FWIW, I'm not trying to *assert* collective intention (or higher-order intention). The idea that a collection of intentions exhibits a relatively closed "floor" or "logical layer of abstraction" below ... so that the structure of a collective of intentional agents may well be self-organized in the same way a group of non-intentional objects like molecules or grains of sand might self-organize.
But my intuition argues that that "floor" is not tightly closed ... that there is a LOT of leakage from the intentions of the agents into the "intention" of the collective. For that sort of reasoning, this paper is interesting: Collective (Telic) Virtue Epistemology https://philpapers.org/rec/CARCTV On 8/5/20 8:15 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote: > [...] > But the idea that corporations are self-organized is dissonant. Keeping my > (tiny) company going all these years (we turn 20 next year!) has been > anything *but* self-organized ... or even organized at all. 8^D It's very > much an extension of my will power, from the state of OR trying to fine me > $60k for claiming my out-of-state contractors were actually employees, to > having years long negotiations collapse because we (apparently) don't use > "standard accounting procedures", it's an *intentional* act at every turn. > > Now, a behemoth like Google or Bechtel might have some self-organizing > elements somewhere in the middle scale, where bureacracy meets bureaucracy in > the same corporation. But even there, I'm skeptical. It definitely has that > stigmergic accumulation. But intention/will is ubiquitous in such beasts so > that it doesn't feel like what we mean by "self-organization". -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
