Against group intentional action

Alice, Bob and Carl are triumvirate that unanimously votes for some legislation, for the following reasons:

1. Alice thinks that hard work and religion are intrinsically bad while entertainment is intrinsically good, and believes the legislation will decrease the prevalence of hard work and religion and increase that of entertainment.

2. Bob thinks that hard work and entertainment are intrinsically bad while religion is intrinsically good, and believes the legislation will decrease the prevalence of hard work and entertainment and increase that of religion.

3. Carl thinks that religion and entertainment are intrinsically bad while hard work is intrinsically good, and believes the legislation will decrease the prevalence of religion and entertainment and increase that of hard work.

If groups engage in intentional actions, it seems that passing legislation is a paradigm of such intentional action. But what is the intention behind the action here?

When I first thought about cases like this, I thought they were a strong argument against group intentional action. But then I became less sure. For we can imagine an intrapersonal version. Suppose Debbie the dictator was given a card by a trustworthy expert that she was informed contains a truth, with the expert departing at that point. Before she could read it, however, she accidentally dropped the card in a garbage can. Reaching into the garbage can, she found three cards in the expert’s handwriting, two of them being mere handwriting exercises and one being the advice card:

1. Hard work and religion are intrinsically bad while entertainment is intrinsically good, and the legislation will decrease the prevalence of hard work and religion and increase that of entertainment.
2. Hard work and entertainment are intrinsically bad while religion is intrinsically good, and the legislation will decrease the prevalence of hard work and entertainment and increase that of religion.
3. Religion and entertainment are intrinsically bad while hard work is intrinsically good, and the legislation will decrease the prevalence of religion and entertainment and increase that of hard work.

Oddly, Debbie’s own prior views are so undecided that she just sets her credence to 1/3 for each of these propositions, and enacts the legislation. What is her intention?

But now I think there is a plausible answer: Debbie’s intention is to increase whichever one of the trio of entertainment, religion and hard work is good and decrease whichever two of them are bad.

Could we thus say that that is what the triumvirate intends? I am not sure. Nobody on the triumvirate has such an abstract intention.

So perhaps we still have an argument against group intentional action, of the form:

1. If there is group intentional action, the triumvirate acts intentionally.

2. Something only acts intentionally if it has an intention.

3. The triumvirate has no intention.

4. So, there is no group intentional action.