Q&A: The Ontological Status of the Collective
The Ontological Status of the Collective
Question
In Two Carts, the Rabbi sees placing the individual at the center as an analytic approach that expresses despair about the ability to arrive at a truth with objective validity. Right after that, he discusses the question of the ontological status of the public and presents the view that denies its existence as stemming from a conventionalist approach, using the example of liquidity for this purpose. Could the Rabbi explain further why, in his view, it makes sense to see the collective as an entity with real existence, rather than as an emergent phenomenon that can be formulated at the microscopic level, as in the example of liquidity (the overall set of considerations facing each individual)?
Answer
I have a series of lectures on the individual and the collective, or the individual and the public. You can listen there.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t see how there could be direct arguments for or against. My claim is that we all have the sense that this collective has existence, and there is no obstacle that forces us to deny it. I made the same claim regarding free choice. In the final analysis, the decision is based on our intuition. But in my view, in most important debates the basic intuitions are shared by all of us, and the argument arises because some of us abandon the intuition because they think reason requires that it be seen as an illusion and a mistake. My goal is to show that this is not so, and therefore there is no necessity to abandon the intuition. That is why I focus on showing that such an intuition indeed exists, rather than proving that it is correct—which probably cannot be done.
Doesn’t belief in free choice require an emergentist view?
Definitely not. On the contrary, in my view it almost requires the opposite. But what does that have to do with the discussion? Even if it did require that, so what?
I listened to the series, and it was definitely interesting, but I don’t recall there being positive arguments there in favor of the ontological status of the collective—mainly phenomenological description and halakhic applications. Does the Rabbi have positive arguments for believing in such a position? After all, if one assumes the existence of free choice, what reason is there not to derive the conduct of the public in a חד חד ערכי way from the free choices of each individual?