naa a22 4500 510783848 CHVBK 20180411083255.0 cr unu---uuuuu 180411e20130301xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s13164-012-0128-x doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s13164-012-0128-x Theiner Georg Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA aut Transactive Memory Systems: A Mechanistic Analysis of Emergent Group Memory [Elektronische Daten] [Georg Theiner] Wegner, Giuliano, and Hertel (1985) defined the notion of a transactive memory system (TMS) as a group level memory system that "involves the operation of the memory systems of the individuals and the processes of communication that occur within the group (p. 191). Those processes are the collaborative procedures ("transactions”) by which groups encode, store, and retrieve information that is distributed among their members. Over the past 25+ years, the conception of a TMS has progressively garnered an increased interest among social and organizational psychologists, communication scholars, and management theorists (Ren & Argote The Academy of Management Annals 5(1): 189-229, 2011). But there remains considerable disagreement about how exactly Wegner's appeal to group memory should be understood. My goal in this paper is contribute to this debate, by articulating more clearly the value of conceptualizing groups as TMSs. This value, I argue, consists in providing us with a blueprint for how to explain group memory in terms of collective information-processing mechanisms. Collective information-processing mechanisms are dependent on, and interact with, the brain-bound information-processing of individuals, but cannot be reduced to the latter. In my analysis, I lean on extant accounts of mechanistic explanation in the philosophy of science (Bechtel & Richardson 1993; Machamer, Darden, & Craver 2000; Wimsatt 2007) that have been used to analyze the explanatory practices of psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Bechtel 2008, Philosophical Psychology 22: 543-564, 2009). Based on my reconstruction of Wegner's conceptualization of a TMS, I argue that the reality of emergent group cognition is compatible with its mechanistic explanation. More generally, my analysis shows that group cognition cannot be reduced to individual cognition, while avoiding the false dilemma between "wholism” and "nothing but-ism” which has hampered traditional construals of the "group mind” thesis (Allport 1968). Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2013 Review of Philosophy and Psychology Springer Netherlands 4/1(2013-03-01), 65-89 1878-5158 4:1<65 2013 4 13164 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0128-x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0128-x text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Theiner Georg Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Review of Philosophy and Psychology Springer Netherlands 4/1(2013-03-01), 65-89 1878-5158 4:1<65 2013 4 13164 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer