What Is Collective Intention?

Traditionally, the analysis of collective intention is made from a descriptive approach, the core question of which is to make clear the relation of individual intention and collective intention. As is said by Tuomela and Bratman, collective intention is the accumulation of individual intention, while Searle insists that collective intention is a kind of primitive intention. The traditional approach ignores the normative dimension of collective intention. Gilbert reminds us of that. She tries to find the answer of collective intention from individual commitments and joint commitments, and explains to us the normative characteristic of collective intention.The conclusion of this thesis is that collective intention is primitive and individual, it is based on the collectivity of human being, when an individual intention is formed, the individual person will communicate with each other and finally the collective intention that is accepted by everybody is formed. The analysis is made from the following five chapters.Chapter1makes a detailed introduction of the background and present problem of the research of collective intention, and puts forward the approach of this thesis.Chapter2analyzes the descriptive collective intention, discusses the theories of Tuomela、Bratman and Searle, especially the debates between them.Chapter3turns the attention to Gilbert’s normative collective intention, mainly explains the three criterions of collective intention, illustrates the theory of joint commitment and plural subject.Chapter4is the target and conclusion of this thesis. With the compare of the two research dimensions of collective intention, a general conclusion is made.The last chapter is to extend the thinking of collective intention to the issue of collective responsibility.