Summary of Part I

The basic questions about collective action concern its ontology and its psychology (§1.6). What is collective action? Are there genuine group-level agents as well as individual agents? What's special about the attitudes of those who engage in collective action? If there are group agents, how do we understand their psychology? In this part, we have focused on the ontology of collective action by investigating the truth conditions of collective action sentences ( Chapters 3 and 6 ). For if collective action sentences require the existence of group agents for their truth, this would mean that our ordinary discourse commits us to group agents. So if at least some collective action sentences are true, it follows that there are group agents.