Parte 2: Diseño e implementación del marco de paralelización

So far, we have been discussing social ontology and institutions at a rather high level and showing why individualistic accounts are problematic. What we have found is that we need to account for several different things in a proper understanding of institutions. First, we need to understand how it is possible that individuals’ attitudes can differ from the facts about the social institution which they in some way help to constitute. This is important because if we fail to account for this we either end up with a super- individual group mind or some complex, but still inadequate, summative account.

We also need an account that can make sense of the bindingness that seems to be inherent in the formation of institutions. This is for two reasons. First, many people feel a sense of belonging and obligation to the institutions to which they belong. However, it should be clear from this that we cannot look for a psychological account which is “a mere matter of ‘feelings”’ (Hart 2012, p. 56) of belonging to a certain collective. Rather, what these attitudes point to is a (potential) aspect of something deeper, viz. a social rule. What we want to know is whether these feelings are an error or if they rest on a deeper social rule. As H.L.A. Hart makes clear, “Such feelings are neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of ‘binding’ rules. There is no contradiction in saying that people accept certain rules but experience no feelings of compulsion” (ibid.). What we are looking for is: what

gives an institution their binding power which accounts for the standing of particular authorities? We want to know whether this is an error on members’ parts or if their feelings rest on deeper social rules of institutions. Second, as we saw with the examples of Kant and Hegel, there is an important sense in which we are bound to each other in institutions which give us roles to perform which, if we fail to do, we violate those to whom we are bound.

Currently in the literature there are two broad alternatives to Bratman's individualistic account of shared intentions. First, there are Searle's and Tuomela's 'we- mode' accounts (Searle 1995 and 2010, Tuomela 2010 and 2013). Although Searle and Tuomela differ on how they account for the 'we-mode', they both share the idea that proper understanding of collective social phenomena is through the 'mode' of intentions. Where their accounts differ is in how to account for 'we-mode' intentions. Searle claims that the we-mode or we-intentions are primitive natural phenomena (Searle 1995; Searle 2010). Tuomela attempts to give a reductionist account of them to more basic intentions (Tuomela 2007; Tuomela 2013). The we-mode account postulates that there are two different modes that individual subjects can have as an intention: the I-mode intention and the we-mode intention. Notice the 'we-intention' is attributed properly to the individual mind: I we-intend to φ.

It seems, however, that the we-mode account is going to run into the same problems as Bratman's content-based approach. There does not seem to be any clear way in which there is any binding to be had in an individual with a we-mode intention. The reason why we should be sceptical about such a we-mode account is that it is not clear why there is bindingness on the individual to the group in these cases. What would stop someone from either changing their we-mode intention to an I-mode intention? Or from simply rescinding the intention all together?

A more promising account is the one purposed by Margaret Gilbert. Gilbert's theory is a commitment account of collective phenomena. As she puts it:

I refer to populations as “collectives” when I conceive of them as genuinely collective subjects of intention, action and so on. I take it that a population is a genuinely collective subject of intention if and only if, roughly, it can plausibly be regarded as having an intention of its own, an intention, if you like, of the population as a whole

(Gilbert 2014, p. 236)

In this joint-commitment account of collectives, it is the 'we' of a group who commit as a whole to believe or intend something. It is the 'us' as a collective who is the subject of the intentional state. These plural subjects, or 'we's, are formed through what Gilbert calls ‘joint commitments’. I think this is a promising account for understanding both the bindingness of institutions as well as the way to overcome the own-action condition. We shall look at this account and its applicability to the issue of authority in the final two chapters.

With these basics on social ontology now in place, we can turn to our main target: to understand how authority is embedded in institutions and how this helps to provide answers to our two questions for authority. It is time now to turn back to these questions for authority.

Five: Social Ontology and the Question of Standing: The Owing Account

The first two chapters of Part I left us with two questions which need to be answered to determine the legitimacy of authorities: the question of content and the question of standing. There is good reason to think that the question of standing should be seen as the proper place to start when attempting to give a full account of legitimate authority. This is because it is a necessary condition of authoritative commands to be possible at all. Without standing to give commands the question of content, the question of 'are these commands valid?' seems to be irrelevant. The command itself does not even 'make it' to the addressee in the proper way. Without the proper background relationship in place, the addressee is not accountable to the authority. This then gives the question of standing priority. We must determine how the relationship of authority to their addressees is possible. If the argument from Chapter Three is right, then we cannot adequately address the question of standing within an individual methodology. We need to turn to the holistic account that was outlined in Chapter Four. That is, the plural subject account offered by Margaret Gilbert.

