The Land Commission consists of three members and the evaluation criteria are excellence in teaching, research and administration. Each member of the committee believes that the nominee is excellent in only two of the areas. However, the Committee may decide to refuse or confirm the mandate on the basis of a definitive or premise procedure. If the final procedure is applied, the mandate is refused, because in this procedure, everyone votes for the confirmation of the mandate only if he considers the candidate excellent in all three areas. If the premises procedure is used, the term of office is confirmed. Because in this procedure, everyone votes on each criterion, and if a majority considers the candidate to be excellent according to that criterion, the candidate is considered excellent in relation to that criterion. Since a majority considers each of the criteria to be excellent, the candidate is ranked as excellent in all three areas. Proponents of irreducibly collectivist thought claim that the choice between the premise-based path and the conclusion-oriented path is a choice between submission to individual reason and submission to collective reason. However, both procedures involve a voting procedure and, in this respect, a common institutional mechanism which can be analysed in totally individualistic terms (see Section 3).
Moreover, both methods involve a reasoning process from premises to a conclusion; However, this process makes sense and, in the example of tenure, it is a process that is conducted in the minds of the members of the tenure committee. In the premise procedure, premises are determined from which each committee member individually draws the conclusion that the candidate is excellent in all three areas, while in the case of the conclusion-based procedure, the conclusion that the candidate is not excellent in all three areas is derived from individually selected premises. Consequently, in the application of both methods, there is no collective thought procedure as such. Second, at the end of production, so to speak, as opposed to the consumption of common actions, the achievement of collective goals, which are also collective goods, may well generate common moral rights. It is easy to see why some agents and not other agents should be entitled to such property; They are responsible for its existence or continuity. In this context, think of the managers and workers of a factory that makes cars sold at a profit. The managers and workers of the plant – but not necessarily the others – have a common moral right to compensation for the sale of the cars they have produced together – and not just on the basis of a contractual agreement they have reached. It is also clear that if one participating agent has a moral right to the good, then – if other things are the same – so do the others. That is, there is an interdependence of moral rights in relation to the good. Moreover, these moral rights give rise to corresponding moral duties on the part of others to respect these rights. Of course, these old common rights and obligations can and will be institutionalized, including through contractual rights and obligations that to some extent respect the respective contributions of the participants.
Individualism (below) engages in an analysis of common action, so that a common action ultimately consists of: (1) a series of singular actions; and (2) the relationships between these singular acts. In addition, the constitutive attitudes associated with joint actions are individual attitudes; There are no sui generis parameters. What rules of conduct apply if you meet a friend at school, work or the supermarket? In general, we do not back down to take into account all the intricacies of such normative rules. We can simply say “Hello!” and ask, “How was your weekend?” or any other trivial question meant to be a friendly greeting.
