If you say that the Star Trek group doesn’t have Star Trek as a collective interest just because of the possibility of someone infiltrating it, then it is hard to see what a true example of a collective interest would look like.
With “continued existence of the organization itself” I think you are making a pun on the word “interest”. There’s no particular reason people should find it interesting to work towards the continued existence of the organization, in the way that they find it interesting to talk about Star Trek.
People have an instrumental interest in preserving an organization insofar as they value their interactions with that organization, or insofar as they value the goals the organization is working towards. But e.g. an employee might not feel any particular loyalty to the survival of the company he works for beyond its instrumental usefulness in paying his salary.
I am not sure what would distinguish the case where an interest is a collective interest of a proper subset from the opposite case. Trivially, we could consider the set of all people who have a particular sub-interest, and by definition this sub-interest would be a collective interest of this set. I guess you are more interested in the question of whether this set of people interacts with each other in a subgroup-like way?
If you say that the Star Trek group doesn’t have Star Trek as a collective interest just because of the possibility of someone infiltrating it, then it is hard to see what a true example of a collective interest would look like.
It is, if you like, a matter of asymptotically approaching the unreachable in-principle case. Enforcement of the condition is what makes the difference.
With “continued existence of the organization itself” I think you are making a pun on the word “interest”. There’s no particular reason people should find it interesting to work towards the continued existence of the organization, in the way that they find it interesting to talk about Star Trek.
No, it’s not a pun. As I say, I use the word “interest” in the broad sense of the term. I make no claim at all about whether anyone finds it “interesting”, in the narrow sense, to do something.
Trivially, we could consider the set of all people who have a particular sub-interest, and by definition this sub-interest would be a collective interest of this set. I guess you are more interested in the question of whether this set of people interacts with each other in a subgroup-like way?
The distinguishing property is the question of whether the subgroup is defined by something other than the trivial property of sharing the interest in question.
So, it seems like interest in Star Trek is “interest” according to Definition 1 here, whereas interest in an organization’s continued existence is “interest” according to Definition 3. I get that the two definitions bear some relation to each other but it doesn’t seem to me that there is any broader concept that they are both special cases of.
So, I agree that someone interested in Star Trek can be said to place a value/importance on talking about Star Trek, which is the same sort of thing as placing a value on the continuing existence of an organization. However, I think from the inside “being interested in Star Trek” feels different from “placing a value on talking about Star Trek”—being interested or curious is an object-level thing whereas placing a value on talking feels more meta-level. Anyway, maybe we have gone on too much of a tangent.
If you say that the Star Trek group doesn’t have Star Trek as a collective interest just because of the possibility of someone infiltrating it, then it is hard to see what a true example of a collective interest would look like.
With “continued existence of the organization itself” I think you are making a pun on the word “interest”. There’s no particular reason people should find it interesting to work towards the continued existence of the organization, in the way that they find it interesting to talk about Star Trek.
People have an instrumental interest in preserving an organization insofar as they value their interactions with that organization, or insofar as they value the goals the organization is working towards. But e.g. an employee might not feel any particular loyalty to the survival of the company he works for beyond its instrumental usefulness in paying his salary.
I am not sure what would distinguish the case where an interest is a collective interest of a proper subset from the opposite case. Trivially, we could consider the set of all people who have a particular sub-interest, and by definition this sub-interest would be a collective interest of this set. I guess you are more interested in the question of whether this set of people interacts with each other in a subgroup-like way?
It is, if you like, a matter of asymptotically approaching the unreachable in-principle case. Enforcement of the condition is what makes the difference.
No, it’s not a pun. As I say, I use the word “interest” in the broad sense of the term. I make no claim at all about whether anyone finds it “interesting”, in the narrow sense, to do something.
The distinguishing property is the question of whether the subgroup is defined by something other than the trivial property of sharing the interest in question.
So, it seems like interest in Star Trek is “interest” according to Definition 1 here, whereas interest in an organization’s continued existence is “interest” according to Definition 3. I get that the two definitions bear some relation to each other but it doesn’t seem to me that there is any broader concept that they are both special cases of.
Definitions 4, 7, 10, and 11 are all relevant.
So, I agree that someone interested in Star Trek can be said to place a value/importance on talking about Star Trek, which is the same sort of thing as placing a value on the continuing existence of an organization. However, I think from the inside “being interested in Star Trek” feels different from “placing a value on talking about Star Trek”—being interested or curious is an object-level thing whereas placing a value on talking feels more meta-level. Anyway, maybe we have gone on too much of a tangent.