Subjectivity, Intersubjectivity, Community

In recent years, a rapidly increasing number of both theorists and empirical researchers have explored the topic of collective intentionality or we-intentionality. Much of the empirical work has drawn inspiration from the theoretical work of a handful of philosophers, including Searle, Bratman, Gilbert, and Tuomela. The focus of these philosophers have primarily been on issues in philosophy of action and, in particular, on the question of how it is possible for individuals to collectively intend to do something, such as go for a walk or paint a house together. The available proposals then differ on whether or not they take collective intentions to be reducible to individual intentions, and on where exactly they locate the jointness in the collective intentions. As important as these questions might be, the narrow focus on action has left certain important issues underexplored and unresolved in the philosophical debate: What is the relation between collective identity and self-identity? How is the we related to the I?  How is collective intentionality and the we-perspective related to social cognition and interpersonal understanding? What is the relation between different kinds of we, and which type of self-experience and interpersonal understanding do they each require? In my talk, I will explore the idea that a systematic account of the we – of we-intentionality, of the we-perspective, and of we-identity – must be embedded within a more comprehensive investigation of selfhood and social cognition, and that a proper understanding of the ontological and epistemic status and nature of the first-person plural perspective will require a clarification of its relationship to the first-person and second-person singular perspectives.