The claim is that the two general problems with establishing standing can be overcome through understanding the social ontology of institutions. Remember, the problems were how it is possible to acknowledge that human agents are necessarily autonomous in the sense of both the own-action condition and how addressees are bound to particular authorities. The basis of both of these problems stem from a conception of individuals as self-originating sources of valid claims. This is an intuitive idea of how to understand the importance of individual persons. It is the basis of both of these problems in the following way. First, it is the source of the own-action condition because for an agent to

act at all they must be the ones intending, it must be their self-originating claims that underlie what they are doing. More important, however, is the bindingness condition. The problem with accounting for bindingness is that, if an individual is a self-originating source of valid claims, then why should they not be able to change their minds at will? What is to stop them from leaving an institution when they decide that they no longer want to be a part of it? That is, what is to stop them from rescinding commitment with no normative reason for regret? If we cannot overcome these two general problems, then we have to face the same issue as Darwall's account, viz. the problem of the would-be independent.

In the following I argue that, to overcome these two general problems, it is important to look at authority at the right level. That is, it seems to me that these general problems only arise if one assumes that the only conceivable level of understanding agents and authority is at the individual level. The problem of authority is often posed as a matter of how A can command B: how can one individual command another isolated individual? This is precisely why it is troubling to think of commands in terms of the intention in the name of another. It is unclear how or whether this is even possible. Another way we can put this, which highlights the implausibility, is to ask: 'how can one practically reason for another?'

This individualistic model of the social ontology of practical authority has the tendency to conceptualise authority relationships only between separate beings. However, this tendency is often hidden because the question is put in terms of how states (as corporate entities) can command individual citizens, for example. Yet the logic of the answer has it that the question is still thought of in terms of individual A commanding individual B.

descending from the consent tradition. Under this conception, authority, when legitimate, is typically seen as being transferred from one individual to another. You have authority over me if, and only if, I consent to your authority. This is an attempt to overcome the problem of 'mineness' of intentions and the own-action condition. Yet, as we have seen, this ends in instability because of the inability to account for the bindingness of such transference. If one can make a commitment to obey some authority, what stops them from having a change of heart?

It does not seem to me, however, to be the problem of authority with which many other traditions have been concerned. Among those who want to ask the question differently are Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel. They seem more interested in the question of self-governance in the first person plural: how do we govern ourselves? Although this account has conceptual obstacles of its own, notice that the problems of 'mineness' of intentions and bindingness are not among them. Rather, what authorities do is settle our deliberative questions for us: the subject of the intention is the same as the intended agent of the intentional action. In other words, A inhabits the role in this institution to settle these deliberative questions for the institution as a whole in which B is a member.

It is important to notice how distinct a question this really is. In the individualistic version, we face the problem of transferring authority to overcome the problem of practically reasoning for another: How does one give up one's natural authority to another? When does this transfer actually take place? Why are the individuals not entitled to change their mind?

In this alternative, holistic model, we do not have these problems. This way of conceptualising the relationship of authority is one in which the authority is created or, better, emerges between individuals when they unite in institutions. The concern for this

model is: how are institutions formed which can give rise to the roles of authorities and addressees?

The reason for the move to the holistic model can be put in a straightforward way: if we accept the idea that as individual agents we can form commitments to pursue certain ends then, if we form institutions, we can also legitimately form commitments to pursue certain ends as a group – we can 'pick up the reins' together. How does this solve our problem? In order to be an autonomous agent, when I commit myself to an end then I am responsible for actualising (or trying to actualise) that end as well as being accountable at least to myself if I fail. In this way, my prior intentions constrain my future actions and practical reasoning. In the holistic model, this autonomous agent is the plural subject of an institution: we commit ourselves to an end and are responsible for actualisation of the said end.