Team reasoning and spontaneous collective intentions

Abstract

I investigate the apparent tension between the idea that collective intentions are the result of team reasoning and the idea that there can be spontaneous collective intentions. This raises a more general question about the relationship between reasoning and spontaneous intentions, including in the individual case. I show that the tension need not arise in accounts that separate intentions from intentionality, as they can deny spontaneous intentions while retaining spontaneous intentionality in both the individual and the collective case. However, individual reasoning is a special case in the team reasoning model and spontaneous individual intentions are plausible, so it would be advantageous for team reasoning theorists to be able to account for spontaneous intentions in the collective case. In order to do this, we need to show how spontaneous intentions are compatible with reasoning. I consider how reasoning is understood in philosophy, economics, and cognitive science, and I show how spontaneous collective intentions can be reconciled on at least some accounts of what it is to do reasoning, which are compatible with the way "reasoning" is used in the team reasoning literature. I argue that we should think of team reasoning as a "computational-level model", as used in cognitive science. I draw on research from philosophy of computation, and show how, on some theories, the view of reasoning as computation has sympathetic implications for theories of group agency, as it would allow that groups can be reasoners.