Abstract
From time to time, philosophers like to raise the possibility of the existence of group minds or group persons. In order for something to be interestingly and appropriately described as a group person it must satisfy two conditions. First, it must itself exhibit various characteristics that are distinctive of persons. Unless it did this, it would not be a group person. Secondly, it must be composed of entities that are themselves persons or relevantly person-like. Without this, it would not be a group person. It is the difficulty of seeing how these two conditions can be satisfied together that has made the existence and possible natures of group persons problematic. For the things that paradigmatically satisfy the first condition, namely persons, are not obviously thought of as being composed of person-like entities related in some group-like way. And the things that paradigmatically satisfy the second condition, such as sports teams, committees and string quartets, are not obviously thought of as themselves displaying personal characteristics. Investigators of group persons – though not always thinking of themselves as such – have usually approached the problem by starting with paradigmatic and uncontroversial groups and exploring the extent to which personal characteristics can be attributed to them. Since it would be unreasonable to expect such groups to exhibit, even in some possibly attenuated way, all the characteristics of an ordinary person, attention is usually directed to some subset of these characteristics. Can such a group have a single consciousness? Can it be the subject of intentional mental states like belief? Can it act? Can it be guilty?
