Groups can speak : a study on group speech acts

Abstract

We naturally interpret groups as making all kinds of speech acts. However, it is not obvious under which conditions we can properly say a group performed such actions. This thesis provides a comprehensive study of group speech acts and group communicative actions, with group assertion as my main (but not only) case study. I propose to understand group speech acts as illocutions that are not just performed by groups but attributable to groups and not just to individuals. The debate so far has included all communicative acts performed by groups —causing philosophers to misclassify cases of individual speech acts as group speech acts. I propose that group speech acts, properly understood, are distinguished by the authority to speak on behalf of the group. I start by providing a classification of the group speech acts views. Until now, there has not been a panoramic picture of the debate. Then, I analyse the case of group assertion, taking input from the debate over the epistemic normativity of assertion. I argue against previous accounts of group assertion that they do not account for some cases of scientific assertion and misclassify some individual assertions. I propose the authority account of group assertion. Next, I show that my authority account extends to all group speech acts and reject the dominant view that there are two kinds of group speech acts. Additionally, I provide a functional account of protests and distinguish group protests using the authority account. Finally, I argue that group mental states inflationism and vehicle externalism follow from group speech acts inflationist accounts like the one I defended, which means that the group belief’s vehicle can be outside the group’s members. Contrary to what some philosophers claim, this shows that we cannot hold both group speech acts inflationism and group mental states deflationism.