Ontological Holism Without Mental Holism: Bratman on Institutional Agency

In his recent book Shared and Institutional Agency, Bratman (2022) argues that institutional agents consist of a web of social rules that are shared among their members. I argue that Bratman is implicitly committed to ontological holism. In fact, his theory shows in a striking manner how an irreducibly collective entity can be constructed out of individualistic building blocks. I question, however, whether the kind of agents he is concerned with are institutions, as some do not have deontic powers of their own. I then go on to discuss why Bratman rejects mental holism. He argues that institutional agents form only a limited range of mental states. Furthermore, they need not act for a reason. Against this, I argue that it is difficult if not impossible to make sense of the notion of an intention without that of a reason. Furthermore, it provides a loophole for moral institutional agents to escape blame.