Theories of Mind that Make Room for Group Agents

This chapter reviews how the main positions on the mind-body problem are related to the question whether there are or can be group-level agents. The two basic views on the relation of the mind to whatever realizes it in the physical world are reductionist and non-reductionist. The main reductionist views are (i) mental-physical identity theories, (ii) logical behaviorism, which treats talk about mental states as reducible to talk about actual and potential behavior, and (iii) functionalism, which identifies mental states not with physical but with functional states. The main non-reductive views are (iv) emergentism and (v) interpretationism. The chapter identifies functionalism and interpretationism as most viable approaches to establishing groups as such have minds but argues that the case has not been made that any extant groups meet criteria that do not trivialize the question, and, in addition, that the question is a sideshow relative to our interest in understanding social reality unless ordinary discourse about group agency itself commits us to group agents.