Collectives with Intentions of their Own | Dr. Bhaskarjit Neog

Dr. Bhaskarjit Neog on "Collectives with Intentions of their Own." This online guest lecture was organised by the School of Sanskrit, Philosophy and Indic Studies (SSPIS) at Goa University on 31 August 2024.

Abstract

The thought that collectives can be the bearers of intentional states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions is a controversial one. How is it that an entity that does not have any mind or brain of its own can have intentional states in the strict sense of the term? In this talk, I make an effort to understand collective entities as the proper bearer of intentions with the help of some of the latest literature in social ontology and philosophy of action and mind. My primary task is to articulate collective intentions as the intentions of collectives by appealing to a strong conceptual interconnection between intentions on the one hand and the collective on the other. Emphasizing on the explanatory role of the phenomenon of collectivity in the constitution of collective intentions, I show how we can legitimately attribute intentions to collectives for doing or failing to do a morally relevant action. Throughout the analysis, I firmly maintain my commitment towards a non-individualist approach.

Bio

Dr. Bhaskarjit Neog teaches in the Centre for Philosophy, JNU. He studied in IIT Kanpur, Utrecht University (the Netherlands), Linkoping University (Sweden), and Gauhati University. Dr. Neog received two prestigious international fellowships- the Endeavour Research fellowships by the government of Australia for pursuing postdoctoral research in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University and Charles Sturt University Australia and the Erasmus Mundus fellowship by the European Union for research masters. He has also been a Visiting Resident Scholar at the Centre for Human Values, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM Calcutta) and a UGC-interuniversity associate at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. His primary research interests are in social ontology, ethics, moral and political philosophy. He has recently published a book titled What Responsibility? Whose Responsibility, from Routledge. He is presently a member of the Ethics Committee of Sitaram Bharatiya Institute of Science and Research, Delhi and editorial board member of Journal of Human Values, and Gauhati University Journal of Philosophy.
About SSPIS:
The School of Sanskrit, Philosophy and Indic Studies (SSPIS) at Goa University, India, offers Master’s as well as Doctoral studies in Philosophy, encompassing both the Indian and Western Philosophical specialisations.



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