Collective Intentions and Collective Intentionality

A BSTRACT . John Searle believes that collective intentions are crucial to his philosophy, but he is yet to present a coherent account of these entities. No account whatsoever of collective intentions is presented in the book where Searle needs them the most ( The Construction of Social Reality ), or, for that matter, in any other of Searle's major books. The only account, and a defective one at that (so I argue), is found in a short, somewhat obscure article entitled "Collective Intentions and Actions," but in fact what Searle presents there is, at best, an account of collective actions , not of collective intentions. In light of Searle own ground-breaking work in the philosophy of mind, and in particular in light of his far-reaching analyses showing how intentions differ from related mental states, I argue that collective intentions are not consistent with Searle's philosophy of mind.