribution, on closer scrutiny, not only stands on an equal footing with contemporary analytic accounts but, indeed, helps to alleviate some of their shortcomings. In particular, I will elaborate on the differences in the social integration of individuals and collectives in terms of intersubjective, social, communal and collective intentionality, respectively. On this background, I will concentrate on Husserl’s alternative construal and demonstrate how it entails a robust anti-individualism regarding both the form and the subject of we-intentions. I will suggest that, contrary to appearances, Husserl does not fall prey to committing a content/vehicle type of fallacy, by inferring from the jointness of the contents of collective intentionality that there is one joint vehicle or, worse, some collectively conscious bearer of such. Rather, the Husserlian alternative yields a robust formal-cum-subject anti-individualism and undercuts the need for deciding between tying in collectivity with either the subject, the mode, or the content of collective intentionality. Ultimately, I wish to show that Husserlian phenomenology allows for a multi-layered and distinctively intentionalist description of communalization, a program often pointed to but, in fact, little expounded upon in contemporary social ontology.

Collaborative Irrationality, Akrasia and Groupthink: Social Disruptions of Emotion Regulation

The present paper proposes an integrative account of social forms of practical irrationality and corresponding disruptions of individual and group-level emotion regulation (ER). I will especially focus on disruptions in ER by means of collaborative agential and doxastic akrasia. I begin by distinguishing mutual, communal and collaborative forms of akrasia. Such a taxonomy seems all the more needed as, rather surprisingly, in the face of huge philosophical interest in analysing the possibility, structure, and mechanisms of individual practical irrationality, with very little exception, there are no comparable accounts of social and collaborative cases. However, I believe that, if it is true that individual akrasia is, in the long run, harmful for those who entertain it, this is even more so in social contexts. I will illustrate this point by drawing on various small group settings, and explore a number of socio-psychological mechanisms underlying collaborative irrationality, in particular groupthink. Specifically, I suggest that in collaborative cases there is what I call a spiraling of practical irrationality at play. I will argue that this is typically correlated and indeed partly due to biases in individual members’ affect control and eventually the group’s with whom the members identify.

Social Phenomenology: Husserl, Intersubjectivity, and Collective Intentionality

Scholarly work on Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity abounds, and yet, the question whether classical phenomenology has the resources to resolve the issue between individualist and non-individualist approaches to sociality, or is beset by the specters of solipsism, is far from being settled. Against this background, Chelstrom’s excellent book represents a bold and refreshing outlook. For Chelstrom does not rest satisfied with simply rehearsing well-known arguments pro or contra (transcendental) solipsism, or discussing Husserl’s theory of empathy. Instead, he brings phenomenology critically, and yet with much mutual benefit, to bear on the topic of collective intentionality and plural agency, which are at the forefront of current debates in analytic philosophy of action and social ontology. Chelstrom’s contribution, however, is not only a timely book; it is tightly focused and thoroughly argued, in a remarkably jargon-free, straightforward fashion, which allows even the phenomenologically uninitiated to find the views presented easily accessible. To be sure, Chelstrom does make an effort to defend Husserl from the charge of solipsism and individualism (esp. ch. 7), and does so, in my view, successfully; but from the outset, the anti-solipsistic argument is carried out and backed up within the overall project of providing a phenomenological explanation of genuinely collective intentionality (henceforth, CI), rather than just taking into account social or intersubjective relations. On the face of it, it may be surprising that the vindication of phenomenology’s anti-solipsism is fleshed out within a robustly individualistic framework. This, however, turns out to be unsurprising if one considers that individualism in social ontology and the CI-debate is not on a par with solipsism, but is rather to be understood as the conceptual dichotomy to collectivism, roughly, the claim that in some sense or other (intentional-psychological, normative, epistemological, or metaphysical) and in some cases (e.g., in group agency) individuals may be ‘outflanked’ or ‘overridden’ (Pettit) by social entities and their laws or regularities. Against this view, Chelstrom forcefully proposes and defends a ‘non-collectivistic’, but, importantly, also ‘non-atomistic’ view of individual and plural subjects. According to this, there are phenomenologically bona fide experiences of collectives and group agents, a ‘we-mode’ sense of ‘togetherness’ and ‘jointness’ in experience, thought and action, but where these are not ‘borne’ or performed by plural subjects themselves, but exclusively by the respective individuals. Chelstrom’s argument for this view is distinctively Husserlian in that it explicitly assumes and reinforces a comprehensive philosophy of mind, and, in particular, a theory of consciousness, according to which intentionality is an irreducible and intrinsic (i.e., here, non-derivative) property of individual INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES