Raimo Tuomela & Kaarlo Miller (1988), Philosophical Studies 53(3): 367–389 — DOI-10.1007/BF00353512. Reprinted in Social Ontology in the Making (De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 69–88.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-02 at the owner’s request, under the topic
social-ontology that ADR-017 added, as the founding statement of
Tuomela’s account of collective intention.
Unavailable because no lawful full text was reachable, so it is not read
and no NOTE is filed. The summary is how search summaries describe the
paper, and it is unverified. The
“we-mode”, the term often attached to Tuomela, does not appear in any
record of this paper seen here; it may be later vocabulary.
What can be said with a source:
- Its reference list (Crossref) is short. It cites David Lewis’s Convention (1969), Sellars on intentions and “we”-reasoning (1963, 1968, 1974, 1980), Tuomela’s A Theory of Social Action (1984), and the authors’ earlier “We-Intentions and Social Action” (Analyse & Kritik 7, 1985). It cites none of Searle, Gilbert or Bratman, whose papers on the subject came later. Lewis’s Convention is being filed in the record the same day (LIT-473).
- Its place in the dispute. Searle’s “Collective Intentions and Actions” (LIT-490) is widely reported to argue against an account of this kind, by a counterexample in which business-school graduates each pursue their own interest believing it will help humanity. That report comes from search summaries, and neither paper has been read here.
Its rivals in this record are Searle (LIT-490), Gilbert (LIT-477) and Bratman (LIT-471), all filed the same day. Bratman’s 2014 précis (described in LIT-488) does not mention Tuomela.
No instruction for machine-learning practice is known, so nothing here points to the Anthology of the SOTA.
What a reading should check.
- The exact analysis of “A we-intends to do X”: which beliefs, and whether mutual belief is required or only belief about mutual belief.
- Whether the account is reductive, as Searle’s counterexample assumes, or whether “we-intend” is treated as a distinct mode of intending.
- How the Sellarsian “we”-reasoning the references point to is used.