Keyboard Shortcuts?f

We approach that by thinking about a distinction between two forms of predication, distributive or collective. The injection saved her life. Two possible ways to interpret this.

[Interpretation 1] Distributive. She is a diabetic and also a little bit careless about it. And so, you know, blood sugar level super low injection received. And that injection saved her life. And not a week later there she was again in a similar situation injection. So it's true that the injection saved her life. And what makes that true is that this injection saved her life, and that injection saved her life as well.

[Interpretation 2] But there's also a collective interpretation of this sentence. So it may be that she's not a careless diabetic at all, but she has been overdoing the sort of substance misuse problem that she has, and that's caused her both to forget her diabetic needs. And she also need some kind of injection to get the heart going again as well. So Billy is there one side and stabs the Insulin in Daisy on the other side with the Naloxone pen. And those injections saved her life because. You know, had the Naloxone pen not been there. The substance misuse would have been fatal. Had the insulin not been there, the diabetic, the diabetes would have been fatal. But the important thing here is that the injections collectively saved her life. It's not a matter of one injection saving her life and another injection saving her life. After all, her life was saved just once. And those injections collectively saved her life.

Consider the statement, ‘The injections prolonged her life.’ This could be true in virtue of her receiving several injections on different occasions, each of which saved her life. In this case, the injections saving her life is just a matter of each injection individually saving her life; this is the distributive interpretation. But the statement is also true if she was given two injections on a single occasion where each injection was necessary but not sufficient to save her life. In this case the injections saving her life is not, or not just, a matter of each injection individually saving her life; this is the collective interpretation.

The difference between distributive and collective interpretations is clearly substantial, for on the distributive interpretation the statement can only be true if her life has been saved more than once, whereas the truth of the collective interpretation requires only one life-threatening situation.

[repeat of last point as spoken] So there's a difference between distributive and collective interpretations of the sentence. And that distinction is really not a kind of mere, mere superficial thing. So if you think about it, in order for this sentence to be true on the distributive reading, her life has to be have been at risk and saved at least twice. Otherwise it can't be true. Whereas on the collective reasoning, reading her life only ever has to have been at risk once. So after this terrible event, things changed. There was a dramatic turnaround and it never happened again. It would still be true that the injection saved her life. Whereas on the distributive reading you need to. So the distinction between distributive and collective is substantial. The two readings have really different truth conditions. There are different ways the world has to be on the collective versus the distributive reading.

Just as some injections can be collectively life-saving, so some actions can be collectively directed to a goal. For example, consider this sentence:

This can be interpreted distributively: each of their actions is separately directed to saving her life. But it can also be interpreted collectively: saving her life is an outcome to which their actions are directed and this is not, or not just, a matter of each of their actions being individually directed to finding a home.

Let me switch to another example ...

No mechanisms! Separate the thing to be explained from the thing which explains it.

Bees prolong life of the queen.

Note that collective goals do not plausibly require any kind of intentions or commitments. After all, there is a sense in which some of the actions of swarming bees are directed to finding a nest and this is not, or not just, a matter of each bee’s actions being individually directed to finding a nest. So finding a nest is a collective goal of the bees’ actions.

[as spoken] What you notice is that in characterising collective goal, we've made no assumptions at all about states of intention or processes or anything else. So when you say the goal of their actions is to find a new home, that can be true of well and who are capable of quite sophisticated forms of coordinated planning. And it can also be true, of course, of some bees as well. Do bees have intentions? Who knows about bee psychology? (Apparently they can learn to play a form of football.) Maybe bees do have intentions—I honestly don’t know. But here’s what matters: we're not making any assumptions about whether they have intentions in saying that the goal of their actions is to find a new home. That sentence is true. And we know that now. We do not first need to wait and check whether or not bees have intentions and shared intentions in order to establish whether it's true. So this notion of a collective goal is neutral about the notion, the kinds of processes and representations that are involved.

To say that an outcome is a \emph{collective goal} of some actions is just to say that it is an outcome to which the actions are directed and this is not, or not just, a matter of each action being individually directed to that outcome.

So here's a really simple thought. To say that an outcome is a collective goal of someone's actions, of some people's actions, is to say two things. First of all, that their actions are directed to that outcome, and secondly. That if we wrote a sentence about their actions being directed to that outcome, it would be true on the collective interpretation. So it follows that their actions being directed to that goal isn't or isn't only just a matter of each of the actions separately being directed to that outcome. Their actions are collectively directed to the outcome. So now we have the notion of a collective goal.

[This implies that the actions of strangers on a crowded street have the collective goal of not colliding (since they are coordinated and their coordination increases the probability of not coordinating).]

[Do I need this?]