Collective Intentions and Collective Intentionality

John Searle believes that collective intentions are crucial to his philosophy, but he is yet to present a coherent account of these entities. No account whatsoever of collective intentions is presented in the book where Searle needs them the most ("The Construction of Social Reality"), or, for that matter, in any other of Searle's major books. The only account, and a defective one at that (so I argue), is found in a short, somewhat obscure article entitled "Collective Intentions and Actions," but in fact what Searle presents there is, at best, an account of collective "actions", not of collective intentions. In light of Searle own ground-breaking work in the philosophy of mind, and in particular in light of his far-reaching analyses showing how intentions differ from related mental states, I argue that collective intentions are not consistent with Searle's philosophy of mind. Copyright 2003 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc..