ABSTRACT
Collective intentionality has been used to explore putatively distinct forms of human cooperation and conflict, the role of institutions in human social life, and even the broader nature of social reality itself. Collective intentionality builds on and utilizes forms of individual cognition that are themselves distinctively human, whether they are metacognitive, modular, or general purpose. The chapter suggests several ways in which one might adjust the overall perspective on collective intentionality that makes space for collective intentionality in the non-human animal world, but which also appeals to a form of the individual ownership claim. Michael Tomasello's shared and collective intentionality are elaborations on head-bound cognition, elaborations that are shaped by and shape new emerging forms of human sociality marked by heightened cooperativeness. Collective intentionality might well be possessed by individuals without itself being individualistic. A collective or group of individuals acts distributively when the components of the overall action are distributed across the actions of those individuals.
