The necessary existence of group minds

Methodological individualism is not credible

Humans are vulnerable creatures. They lack a bony carapace, formidable horns, sharp claws or powerful teeth, and they cannot run very fast. They have always survived by working together in groups such as teams. These groups form the foundation of civil society.

On one account, that of methodological individualism, all aspects and properties of groups may be eliminatively reduced to those of individuals. On this account, ‘team’ and ‘group’, and any properties these may have, merely stand proxy for properties correctly ascribed to individuals. We shall see that this is not credible and that we require the concept of a ‘group mind’ in order to fully describe groups.

Deborah Tollefsen gives a very readable overview of group minds in Groups As Agents. She points out that group minds are implicit in the way we speak. It is common in ordinary language to ascribe a belief or attitude or goal to a group without assuming that all or even most members hold that belief, attitude or goal. Thus we talk of a company supporting a charity, a political party having a position, and a family being Christian. This joint commitment creates a normative requirement for group members to emulate a single believer, even if they hold private doubts about the commitment. The commitment to act this way is common knowledge within the group, and if a group member does not act accordingly they are likely to be held responsible by their peers for failing to do so. Without this concept of a normative joint commitment the behaviour of individual members becomes irrational or mystifying. (For instance: why, in the absence of a normative joint commitment, would someone say ‘We support charity x’, when they don’t?)

The force of these normative commitments varies between groups. Some groups simply cooperate to achieve their purposes; others, such as teams, collaborate. In a collaborating group, since all members are accountable for the success of the group, the normative commitments of the group are embraced, whereas, with a cooperating group, such as might be formed by strangers on the internet for the purpose of writing computer code, the normative commitments of the group may be merely accepted. Collaboration enables a group to harness the specialist skills, knowledge, experience, and talents of its members for the benefit of the group. The specialist abilities which members bring to a group create mutual dependence which requires accountability to the group: members must be able to trust in the diligence and goodwill of other members. It is this degree of collaboration that makes a mere group become a team. Team members are more strongly committed to the purposes of the group than are members of a cooperating group. We should therefore expect teams to form more resilient group minds than cooperating groups and be more zealous in pursuit of their goals. For most purposes we therefore want a group to be a team.

If a group can be said to have a mind then we would expect it to have at least some of the properties of the mind of an individual such as agency, intentions, beliefs, memories, and knowledge.

Ascription of agency requires only that the agent acts purposefully. A lion or a dog can be an agent. Groups have goals and plans and these structure and give purpose to the way the group acts. These goals and plans may be distinct from those of the members. A group may plan to wash a car. A member of the group may plan no more than to earn some cash in the easiest way possible. The goal of a pride of lions may be to flush prey to the members of the pride waiting in ambush. The goal of an individual lion in the pride is probably a full belly. Groups can therefore be agents.

This is not to suggest that a group mind is ontologically distinct from the group members. The existence of a group mind need be no more mysterious than that an object should have a centre of gravity.

It is usual to speak of groups as having intentions. We would say that an orchestra intends to play a symphony. Clearly no member can do so individually; but the orchestra can play the symphony. Each member may individually intend to play their part, but only the orchestra can intend to play the symphony.

Groups also have views and beliefs. For example, a dress code committee and a budgetary committee might have the same membership. One will have a view on whether a particular dress is appropriate. The other will not. These groups have different views despite identical membership. Further, every member of the committee will probably believe that 2 + 2 = 4; the committee, however, will have no view on this. Group beliefs therefore cannot be summations of the beliefs of members. It makes more sense to think of them as beliefs of the group’s mind.

In discussion a group may reason to a view and accordingly endorse a moral position that all accept yet no member individually believes, such as that ‘Abortion on demand is a fundamental human right’. This property of groups is sometimes referred to as the Abilene paradox. The usual explanation of this paradox is couched in terms of flaws in communication between individuals. But it is much simpler to recognise that a group’s moral attitudes can be distinct from the views of its individual members. This makes sense of the — seemingly self-evident — idea that the attitudes of one group can be morally better than those of another group. This explains why we worry about our children ‘getting into bad company’.

If a group can indeed have a group mind we should expect that mind to exist independently of the group members. This is apparent in the way groups and their properties can persist through changes in membership. A choir, a regiment, or a family may change all their members, yet their distinctive character continues. In part this is because groups can have memories which are created and sustained by the stories the members tell one another about the group’s past. This group activity of story-telling or recounting of history remembers the past and creates the present identity in much the same way as personal memories create the present person. The natural way to talk about this is as the memory of a group mind.

Groups expect members will behave in certain ways, observe certain boundaries, and participate in group rituals. For example: formal introductions, physical challenges, induction courses, religious rites, wearing appropriate dress, attendance at meetings, and acting honourably — or decadently. These also help to create a group identity. These boundaries and rituals are a property of the group not just of the individuals. Groups can therefore have an identity which is separate from the identities of its members.

If groups can have identities distinct from their members, can be agents, can hold beliefs, have intentions and have memories, then they can know things. (This explains why the village fête committee can know far more about how to run a fête than any of its members.) Since these are mental qualities which cannot be eliminatively reduced to the properties of group members it seems clear that group minds must exist.

From these considerations we can see that, in order to talk clearly about groups, we need the concept of a ‘group mind’. This is consistent with, and makes sense of, the way that we often talk. We usually accept sentences such as: ‘The review panel judged that the candidate had plagiarised his thesis’, or ‘The committee took the view that the racecourse was too dangerous’, or ‘The Bank fears a return of inflation’, without demur. Yet none of these presuppose unanimity amongst the group and, in the absence of the joint normative commitment of a group mind, all of them are mysterious.

We should however note that groups minds are not persons because they do not — so far as we know — have phenomenological experiences. Only individuals have these.

In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke writes of the ‘little platoons’ of society. He means by this groups with group minds which are such as to lead us to love them. This love, he writes is the basis of ‘public affections’ which lead to love of country and, ultimately, love of mankind. He also observes that a spirit of compromise is forced upon all by the continuous jostling of the little platoons for attention and commitment of time and resources ‘…rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, forever impractical.’ As most people are part of more than one group mind this creates a liberty of ‘separate, insulated, private men’, which benefits the weak and humble as much as the strong, and this places a restraint upon personal passions and creates a system of mixed opinions and sentiments. That is to say it promotes tolerance. In a society of little platoons the exercise of power is constrained by the diversity of sentiments and must, of necessity, be gentle.

This constraint of power by tolerance which arises from the jostling of group minds promotes endless debates and, from that, democracy. It arise at root from the practical benefits of robust group minds formed by collaboration.

From the team in a dental practice, to football teams, to sales teams, teams are ubiquitous. Most of what humans achieve is achieved by teams. Teams and their group minds are therefore not, so to speak, an optional extra to the going forward of successful human life: they are both fundamental and crucial to a tolerant and democratic society.

We may conclude that group minds exist and cannot be reduced to the properties of their members. They can act as a brake on the exercise of arbitrary power and can promote compromise, love of the public good, and tolerance. Through them humans overcome their native vulnerability and are enabled to build social institutions that serve the common weal. They can also promote virtue, protect the weak, provide security for the vulnerable and ameliorate harsh and crude reformations of society. Group minds are real and, potentially, a source of great blessings.