H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE: I VERBALI: SIGHELE

 G.: Thomson, your title is mischievous already. La folla delinquente. T.: It is Sighele’s, not mine, though I bring it with intent. G.: And the intent is to make me wonder whether “the delinquent crowd” is a category mistake. T.: Partly. Does a crowd commit? Or do only persons commit? G.: One must not answer too quickly. “Only persons act” has the sound of virtue and the smell of laziness. T.: You are thinking of collective intentionality. G.: I am thinking that there may be something between mystical group-mind nonsense and mere summation of individuals. Suppose we carry a log together. T.: A favourite philosopher’s burden. G.: Quite. I am not carrying it in the way I would if I took one end and forgot you. You are not carrying it in isolation either. We are carrying it. T.: Or rather, each of us is carrying his end under an intention to coordinate with the other. G.: That is one reduction, yes. But notice how thin it sounds compared with the ordinary fact. “We are carrying it” is not merely shorthand for “I am carrying my end while you carry yours.” It names a coordinated action with a shared shape. T.: Shared shape is not yet shared agent. G.: No, but neither is it nothing. T.: And now you want to transport that to la folla delinquente. G.: Not transport, exactly. Ask whether the very phrase presupposes an intelligible “we” in action. T.: Sighele thinks so. Or at least thinks responsibility is reorganised, not dissolved, once one acts in a crowd. G.: Yes. He wants to resist the mystical contagion theorists who make the crowd pure irrational vapor. T.: But also to resist the legal moralists who say, “Find the hand that struck, and the rest are scenery.” G.: Precisely. He wants complicity, influence, participation, and cooperation without an occult collective soul. T.: Which is nearly tolerable. G.: Nearly? You sound severe. T.: Because you are tempted by “we act,” and I am not sure that is anything more than a useful social idiom. G.: Let us go slowly. In conversation, I say that utterer-meaning requires an utterer and an addressee, with nested intentions and recognitions. T.: Yes. Speaker intends hearer to recognise that speaker intends hearer to form a belief, and so forth. G.: Quite. Now if one says “we mean,” you become suspicious. T.: Entirely. “We mean” sounds absurd unless it resolves into each of us meaning something sufficiently similar. G.: Yet “we cooperate” does not strike the ear as absurd. T.: No. But “cooperate” is already relational. “Mean” is not obviously collective in the same way. G.: Is that principle or habit? T.: Both, perhaps. Meaning, as you tell it, belongs to a purposive act of one utterer toward one audience, even if there are many hearers. G.: But committees issue statements. T.: Which means that some person or persons authorised the issuing, drafted, revised, approved, signed, or at any rate let it out under a collective description. G.: So “the committee means” is reducible? T.: I should say so. It means something like: enough members of the committee accepted this formulation under relevant procedures for us to ascribe the statement to the committee. G.: That is a fine bureaucratic paraphrase. But it still leaves intact that we do, in fact, ascribe agency to the committee. T.: Ascribe, yes. Reify, no. G.: Good. Let us keep that distinction visible. Now back to the log. When we carry it, what is the best analysis? T.: Each intends his own bodily movement, each perceives the other’s intentions sufficiently, each adjusts his action in light of the other’s, and together they produce the transportation of the log. G.: That sounds right enough, but I still feel that the “together” is doing more than bookkeeping. T.: It is doing coordination work, not metaphysical work. G.: But coordination may itself be a form of practical unity. T.: Practical unity, yes. Collective subject, no. G.: So you will grant me “we are doing X” as a practical description without granting “we” as a metaphysical person. T.: Happily. G.: Good. Now, mutatis mutandis, la folla delinquente. T.: I object at once. G.: Naturally. On what ground? T.: Because a criminal crowd is not like two men carrying a log. In the latter case coordination is transparent and purposive. In the former, the same outward event may contain leaders, imitators, cowards, enthusiasts, opportunists, onlookers, and one idiot who thought there was a parade. G.: Excellent. So the first problem is heterogeneity of role. T.: Yes. “The crowd did it” may conceal wildly different forms of participation. G.: That still does not prove the category mistake. T.: No, only the danger of easy collectivisation. G.: Sighele would agree. He wants a positive theory of complicity and cooperation, not a hymn to the communal soul. T.: Then he ought not to title the thing so temptingly. G.: Titles are usually the first crime of theorists. Let us be fairer. Suppose a crowd loots a shop. T.: A depressing but serviceable example. G.: Some break the window, some enter, some pass items outward, some keep watch, some cry encouragement, some prevent interference. T.: Yes. G.: Is it unintelligible to say the crowd looted the shop? T.: Not unintelligible. But analytically loose. It may be shorthand for a structured field of individual actions connected by mutual visibility, imitation, expectation, and opportunistic convergence. G.: Very good. And perhaps also by some shared practical orientation. T.: Perhaps, though “shared” there may mean only partially aligned under local cues. G.: So your thesis is that there need be no super-individual we-intention. T.: Exactly. B perceives that A wants that p, or wants to do X; B adjusts his goal or behaviour in the light of that; C perceives both and aligns similarly; and a pattern emerges. G.: A pattern of convergence without a robust we. T.: Yes. G.: Then what about “we mean”? T.: Even worse. “We mean” in the strict sense seems absurd because there is no single intending centre. G.: Unless one says the group means via its authorised procedures. T.: Which is again a reduction to individuals plus rules. G.: Rules plus mutual recognitions. T.: Precisely. G.: I wonder whether you are simply more comfortable with procedural than with practical unity. T.: Very likely. But that is because procedures can be individuated more clearly than collective inwardness. G.: Fair. Now let us see whether my own theory forces me to your side. Meaning for me involves utterer-intention, audience-recognition, and the audience’s taking that recognition as reason. T.: Yes. G.: Can there be a group utterer? T.: Only derivatively. A crowd chanting perhaps. G.: Ah. Good. Crowds chant. T.: They do. G.: “We want bread,” “Down with X,” “Death to Y.” There the utterance is collective in production and reception. T.: Production yes, though often still led by a few. Reception too, if outsiders hear it as the voice of the crowd. G.: And what of meaning there? Does the crowd mean what it chants? T.: In a loose sense, yes. But one can still analyse it as enough individuals intentionally participating in a common signal under mutual adjustment. G.: Again your “enough individuals.” T.: It is a sober phrase. G.: It is also a cowardly one. T.: Sober cowardice is a philosophical virtue. G.: Occasionally. Yet the chant seems to have a practical first-person plural built into it. T.: Grammatically, yes. Ontologically, not yet. G.: Let us try a cleaner case. Two conspirators agree to signal their victim by saying “The weather is improving.” T.: Very nice. G.: One says it, the other hears it, both know what it initiates. T.: In that case, one means and the other recognises. G.: But if both say it to reassure each other and to trigger the act, there is something almost like a plural utterer. T.: Almost like. But still analysable as parallel or interlocking singular intentions. G.: You dislike “interlocking” less than “collective.” T.: Naturally. Interlocking tells me how the thing works without making a ghostly subject. G.: Sighele might accept that, though he would insist the pair is not merely additive. T.: Yes. His Le crime à deux already suggests that the pair reorganises agency. G.: Exactly. The criminal couple is neither one person nor two isolated persons. It is a dyadic field with pressure, suggestion, imitation, and asymmetry. T.: That is all very well. But from there to la folla delinquente is a considerable leap. G.: Agreed. Scale changes the structure. T.: Greatly. In the crowd, reciprocal recognition often fragments. One may respond to immediate local cues without any grasp of the whole. G.: So the “we” may be perspectival and partial. T.: Precisely. G.: Yet many social actions are like that. A football crowd surges. A panic spreads. A queue dissolves. A riot forms. T.: And we describe them collectively, yes. G.: Because there is a level at which collective description tracks real coordination, even if no one