When does the common good become ‘common’?
Let’s imagine a group of parents who all want the same thing: a better school for their children. They would like fewer teachers on temporary contracts, lower drop-out rates, safe buildings, laboratories, sports halls and more full-time schooling. If we try to speak to them individually, they will all say almost the same things. Does that mean they share a common goal? Not necessarily. It is possible, in fact, that each of them wants a better school solely for their own child and hopes that someone else – the Ministry, the local council, the headteacher, the teachers – will bring about the result. One hundred identical wishes may remain one hundred individual wishes. The fact that the goals are aligned does not necessarily result in a ‘we’. It is precisely this transition, from the individual sphere to the truly collective one, that interests Raimo Tuomela. In last week’s Mind the Economy, we saw his distinction between acting in I-mode and acting in we-mode. Let us now try to take a further step by asking ourselves when something that many people desire truly becomes the goal of a group. When can we move from a coincidence of interests – ‘we all want X’ – to the assertion ‘X is our goal’? The difference is subtle because the observable outcome may be identical. Two people may want to move a table to the same place; ten researchers may want a project to be funded; thousands of citizens may want a safer neighbourhood. Yet, in each of these cases, the goal may remain simply distributed amongst individuals or take on a truly collective form.
Already in The Importance of Us (Stanford University Press, 1995), Tuomela distinguishes between a simple shared goal and a group goal – the ‘shared’ objective as opposed to the more demanding ‘group’ objective. In the weakest sense, a particular situation is shared when several people adopt it separately as their own goal and are mutually aware that they want it. But even when the agents know they share the same aim, there may still be no agreement or commitment binding the group as such. This is the first fundamental step, because knowing that we all want the same thing does not yet mean that we want it together.
Wanting the same thing
Let us consider three different situations. In the first case, two motorists are both looking for a parking space in the same neighbourhood. Their objective is identical but clearly not shared. Indeed, it may be competitive. If there is only one space left, the success of one implies the failure of the other. In the second scenario, two shopkeepers want a street to be made more attractive because this would increase the flow of customers to both their businesses. Here, the outcome is compatible with the success of both and may even require some form of coordination. However, each can continue to pursue it as their own private objective. In the third case, a medical team sets to work to save a patient’s life by performing a delicate operation. The surgeon does not simply aim to make a good incision, the anaesthetist to maintain the patient’s vital signs within the correct range, and the nurse to support the doctors’ work with precision. These actions derive their meaning from the overall aim the team is pursuing: to save the patient. The actions of the individual are not merely compatible with those of the others or functionally complementary to them. They form part of a result that belongs to the group.
Tuomela uses a very precise formulation on this point. A collective goal, in the full sense, is a goal shared by several people ‘whose achievement all those with the goal are collectively committed to’ and which normally cannot be achieved unless those who share it act appropriately together (Social Ontology in the Making, De Gruyter, 2020, p. 25). This allows us to distinguish between three situations that we often tend to confuse: coincident goals, when several individuals want the same outcome; complementary goals, where success depends to some extent on the actions of others; and strictly collective goals, where the outcome is regarded as something the group must achieve as a group. The difference does not lie in the number of people involved, but in the way the goal is held. In the formulation found in The Philosophy of Sociality (Oxford University Press, 2007), Tuomela expresses this point through what he defines as the Collectivity Condition. A goal in we-mode is constructed and accepted as ‘our’ goal. This formulation might seem merely linguistic. It is not. If the goal truly belongs to the group, in fact, its fulfilment possesses a distinctive characteristic: it must apply equally to all members in their capacity as members. Tuomela formulates the Collectivity Condition by arguing that a content taken as a collective goal is satisfied for a member if and only if it is satisfied for the other members, always considered in their capacity as members of the group. A team cannot, in the same match, win for the goalkeeper and lose for the striker. The medical team cannot have saved the patient for the surgeon but not for the anaesthetist. If a department’s objective is to develop a good degree programme, the outcome cannot be achieved for some members and not for others in the same sense as might happen with their private objectives. This is what Tuomela calls ‘standing or falling together’. However, we must avoid a misunderstanding. The condition does not state that all members will enjoy the same benefits. A team can win whilst a player remains on the bench. A university can improve the quality of its teaching, and some lecturers may benefit more from this than others. A community may reduce pollution whilst distributing costs and benefits unequally. What must be shared is the achievement of the goal as the group’s objective, not necessarily the benefit that each individual derives from the outcome. This distinction separates the logic of the collective from the mere coincidence of interests.
The primary aim of the parties
When a group truly shares a common purpose, the way in which individual actions are defined also changes. We no longer start with the actions of individuals to see whether, when added together, they produce something useful. We start with what the group intends to achieve and, from there, identify the individual parts. Tuomela emphasises precisely this top-down approach. It is the collective aim that gives meaning to the members’ individual objectives. Let’s think of an orchestra. The aim is not for each musician to perform their part perfectly as if they were alone in a room. It is for the orchestra to perform the symphony to the best of its ability. This is precisely why a violinist may have to adjust their intensity, tempo or attack from what they would have considered musically preferable on their own. The part derives its meaning from the whole. Technical complementarity, however, is not enough. The cogs of a machine are also complementary. What transforms complementarity into collective action is the acceptance of the result as our own and the commitment to contribute to it. For Tuomela, an authentic group goal also contains a normative dimension. In The Importance of Us, he writes that the group’s goal binds its members, obliging them to work towards its realisation (p. 271). Once adopted by the group in accordance with the appropriate procedures, the goal does not merely describe what would be desirable, but generates reasons for the members. This does not mean that every collective goal becomes morally obligatory. It means, more narrowly, that within the shared practice, taking that goal seriously entails a responsibility regarding one’s own part.
