ndpr.nd.edu | The idea that groups have minds was popular in the late-19th and early-20th
centuries. The group mind was posited as a force that influenced and
dominated individual agency and provided an explanation for various
types of human behavior. But such explanations were deemed mysterious,
and, with the rise of behaviorism and operationalism, the idea fell out
of favor. But interest in group mentality has experienced a rebirth over
the past few decades. Within philosophy, Margaret Gilbert's work (e.g.,
1989, 2004, 2013) has done a great deal to bring attention to the ways
in which individuals might form a single unit of intentional agency, and
Christian List and Philip Pettit's recent book Group Agency
(2011) argues that there are genuine group mental states that cannot be
reduced to the mental states of individuals within the group. Outside of
philosophy, the study of distributed cognition is a growing area of
research in cognitive science, and the hypothesis of group mind is
gaining traction in economics, social psychology, organizational theory,
and politics. Recent theories of group mentality, however, are thought
to be just as mysterious as their 19th and early-20th century ancestors. Macrocognition goes
a long way to demystifying the idea. It provides the most sustained and
detailed defense of group minds available in the literature today. Macrocognition