surveys the whole. T.: That is closer to my view. Collective predicates may be legitimate without implying a group mind. G.: Good. Now responsibility. T.: Ah yes. G.: If the crowd acts, who is responsible? T.: The old question. Sighele wants to say responsibility persists but is redistributed. Not contagion without guilt, but transformed accountability. G.: Which I find sensible. “The crowd did it” is often a legal and moral evasion if it erases the role-structure. T.: Exactly. Some incited, some complied, some escalated, some merely failed to resist, some enjoyed anonymity. G.: And some became bolder because the crowd lowered the cost of expression. T.: Yes. That is perhaps Sighele’s most enduring point. G.: Then in our seminar on action, we might say that “the crowd acts” is not nonsense, but a compressed claim that a structured multiplicity produced an event under mutual responsiveness. T.: I could live with that, provided you do not start writing “the crowd intended” without qualifications. G.: Perhaps I shall say “the crowd’s action exhibited collective intentional structure.” T.: Hideous, but safer. G.: You wound me. T.: I refine you. G.: Very well. Now, back to conversation. If two or more people jointly mislead a third, do “we mean” anything? T.: In a derivative sense. We may mean to deceive him. But the analysis still proceeds through each participant’s recognition of the others’ intentions and adjustment thereto. G.: So B perceives that A wants the hearer to believe p; B aligns his own contribution accordingly; C does likewise; and the addressee receives a coordinated deception. T.: Exactly. No super-speaker needed. G.: Yet the hearer might perfectly well say “they meant me to think X.” T.: That is harmless enough. G.: And if the hearer says “they,” why may I not sometimes say “we” from the participants’ side? T.: Because first-person plural tempts philosophers into bad metaphysics more quickly than third-person plural. G.: A nice asymmetry. T.: A useful one. G.: Very well. Suppose a choir sings. Do they sing, or does each sing his part? T.: Both. But again, the collective predication does not generate a collective soul. G.: You are a great enemy of souls today. T.: Only of collective ones. G.: Fair. Suppose now a criminal crowd sets fire to a building. Some light, some cheer, some obstruct the brigade, some drag furniture into the blaze. T.: Yes. G.: Would you agree that “the crowd burned the building” is not a category mistake? T.: Not a category mistake. A dangerous convenience. G.: Which is a better line. T.: Thank you. G.: One must keep the danger and the convenience together. T.: Yes. Otherwise one either mystifies the collective or atomises it falsely. G.: Precisely Sighele’s terrain. T.: And yours, perhaps, when you try to let cooperative structures scale upward from dyads to groups. G.: Yes. I have never thought conversation ceases to be governed by rational norms once a third person enters the room. T.: No, but the form changes. With more parties, mutual recognition becomes layered, and not every participant need grasp the whole. G.: Which suggests that cooperative principles scale, but not simply. T.: Exactly. G.: That is useful for the seminar. “We” may be a practical category with variable density. T.: Good. Explain. G.: A two-person “we” carrying a log may be dense: each knows what the other is doing as part of the common act. A crowd “we” may be thin: partial mutual responsiveness plus shared direction without full reflective unity. T.: I like “variable density.” G.: Good. Keep it and make it seem yours. T.: It often is. G.: Insolent. Now, does this help with “la folla delinquente”? T.: It does. We can say the phrase is not absurd, but its propriety depends on what density of collective organisation and mutual responsiveness is present. G.: So an accidental gathering of pickpockets is different from a riot coordinated by shouted cues, visual signals, and escalating participation. T.: Yes. The first may be only aggregate coincidence; the second may exhibit a real, though thin, collective agency. G.: Thin collective agency. Very Oxonian and almost Italian. T.: That is the highest praise I shall get all week. G.: Enjoy it. Now, meaning again. If a crowd chants “Justice!” does the crowd mean justice? T.: It means many things, likely incompatible ones, and that is why the case is philosophically wicked. G.: Excellent. The slogan gathers divergent singular intentions under one public token. T.: Which is why “we mean” becomes especially unstable in crowds. The same utterance coordinates without unifying full content. G.: Splendid. So collective utterance may outrun individual agreement at the level of determinate meaning. T.: Exactly. G.: Then perhaps the crowd can mean thinly while its members mean thickly and differently. T.: That is very good. G.: Thank you. T.: Do not become pleased. G.: You have been reading me against myself. T.: It improves the afternoon. Now, if crowd-utterance means thinly, does crowd-action also intend thinly? G.: Perhaps. A crowd may intend to stop the convoy, to storm the gate, to punish the traitor, without every member sharing a full specification of why or what next. T.: So intention itself may be distributed and underdetermined. G.: Yes. Which is why reduction to singular intentions may become descriptively clumsy. T.: Clumsy perhaps, but still truer than a collective soul. G.: I do not want the soul. I want the action-category. T.: Good. Then we agree more than we disagree. G.: Usually a bad sign in seminars. T.: We can improve matters. I still think “we mean” in your strict speaker-meaning sense is almost always derivative. G.: I can grant “almost always.” T.: And I can grant that “the crowd acts” is not merely poetic. G.: Excellent. Now, Sighele versus Le Bon. T.: Sighele is rational where Le Bon is atmospheric. G.: Exactly. He wants complicity, pairings, sects, criminal couples, influence-patterns. He resists mystical fusion. T.: Which is why he remains interesting now. G.: Yes. He is an ancestor of sober social ontology, though I hesitate to use the phrase too cheerfully. T.: Quite. But he at least sees that social formations reorganise accountability without abolishing it. G.: That is his enduring philosophical value. The “we” of crime is not exculpatory vapor. T.: Nor is it a single wicked person writ large. G.: Precisely. It is a field of aligned and misaligned agencies. T.: Which is perhaps our best formula. G.: A field of aligned and misaligned agencies under conditions of mutual responsiveness. T.: Hideous, but strong. G.: That should be the subtitle of the seminar. T.: Along with “Carrying logs and burning shops.” G.: You have more theatre than judgment. T.: We need both. Now, what of your own “we” in personal identity? G.: Ah. The old communal temptations. Yes, there are cases where identity-talk itself presupposes social uptake. But I was not trying to invent a crowd-self. T.: No. But you were acknowledging that the first person singular lives among second persons and occasional plurals. G.: True enough. The self is never wholly without social conditions of intelligibility. T.: Then “we” may be philosophically prior to some uses of “I,” though not all. G.: Dangerous but tempting. Keep it for questions, not for the opening. T.: Very well. Then our opening says what? G.: It says that collective action is not a category mistake, but that its analysis requires us to distinguish aggregate coincidence, interlocking individual agency, thin collective intentional structure, and robust coordinated action. T.: And that “la folla delinquente” is therefore neither mystical nor innocent. G.: Excellent. T.: What of collective meaning? G.: It says that “we mean” is usually derivative from interlocking singular or procedural intentions, but that public tokens can coordinate action and uptake even where content remains only thinly shared. T.: Good. I can live with that. G.: You are becoming reasonable. Disturbing. T.: I brought Sighele precisely to avoid mystical rubbish and reductive rubbish alike. G.: Then he has done his work already. One last example? T.: Two thieves lift a chest together. G.: Better than a log. T.: One cannot do it alone. Each perceives the other’s aim, each adjusts force and timing, and together they remove it. G.: That is a criminal “we” of admirable simplicity. T.: Now scale up to ten men forcing a gate. G.: There the “we” is thinner, but still operative. T.: And to a thousand shouting for blood. G.: There the “we” becomes symbolically thick but motivationally thin and uneven. T.: Very good. We have our gradient. G.: And Sighele supplies the caution that responsibility does not vanish at any point merely because the pronoun broadens. T.: Excellent. Then the seminar can begin. G.: With the log or the crowd? T.: With the chest. G.: Criminality improves clarity. T.: It often does. G.: Dry enough? T.: Sufficiently Brescian, with one Oxford log still on the shoulder.