Deborah Perron Tollefsen (2015), Polity, Key Concepts in Philosophy (hardback ISBN 9780745684833; paperback ISBN 9780745684840; 184 pp.) — https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Groups+as+Agents-p-9780745684840
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-02 at the owner’s request, as one of the works filling out the record’s coverage of social ontology under the topic ADR-017 added. List’s paper (NOTE-340) named it among the group-agency works the record did not hold.
Unavailable because no lawful full text was reachable, so it is not read and no
NOTE is filed. What follows is only what the publisher says.
What the publisher says. “We say for example that ‘Google intends to develop an automated car’, ‘the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people’, or that ‘the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners’. … But could groups literally intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible?” The book “offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers’ answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable”, and “shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability”.
Contents (Wiley):
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Group Belief
- 2 Group Intention
- 3 Group Agency
- 4 Group Cognition
- 5 Interpreting Groups
- 6 The Moral Responsibility of Groups
- Conclusion; Notes; References; Index
Where it would sit, from what was seen. It is on the same side as List & Pettit (LIT-391) and List (LIT-401): groups can be agents. Its examples (a company, a government, an advocacy organisation) are all organised groups in Ritchie’s sense (LIT-486). Its chapter titles cover what THEORY-043 calls the uncontested half, agency, and add “Group Cognition”, where Huebner (LIT-426) is the held neighbour. A chapter called “Interpreting Groups” suggests a view of group agency through interpretation, which would bear on Dennett’s intentional stance (LIT-440, LIT-398); that is a guess from a chapter title and is recorded only as something to check. Whether the book addresses group phenomenal consciousness, THEORY-043’s actual question, is unknown. Nothing read lets this record say more about what Tollefsen’s view implies for LIT-391, LIT-401, LIT-159 or THEORY-043.
Topic. social-ontology is primary: whether groups can be agents or
minds, in the topic’s own words. agency holds chapters 2–3, cognition holds
chapters 1 and 4 (group belief and cognition), and ethics holds chapter 6.
No instruction for machine-learning practice appears in what was seen, so nothing here points to the Anthology of the SOTA.
What a reading should check.
- Which groups count as agents, and by what criterion: functionalist like List & Pettit’s, interpretivist, or another.
- What chapter 4 says about collective minds, and whether it touches experience as well as cognition.
- Whether chapter 6’s case for group responsibility depends on group agency alone, as List & Pettit’s does by List’s account (NOTE-340), or on more.