Abstract
Raimo Tuomela’s most important contribution to the philosophy of collective intentionality was his development of the notion of the we-mode. In my chapter I extend the notion of we-mode to that of role-mode, the mode in which individual and collective subjects feel, think and act as occupants of roles within groups and institutional structures. I focus on how being in role-mode is manifest in the minds of subjects and on the following points. First, I argue that both we-mode and role-mode are best thought of as further modifications of I-consciousness, respectively we-consciousness. Second, role-mode is further characterized by the fact that subjects will take positions as role occupants that they won’t take as mere individuals, or we-mode group members, or in other roles. Third, such divergences are only possible against a background of agreements between positions taken in different modes. Fourth, such divergences are also grounded in decision making procedures and the accessibility and admissibility of sources of evidence. Fifth, role-mode goes all the way down, that is, it is also manifest in how subjects feel, move and comport themselves when they occupy their roles. To put it into fashionable jargon, it is embodied and enacted.
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Notes
- 1.
However, in his response to me he writes: “In my view, the subject of an attitude or action to which the mode is attributed accordingly may be either an individual or a collective (or a collection of people). Thus my we-mode notion can be regarded as primarily a subject account” (2017, 74). I may thus have misrepresented what Tuomela wrote earlier, but I am not entirely convinced for the reasons that I stated in my original piece and don’t want to repeat here, as I focus on developing the positive picture. And though we should not give too much importance to such labels, others (e.g. Schweikard and Schmid (2013)) have also taken Tuomela to be the paradigmatic representative of a mode account taken to be distinct from a subject account.
- 2.
Tuomela wrote: “a group agent necessarily lacks an intrinsic mind qua group” (2017, 72). Certainly, but my question is: why should we even expect it to have one intrinsic mind?
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Acknowledgements
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Raimo Tuomela, who was not only an intellectual inspiration for me, but also a friend. For some personal remembrances by myself and others, visit https://isosonline.org/In-Memoriam-Raimo-Tuomela
I thank audiences in Helsinki and Rome, Manchester and San Diego (respectively online), especially Gunnar Björnsson, Abe Roth and Randell E. Westgren, and the editors Miguel Garcia and Rachael Mellin for questions and comments, and Zuzana Toth for her support.
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Schmitz, M. (2023). From We-Mode to Role-Mode. In: Garcia-Godinez, M., Mellin, R. (eds) Tuomela on Sociality. Philosophers in Depth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22626-7_9
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