pdf version of the entry

Shared Agency
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/shared-agency/ Shared Agency
from the Summer 2017 Edition of the First published Mon Dec 13, 2010; substantive revision Mon May 1, 2017

Stanford Encyclopedia Sometimes individuals act together, and sometimes they act independently
of one another. It’s a distinction that matters. You are likely to make more
of Philosophy headway in a difficult task working with others; and even if little progress
is made, there’s at least the comfort and solidarity that comes with a
collective undertaking. Or, to take a very different perspective, the
realization (or delusion) that the many bits of rudeness one has been
suffering of late are part of a concerted effort can be of significance in
identifying what one is up against: the accumulation of grievances (no
Edward N. Zalta Uri Nodelman Colin Allen R. Lanier Anderson
doubt well catalogued) is seen, not as an unfortunate coincidence of
Principal Editor Senior Editor Associate Editor Faculty Sponsor
affronts stemming from various quarters, but as itself a product of a
Editorial Board
https://plato.stanford.edu/board.html unified exercise of agency. A paranoid conspiracy theorist is not usually to
be taken seriously. But he does get right that it certainly would be awful,
Library of Congress Catalog Data
ISSN: 1095-5054
for example, if everyone were out to get him and were working together to
do so.
Notice: This PDF version was distributed by request to mem-
bers of the Friends of the SEP Society and by courtesy to SEP Shared agency also has important normative implications. Institutions or
content contributors. It is solely for their fair use. Unauthorized laws established by everyone acting together have a status different from
distribution is prohibited. To learn how to join the Friends of the those that are, for example, imposed on a people by the dictates of one.
SEP Society and obtain authorized PDF versions of SEP entries, And the nature of justification, be it epistemic or practical, might depend
please visit https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/ . on whether it figures in the context of a shared enterprise. No wonder,
then, that shared activity and intention is of interest for a variety of
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Copyright c 2017 by the publisher disciplines, including politics, social science, economics, ethics, law,
The Metaphysics Research Lab epistemology (especially testimony and social epistemology), and
Center for the Study of Language and Information
psychology.
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
Shared Agency But what is it to act together? The question has received sustained
c 2017 by the author
Copyright
Abraham Sesshu Roth discussion in contemporary philosophy of action. Central concerns have
All rights reserved.
been to explicate the distinctive features of shared agency, and to
Copyright policy: https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/info/copyright/

1
 Shared Agency
investigate the possibility and scope of reduction: can shared agency be
understood in terms of the resources available to us from the study of
individual agency? This entry will focus on some issues most closely
related to the philosophy of action. See the entry on collective
intentionality for a broader discussion.
1. The traditional ontological problem and the Intention Thesis
2. Interrelatedness of participatory intentions
3. How is the structure of interrelated intentions established?
4. Mutual obligations
5. The discursive dilemma and group minds
Bibliography
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
1. The traditional ontological problem and the
Intention Thesis
Agency is sometimes exercised in concert, as when we walk together,
several individuals undertake painting a house, or a football team executes
a pass play.[1] It is hardly controversial that there really is a phenomenon
falling under labels such as shared activity, and joint or collective action.
What is disputed is how to understand it. One way to approach the issues
here is to ask what distinguishes actions of individuals that together
constitute shared activity from those that amount to a mere aggregation of
individual acts. What is left over when we subtract what each of us did
from what we did together?[2]
Consider a case discussed by Searle (1990, 402). A number of individuals
are scattered about in a park. Suddenly it starts to rain, and each runs to a
2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
centrally located shelter. Although there may be some coordination
(people tend not to collide into one another), running to the shelter is not,
in the relevant sense, something that we do together. Now imagine another
scenario with the same individuals executing the same movements but as
members of a dance troop performing a site-specific piece in that park. In
both cases, there is no difference in the collection or “summation” of
individual behavior: A is running to the shelter, and B is running to the
shelter, etc. But the dancers are engaged in collective action, whereas the
storm panicked picnickers are not.
Searle suggests that what distinguishes the two cases is not the outward
behavior, but something “internal”. He hints that in the collective case, the
outward behavior—everyone running to and converging on the shelter—is
not a matter of coincidence.[3] It is, rather, explained as something aimed
at by the participants. This suggests that the internal difference is a matter
of intention. And, indeed, Searle sees it this way. In both cases, a
participant has an intention expressed by “I am running to the shelter”. But
in the collective case this intention somehow derives from and is
dependent upon an intention that necessarily adverts to the others, one that
might be expressed as “We are running to the shelter” (or perhaps “We are
performing the part of the piece where….”). It is this “we-intention” that
distinguishes shared or collective activity from a mere summation or heap
of individual acts.
Perhaps it’s premature to conclude, as Searle does, that there has to be an
“internal” difference here. While most theorists treat intention as a
psychological attitude (e.g. Davidson 1978, Harman 1976, Bratman 1986),
some work on intention influenced by Anscombe and Wittgenstein (such
as Wilson 1989 and Thompson 2008) understands intention fundamentally
in terms of intentional action (see the entry on intention for discussion). It
remains to be seen how Anscombian approaches to shared agency will
Summer 2017 Edition 3
 Shared Agency
develop, though some forays into this territory are to be found in Stoutland
1997 and Laurence 2010.
Another reservation with invoking intention at this point stems from
consideration of unintentional collective action. Appealing to intention as
Searle does would seem to preclude what some see as a real possibility:
that there are φ-ings done jointly in some robust sense, but which are not
intended under any description. One possible example would be our
jointly bringing about some severe environmental damage. This might
come about as a side effect of each of us pursuing our own projects. No
subject intends the severe environmental damage, under any description:
no single individual has enough of an impact to intend anything that would
count as severe environmental damage, and as a collective the polluters
seem not to be sufficiently integrated to count as a subject of intention.
Whether this really amounts to a counterexample will depend on whether
our damaging the environment was joint, a genuine exercise of shared
agency. For discussion see Ludwig 2007; 2016, 182, and Chant 2007.
Setting aside these reservations, we can ask how the attitude of intention
should be understood if it is to serve as a distinctive mark of joint action.
One approach is to think of it as an attitude of a peculiar, supra-individual
entity.[4] The intention whose content is expressed by We are running to
the shelter is, on this view, an attitude had by whatever entity is denoted
by the ‘we’. On this view whenever people act together, they constitute a
group that, in a non-figurative sense, intends. This entails that groups can
be genuine agents and subjects of intentional attitudes.
Searle (1990, 406) rules this out of court, understandably and perhaps
dogmatically reluctant to embrace a view that leads to a profusion of
supra-individual intentional subjects, group minds, or corporate persons
whenever individuals act together. Such ontological profligacy is
prompted in part by a straightforward interpretation of the language we
4 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
use to describe joint action, with the plural subject term understood simply
as a referring expression. Ludwig 2016 suggests instead that we think of
the subject term as involving implicit restricted quantification over
members of the group. This proposal, combined with a Davidsonian event
analysis of action descriptions, provides resources for an alternative
rendering of the underlying logical form of action descriptions, one that
does not encourage the supra-individual view. What would be required
instead is that there be some one event for which there is more than one
agent.[5]
There is reason, moreover, to think that a strategy appealing to supra-
individual entities as subjects of intentional states is misplaced if the social
phenomenon in question is shared activity. It’s not at all obvious that an
individual who is a constituent of a supra-individual entity is necessarily
committed to what it is up to. For example, consider the U.S., which
would on such a view count as supra-individual entity. The U.S. increases
research funding in physics in order to win the space race with the
U.S.S.R. I’m a graduate student benefitting from the additional funding,
and I do research in rocket and satellite technology, and teach physics and
engineering to undergraduates; indeed, I wouldn’t have gone into the area
had it not been for the funding opportunities. I am in the relevant sense a
constituent of the larger entity - in this case the U.S. - but I have no
concern with the space race. I’m just doing my job, advancing my career,
hoping to raise a family and be able to pay the mortgage, etc.; I frankly
couldn’t care less about larger geopolitical issues, which are presumably
the concern of the supra-individual entity that is the U.S. In contrast, a
participant in shared activity arguably is committed to the collective
endeavor and its aims - at least in the sense of commitment to an end
implicated in any instance of intention or intentional action. So, while we
haven’t ruled out that there are supra-individual agents (see below for
more discussion), it’s not clear that we need to be committed to them in
order to understand shared activity.
Summer 2017 Edition 5
 Shared Agency
If shared activity does indeed involve commitment on the part of the
individual participants, then it seems that some intention-like element of
each individual’s psychology must realize or reflect the we-intention that
is the mark of shared activity.[6] The Intention Thesis attributes to each
individual participant in shared activity an intention pertaining to that
activity. This participatory intention accounts for each individual’s
participatory commitment to the activity, and it serves to distinguish one’s
action when it is done with others from action done on one’s own. [7]
Some of the discussion of the current literature on shared activity can be
understood as a debate about the nature of this participatory intention and
how instances of it in different individuals must be related to one another
so that the individuals could be said to act together, and share an intention
(presumably the intention expressed with the aforementioned we-
locution).
Participatory intentions might, for example, be understood as an instance
of an ordinary intention, familiar from the study of individual agency; if
we-intentions are identified with, or built out of these participatory
intentions, we would thus be offered the prospect of a reductive account of
this we-intention in terms of ordinary individual intentions. Tuomela and
Miller 1988 defend such a view. Take an individual who is a member of a
group. According to Tuomela and Miller, this individual has a
participatory intention with respect to X if she intends to do her part in X,
believes conditions for success of X obtain, and believes that there is
mutual belief amongst members of the group that conditions for success
obtain.[8] (Other work in this general vein include Bratman 1992,
MacMahon 2001, 2005, S. Miller 2001. Tuomela’s later work is rather
different, as will be noted below.)
As a counterexample to the reductive account, Searle imagines each
member of a business school graduating class, versed in Adam Smith’s
6 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
theory of the invisible hand, intending to pursue his selfish interests and
thereby intending to do his part in helping humanity. Such an intention,
even supplemented with the sort of beliefs that Tuomela and Miller
require, intuitively doesn’t count as the sort of intention one has when
acting with others, and it is implausible to think that these graduates go on
to act collectively. And yet it seems to satisfy Tuomela and Miller’s
analysis.[9] Searle’s diagnosis of the problem is that reductive approaches
don’t guarantee the element of cooperation that is essential to shared
activity and necessarily reflected in the attitudes of the participant (1990,
406). And one cannot respond by inserting the cooperative element into
the content of the intention, so that what the agent intends is to do her part
in shared activity. That would in effect presuppose the notion for which
we’re seeking an account (1990, 405).[10]
Searle, in contrast to Tuomela and Miller, insists that the individual’s
participatory intention (what he calls a collective intention) is primitive.
The aforementioned “we-intention” turns out, for Searle, just to be an
individual’s participatory intention. But though it is an attitude or state of
an individual, it is a fundamentally different kind of intention, and not the
sort of intention that figures in individual action. It should be mentioned
that this is a view with similarities to those held by Sellars and later
Tuomela.[11]
Searle’s version of the intention thesis also involves a rejection of anti-
individualism in the philosophy of mind (see the entry on externalism
about mental content). In particular, whether an individual has this
primitively collective participatory intention is independent of what may
be going on in the minds of others, or whether there even are any others
around her. Thinking to help you with your stalled car, I might have the
collective intention expressed as we are pushing the car. And this is so,
even if you’re just stretching your calves before a run and not trying to
Summer 2017 Edition 7
 Shared Agency
move the car, and even if I’m just hallucinating and there is no one
around.[12]
2. Interrelatedness of participatory intentions
Be that as it may, whether one is sharing an intention and acting with
others will depend, of course, on there being other agents with whom one
is appropriately related. Suppose that each of several individuals has a
participatory intention. How must they be related in order for those
individuals to count as sharing an intention? Recall that for Searle, the
participatory intention is primitively collective and expressed, for
example, as We will do A. Given this, one thing Searle presumably would
require for the sharing of intentions is the co-extensiveness of the we-
element instanced in the intentions across the several individuals. But this
is not sufficient. No intention is shared if yours is for us to go to the beach
this afternoon, whereas mine has us doing something incompatible, like
working all day in the library. Even if our intentions coincide on the action
and the plural subject in question, if there is no agreement on how to go
about it, or if we each fail even to accord any significant status to the
other’s intentions, there would be no intention or action shared in this
instance. So, more needs to be said about the interrelations of the
participatory intentions if they are to account for the coordination and
cooperativeness we find in shared or joint activity. Searle is silent on the
matter; for what more to say, we need to turn elsewhere.[13]
In an influential series of papers, Bratman has developed a reductive
account of shared activity and shared intention.[14] He understands a
shared intention to be an interpersonal structure of related intentions that
serves to coordinate action and planning, as well as structure bargaining
between participants.[15] The individually held intentions that constitute
this structure—what we’ve been calling participatory intentions—are
instances of a familiar sort of individual intention that figures in the
8 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
planning and the coordination of one’s activities over time. When these
individual intentions concern something that is done by more than one
person, taking the form I intend that we J, they accord with Bratman’s
version of the Intention Thesis, and the core of his proposals about shared
intention and action. But Bratman imposes further conditions, and these
serve to relate these participatory intentions in distinctive ways.
One important condition concerns the meshing of sub-plans (Bratman
1992, 331ff). On Bratman’s view, an intention is distinctive in how it leads
to planning about necessary means and facilitative steps that lead to its
satisfaction. Now, suppose each of us has the intention to paint the house
together (or, as Bratman would have it, the intention that we paint the
house), but my plan is to paint it green all over, whereas yours is to paint it
purple all over. It seems that we don’t share the intention to paint the
house. So Bratman introduces the condition that each participant intends
that the subplans that follow upon the participatory intentions of each
individual mesh—that is, are mutually satisfiable and coherent—in order
for the individuals to count as sharing an intention.[16]
We wouldn’t exhibit the right sort of cooperative attitude for shared
activity and intention if the mesh of our sub-plans were accidental and we
were not at all disposed to make them consistent if they were to become
incompatible. That’s why Bratman requires the intention to mesh
subplans.[17] There is, moreover, a normative element to the meshing, as
emphasized by Roth 2003. Participants are subject to some sort of rational
requirement[18] such that they in a sense ought to mesh their plans: the
plans of the other participants serve as a normative constraint on one’s
own plans. And there is no reason to restrict this status to the plans, and
not extend it to the intentions that generate them. Thus, shared activity
exhibits what Roth calls practical intersubjectivity. In effect, each
participant treats the other’s intentions and plans much in the way that he
Summer 2017 Edition 9
 Shared Agency
or she treats her own: as rational constraints on further intention and
planning.
Bratman (especially in his 2014 book, but see also his 2009c, 2009b,
1992) defends a reductive account of this normative requirement,
explaining this interpersonal normative constraint in terms of the norms of
commitment governing individual intention, such as those of consistency
and means-end coherence. Your intentions and plans pertaining to our J-
ing have an authority for me because of what might be called a bridge
intention to mesh my J-related plans and intentions with yours. Bratman
expresses the bridge intention in terms of the condition requiring each
participant to have the intention to act in accordance with and because of
the others’ intentions and plans (as well as his or her own). Bratman’s idea
is that, given my bridge intention, the norms of consistency and coherence
governing my individual intentions will be recruited to require that I form
my plans and intentions with an eye toward consistency and coherence
with your plans and intentions. Roth 2003 sympathizes with these
interpersonal normative requirements of consistency and coherence as a
condition for shared intention and action, but resists the reductive bridge
intention account of it.
The demand that subplans must mesh might inspire the view that super-
ordinate intentions, or the reasons each participant in shared activity A has
for taking part, might also be subject to a similar requirement. This is
suggested, for example, in Korsgaard’s talk of the sharing of reasons:
…if personal interaction is to be possible, we must reason together,
and this means that I must treat your reasons…as reasons, that is,
as considerations that have normative force for me as well as you,
and therefore as public reasons. (Korsgaard 2009, 192)
10 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
In a similar vein, Tuomela requires that the “we-mode” intention at the
core of his more recent theory necessarily involves group reasons shared
by all participants. See his 2007; 13, 47, 98.
But it seems possible that individuals might engage in shared activity (and
have the corresponding intention) even when they have different and
incompatible reasons for doing so. For example, representatives from rival
parties might engage in the legislative process that leads to the passage of
laws, even when each is motivated by considerations that the other finds
unacceptable.[19] Still, it is plausible to think that there must be some
constraints on the sort of individual motive or reason a participant has to
engage in shared activity. If my motive for engaging in shared activity is
overly manipulative or undermining of fellow participants (e.g. doing
something with A in order better to control him/her), the status of the
activity or intention as shared might be compromised.[20]
A further way in which participatory intentions of different individuals are
related stems from how they might be formed, modified, or set aside. For
example, Gilbert holds that shared activity gets started only when each
individual openly expresses a readiness to be jointly committed in a
certain way with others.[21] She adds that rescinding or significantly
modifying the resulting intention, as well as releasing any individual from
participation, would also require concurrence on everyone’s part. It’s not
clear that Gilbert herself would want to talk of this “concurrence
condition” in terms of relating intention or intention-like attitudes in
different participants. But, given that whether I concur with how you
propose to modify your intentions will depend in part on my intentions, it
is natural to take Gilbert’s conditions as imposing dynamic constraints on
how the participatory intentions of different individual are related to one
another. Of course, Gilbert’s conditions might be too strong. For example,
the concurrence criterion does not permit one to withdraw unilaterally
from shared activity.[22] Some may find this implausible. But relaxing
Summer 2017 Edition 11
 Shared Agency
Gilbert’s conditions would naturally result in another perhaps weaker set
of dynamic constraints, and not in their complete absence. For example,
recall that intentions are defeasible: they can be revised or dropped if
changing circumstances warrant it. Now, we might imagine that each
participant in shared activity might have the authority unilaterally to revise
or defeat the intention in light of those changing circumstances,
whereupon other participants would have to abide by the change unless, of
course, they think that some mistake has been made (Roth 2004).
Most of the views canvassed here emphasize as a condition for shared
activity fairly robust forms of integration between participants. Before
continuing in this vein, it bears mention that the focus on the participants
and how they are related might lead us to neglect other important
conditions for shared activity. Epstein 2015 argues that the metaphysical
grounds for some forms of shared activity, such as that involved in some
cases of group action, involve a variety of conditions that are not
themselves relations between members of the group, but often can
determine how those members are related. These might include historical
conditions that determine the structure and membership criteria for the
group. Or, the grounds might include external conditions such as the
actions of some designated individual (such as a sergeant at arms) not a
part of the collective body but who for example must convene a meeting
in order that the members of the body may collectively take some action.
3. How is the structure of interrelated intentions
established?
So shared activity is distinguished from a mere aggregation of individual
acts by a structure of appropriately related participatory intentions across
different individuals. It is a structure that has a distinctive normative
significance for those individuals, with an impact most immediately on
each individual’s intention-based practical reasoning.[23]
12 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
It is natural to think that this structure of intentions is brought about by
individuals involved in shared activity, presumably when each forms the
participatory intention that is his or her contribution to the structure. But
recall that participatory intentions are meant to capture the sense in which
each individual is committed to what everyone is doing together, and not
merely to what he or she is doing. Thus, Searle says of an instance of
shared activity that “I’m pushing only as a part of our pushing.” This
suggests that what is intended is the entirety of the activity, something
reflected in Bratman’s intentions of the form I intend that we J.[24]
But as Velleman has shown, given the standard understanding of
intentions, it’s not clear that one can intend the entire activity; or if one
can, it would seem incompatible with the activity being shared.[25]
Intending is something I do to settle a deliberative issue: weighing several
options, I decide on A-ing, and thereby intend to A. This suggests the
Settling Condition[26] that I can only intend what I take to be up to me to
decide or settle. It is a violation of a rational requirement to intend
something I don’t think I can settle, and thus regard my ensuing plans and
actions as likely coming to grief. Applying the point to collective action,
to say that I intend for us to be dining together presumes that whether
we’re dining together is something for me to settle. But the idea behind
shared activity and intention is precisely that it’s not entirely up to me
what we do. You have a say in the matter; at the very least what you do
should be up to you (see also Schmid 2008). Our problem, then, is that
shared activity would seem both to demand and to disallow one and the
same intention on the part of each participant.[27]
Several responses have emerged to this problem. Velleman develops a
solution that invokes interdependent conditional intentions.[28] Each
individual conditionally settles what the group will do, where the
condition is that each of the others has a similar commitment and intends
likewise. Thus, I intend to J, on condition that you intend likewise. Some
Summer 2017 Edition 13
 Shared Agency
have worried that when intentions are interdependent in this way it’s not
entirely clear that they settle anything at all, and hence, whether anyone is
appropriately committed to our J-ing. If each intention is conditioned on
the other, it’s just as reasonable to refrain from acting as it is to engage in
it. For discussion, see Roth 2004, 373–80; Bacharach 2006, 137ff. Gilbert
2002, while addressing Robins 2002 and a precursor of Roth 2004
disavows the interdependent conditional view attributed to her by
Velleman, Roth, and Robins. See also Gilbert 2003, 2009. Velleman
himself is sensitive to something like this worry (1997a, 39) and it shapes
how he formulates the content of the conditional intention.[29]
Bratman (1997) has suggested that what an individual intends can extend
beyond what he can settle himself, so long as he can reasonably predict
that the relevant other parties will act appropriately. Flagrantly
disregarding sound medical advice, I can have the categorical intention to
work on my tan at the beach this afternoon, so long as I can reasonably
predict that it’ll be sunny. Likewise, when I reasonably believe that you
have or will have the appropriate intentions, I can then intend that we J.
One might wonder whether taking this sort of predictive attitude with
respect to the intentions and actions of fellow participants is consistent
with sharing an intention and acting with them. On the other hand, it’s not
obvious that the prediction of an action entails that it is or must be
regarded as involuntary or otherwise problematic. If so, the predictive
attitude toward others very well may be compatible with acting with them,
and might account for how our J-ing might be the object of my intention.
[30]
Another suggestion is that a participant intends not the entirety of the
activity, but only his or her part in it. Such an intention is more modest in
that it does not purport to settle what other people do. An account of
shared activity in terms of such intentions (e.g. Tuomela & Miller 1998,
Kutz 2000) does not entail the authority or control over others that would
14 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
be difficult to reconcile with the activity being shared. But this modest
intention involves a commitment only to one’s part in our J-ing and
doesn’t seem to account for a participatory commitment to our J-ing as a
whole. To see why not, consider the case of walking together from Gilbert
1990. We might describe my part as walking at a certain pace. But
intending to do that is entirely compatible with undermining my partner’s
contribution, for example by tripping him. Suppose instead that we avail
ourselves of some robust conception of part, so that each participant
intends to do his part in shared activity, as such. This would appear to rule
out attempts to undermine a partner’s contribution. But what exactly is this
intention? It seems to presuppose an understanding of the concept of
shared activity, which is the notion we’re trying to elucidate.[31]
Maybe this criticism is too quick. Perhaps there remains a way to
characterize the intention to do one’s part that doesn’t presuppose the
notion of shared activity. One approach appeals to “team reasoning”, a
distinctive form of strategic practical reasoning. This view of reasoning
was developed to address certain difficulties standard game theory has in
accounting for the rationality of selecting more cooperative options in
strategic scenarios such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Hi-Lo. The idea is
that we get intuitively more rational outcomes with individuals each
approaching the situation asking him- or herself not what’s best for me
given what others do?, but what is best for us or the group as a whole?[32]
The participatory intention is characterized in terms of the distinctive
reasoning that leads to its formation, rather than in terms of some more
intrinsic feature of the intention or its content. It remains to be seen
whether intending one’s part, so understood, can account for the
participatory commitment distinctive of shared activity.[33]
The issue of how to establish the interpersonal structure of participatory
intention is a central problem for the theory of shared agency, and remains
an area of active research interest. For further views, see Gilbert 2009
Summer 2017 Edition 15
 Shared Agency
(some discussion of which is below), Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kant in
her 2009, 189ff, and Roth 2004, whose conception of intentions allows
him to appeal to an interpersonal mechanism similar in some respects to
that of commands.
4. Mutual obligations
Gilbert has long held that participants in shared activity are obligated to do
their part in it. Take her well-known example of walking together, starring
Jack and Sue. When Jack does something that’s not compatible with
walking together, e.g. walking so fast that Sue cannot keep up, Sue is
entitled to rebuke Jack. This suggests to Gilbert that it is essential to
shared activity (and intention) that each participant has an obligation to do
his or her part in the activity (or in carrying out the intention). For
example,
The existence of this entitlement [Sue’s entitlement to rebuke]
suggests that Jack has, in effect, an obligation to notice and to act
(an obligation Sue has also). (Gilbert 1990, 180–1 (1996, 184))[34]
Gilbert has used this mutual obligation criterion to criticize reductive
accounts of shared activity in terms of “personal intentions” (1990, 180ff;
2008,499), such as that defended by Bratman. Bratman 1997
acknowledges that mutual obligations are typically associated with the
sharing of intentions, but insists that they are not essential. He argues that
when present, the obligations are explained in terms of a moral principle
that one should live up to the expectations about one’s actions that one has
intentionally created in others. This principle, articulated by Scanlon in the
context of a discussion about promising, does generally apply to situations
where individuals act together and share intentions. (Scanlon’s Principle F
is in his 1998, 304. For recent discussion of Scanlon and promising that
bears on shared activity, see Shiffrin 2008. For another reductivist
16 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
response to Gilbert see MacMahon 2005, 299ff. For more recent
discussion of mutual obligation, see Roth 2004, Alonso 2009.)
Suppose, however, that we have individuals engaged in an endeavor they
know to be immoral, such as that of a pillager and a lazy plunderer raiding
a village. The inadmissibility of the action undermines the pillager’s
entitlement to hold the plunderer accountable for slacking off in his search
for loot. There could not be an obligation to do one’s part in this activity
(Bratman, 1999, 132–6). For Bratman, this shows that there can be shared
activity without these obligations. Gilbert responds that it only shows that
the obligations in question are special, “of a different kind” (2009, 178)
than the sort of obligation familiar from discussion of moral philosophy.
She goes so far as to say that the obligations to do one’s part are present,
even when one’s partners in shared activity have coerced one into joining
them.
Gilbert’s later statements become more explicit about the directed nature
of these non-moral obligations (Gilbert 1997, 75–6). The obligation relates
Jack with Sue in a way in which Jack and a non-participant are not related
(Gilbert 2009; 2008, 497; this connects with recent discussion of “bipolar
normativity”; see Darwall 2006, Thompson 2004, and Wallace 2013). To
mark the directed nature of the normative relation, and in a way that does
not suggest as strongly that they are moral in nature, we might speak of
contralateral commitments (Roth 2004). Thus, Jack has a contralateral
commitment-to-Sue to walk in a way that is compatible with their walking
together.
Gilbert attempts to articulate the sense of directedness in terms of
ownership: Jack’s contralateral commitment to Sue to walk at the
appropriate pace entails that Sue is owed, and in a sense owns, the relevant
performance on Jack’s part (Gilbert 2008, 497). This would presumably
explain why Sue and not anyone else can release Jack from fulfilling the
Summer 2017 Edition 17
 Shared Agency
obligation/commitment, by giving up her claim on Jack’s action. One
might, in a related vein, try to articulate the directed nature of the
commitment in terms of promising.[35] If we understand Jack’s obligation
as the result of something like a promise to Sue, we can see not only that
Jack has a commitment, but that Sue is in a special position such that she
can, for example, release him from fulfilling it. One drawback, at least for
Gilbert, of appealing either to ownership or promising to articulate the
notion of directed obligation or contralateral commitment is that it is not
clear that this would allow for these commitments to be as insulated from
moral considerations as Gilbert seems to think they are (e.g. in the
response to Bratman above). A further question is whether ownership or
promising fully captures all that there is to the contralateral or directed
nature of the commitment. These strategies might explain why Sue is in a
special position to release Jack from his commitment. But one might
wonder whether there are other aspects of her special standing with
respect to Jack that are left unaddressed.[36] Furthermore, it might be that
certain aspects of promising - in particular the directedness of the
obligation - might in some way depend on shared agency or aspects
thereof. See Gilbert 2011 and Roth 2016.
While the notion of ownership or claim rights is meant to be suggestive of
the sort of mutual obligations/contralateral commitments she has in mind,
the central explanatory concept deployed by Gilbert is that of joint
commitment, which she takes to be primitive.[37] A concern here is
whether joint commitment provides anything like a philosophical account
or explanation of mutual obligations, or whether it merely re-describes
them. We get some idea of what Gilbert has in mind by contrasting it with
personal commitment associated with individual intention or decision
(2009, 180). Whereas one can on one’s own take on and rescind the sort of
commitment associated with individual intention and decision, joint
commitment can only be formed through a process whereby everyone
expresses their readiness, and it can only be rescinded when all parties
18 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
concur. This raises the issue of the previous section, of how exactly the
joint commitment comes into force. Even if everyone expresses a
readiness to A together, it doesn’t follow that we all take the plunge and
actually undertake it. A further worry Gilbert herself has voiced is whether
any condition requiring expression might limit the applicability of her
view in giving a more general account of political obligation, something
she aims to do (e.g., in her 2006). Gilbert’s view has also been charged
with circularity; it would seem that the expression of readiness needed to
establish joint commitment would itself be an instance of shared activity
and thus presuppose joint commitment. For discussion, see Tuomela 1992,
Tollefsen 2002, and Schmid 2014.
Understood as a kind of obligation, Gilbert’s insight about a distinctive
normative relation holding between participants in shared agency risks
rejection. Many find obligation, and especially the no-unilateral
withdrawal condition, to be too strong. Gilbert’s general idea might find
wider acceptance if we talk instead of commitment that allows for
unilateral withdrawal.[38] Finally, Stroud (2010) has suggested a
normative condition in some respects even weaker. Stroud holds that
participants in shared activity have a prerogative—a moral permission—
that can override or mitigate moral obligations had to non-participants
(such as that of beneficence). It remains to be seen to what extent this
might address the intuitions that motivated Gilbert’s original and
important insight.
5. The discursive dilemma and group minds
It was suggested earlier (in Section 1) that thinking of a group as itself an
agent and a subject of intentional states was not a good model or account
of central forms of shared intention and activity. But that’s not to say that
it’s never appropriate to talk this way. Indeed, Rovane, Pettit and others
have argued that some groups can be genuine subjects of intentional
Summer 2017 Edition 19
 Shared Agency
attitudes, and can have minds of their own. This would amount to a
different way in which individuals can act together, and raises interesting
questions about how a group’s intentions must be related to an individual’s
in practical reasoning.
Pettit starts with the assumption that a rational integration of a collective is
a sign of its mentality (2003, 181). He says,
… it is reasonable, even compulsory, to think of the integrated
collectivity as an intentional subject…The basis for this claim is
that the integrated collectivity, as characterized, is going to display
all the functional marks of an intentional subject…Within relevant
domains it will generally act in a manner that is rationalized by
independently discernible representations and goals; and within
relevant domains it will generally form and unform those
representations in a manner that is rationalized by the evidence that
we take to be at its disposal. (Pettit 2003, 182; see also Rovane
1998, 131–2 for a related line of thought.)
The group mind hypothesis thus seems to explain or account for the
rationality exhibited by the group, both in what it does and what it
represents. This explanatory role, if indispensable, would give us a reason
for admitting into our ontology groups with genuine minds of their own.
The point might be put in traditional Quinean terms: if a regimentation in
first order logic of our best empirical theory quantifies over such groups,
then such groups exist. But this sort of explanatory commitment needn’t
be quite as explicitly quantificational as Quine would have it, and Pettit
himself never mentions Quine. The ontological commitment might be
more implied in the content of our theory than a matter of logical form.
Another question to raise, if only to set aside on this occasion, is whether
the only sort of indispensability that can support the group mind
20 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
hypothesis is of the theoretical/explanatory sort. One might, for example,
consider whether the Rovane/Pettit line of thought could be run with the
assumption that the indispensability of such groups is practical in nature,
perhaps a condition for a sort of agency that individuals can and do
exercise (Roth 2014a, 140–141; Pettit 2015, 1642).
But is the group mind hypothesis explanatorily indispensable? If the
rational behavior, representation, speech, etc. can easily be explained (or
explained away) without invoking group minds, then the presumption of
mindedness is defeated. Thus, if we discover of what appears to be a
subject that its behavior was entirely controlled by or explicable in terms
of the attitudes and behavior of some other (or others), then one would no
longer have reason to think the subject in question as minded. For
example, if the rational behavior of a group is explained wholly in terms
of the individual members, then we are not tempted to think that the group
itself is genuinely minded (Watkins 1957). Or, if there is a very tight fit
between judgments and attitudes of the group on the one hand, and
members on the other – for example if ascriptions of attitudes to a group
just is a summary of ascriptions to its individual members (Quinton 1975–
6) – then there is no reason to think of the group as having a mind of its
own.
Pettit’s recent arguments address this worry. He has suggested that some
group decision procedures are such that past group judgments rationally
constrain subsequent decisions, judgments, and intentions. When such
“premise-driven” procedures are followed, a group not only displays a
rational unity indicative of mindedness, but does so in such a way that it
might arrive at a judgment that a minority—perhaps even none—of the
individual members personally hold.
Pettit draws on the literature on judgment aggregation (E.g. Kornhauser
and Sager, 1986; List & Pettit, 2002). Here’s a version of the sort of case
Summer 2017 Edition 21
 Shared Agency
Pettit has in mind: several colleagues (A, B, and C) heading to the APA
convention in Chicago have to decide whether to take the El (train) from
the airport. An affirmative judgment regarding each of the following
considerations or “premises” is necessary for the decision/conclusion to
get on board: whether the train is safe enough, whether it’s quick enough,
and whether it’s scenic enough (e.g. whether it’s okay that they’ll miss out
on a view of the lake). Let us also suppose, given appropriate background
assumptions, that the satisfaction of these conditions amounts to a
conclusive reason to take the train. Finally, suppose the group arrives at
judgments regarding the premises by majority vote as follows:
Safe enough? Quick enough? Scenic enough? Get on board?
A Yes No Yes No
B No Yes Yes No
C Yes Yes No No
No
Group Yes Yes Yes Yes╲
If the group decides on the conclusion by a majority vote on what each
individual personally thinks s/he ought to do, it will decide against taking
the train (this is the “no” in the upper triangle of the lower right box). But
this conclusion would be hard to square with the group judgments
concerning the three premises of the argument. Whereas, if the group
adopts the premise driven procedure, where the conclusion is determined
not by a vote but by group’s views regarding the premises, then the
group’s conclusion is rational (this is the “yes” in the lower triangle of the
lower right box).
Such a conclusion, however, is not obviously explicable in terms of the
personal conclusions of the members, each of whom concludes the
opposite. Thus, suppose (as Pettit does) that there are groups that do in
fact adopt the premise-driven procedure. Then, the rationality of the
group’s conclusion suggests that the group has a mind. Moreover, the
22 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
discontinuity between individual and group level attitudes concerning the
conclusion is such that the presumption of mindedness is not defeated.
This suggests to Pettit that, at least in some cases, groups can have minds
of their own, and be genuine intentional subjects.
One worry with this argument concerns how the premise-driven decision
procedure is implemented. If it’s simply implemented by virtue of the
intentions of each individual to establish and maintain rationality at the
group level, then there appears to be an alternative to the group mind
hypothesis. That the group appears to have a mind of its own in examples
such as this would then be an artifact of the restricted focus of the
example, which said nothing about how a policy of rationality at the
collective level is maintained. Once we broaden our perspective to
recognize that each individual aims to maintain rationality at the collective
level, it’s no longer clear that there is such a gap or discontinuity between
the intentionality at the level of the individuals and of the group. Thus,
there would be no warrant for talk of group minds.[39] Of course, this
criticism makes strong assumptions about how to explain any rationality
that might be exhibited at the group level, assumptions that are open to
challenge.
For some, taking seriously the idea that a group has a mind of its own
involves more than an empiricist commitment to the explanation of
phenomena. That is, a group mind is not merely a convenient posit
adopted from within the third person perspective of the intentional stance
for the purposes of explanation and prediction (Dennett 1987). A mind has
a point of view, and if sufficiently sophisticated, is a subject of
commitment and obligation. In developing ideas of Searle and Tuomela in
a new direction, Schmid (2014) argues that such a group mind would
require a distinctive form of plural self-awareness on the part of each of
the members of the group. He suggests that such groups do exist, and
Summer 2017 Edition 23
 Shared Agency
explores ways in which plural self-awareness is and is not analogous to the
self-awareness each of us as individuals exhibit.
Bibliography
Alonso, Facundo, 2009. “Shared Intention, Reliance, and Interpersonal
Obligations”, Ethics, 119: 444–475.
Anderson, Elizabeth, 2001. “Unstrapping the Straightjacket of
‘Preference’: a Comment on Amartya Sen’s Contributions to
Philosophy and Economics”, Economics and Philosophy, 17: 21–38.
Anscombe, G. E. M., 1963. Intention (2d edition), Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Bacharach, Michael, 2006. Beyond Individual Choice, N. Gold & R.
Sugden, eds., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Baier, Annette, 1997. “Doing things with Others: The Mental Commons”
in Alanen, L., S. Heinämaa, and T. Wallgren, eds., Commonality and
Particularity in Ethics, New York: St. Martin’s Press, Inc.
Bratman, Michael, 1987. Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
–––, 1992. “Shared Cooperative Activity”, The Philosophical Review,
101: 327–341.
–––, 1993. “Shared Intention”, Ethics, 104: 97–113.
–––, 1997a. “I Intend that We J”, in R. Tuomela and G. Holmstrom-
Hintikka (eds.), Contemporary Action Theory (Volume 2: Social
Action), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 49–63, reprinted in Bratman 1999: 142–
161.
–––, 1997b. “Shared Intention and Mutual Obligation”, originally
published as “Intention Partagée et Obligation Mutuelle,” in Les
limites de la rationalité (Volumes 1), Jean-Pierre Dupuy and Pierre
Livet (eds.), Joelle Proust, (trans.), Paris: Editions La Découverte,
246–66. Reprinted in Bratman 1999.
24 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
–––, 1999. Faces of Intention, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2009a. “Intention, Practical Rationality, and Self-
Governance”,Ethics, 119: 411–443.
–––, 2009b. “Modest sociality and the distinctiveness of intention”,
Philosophical Studies, 144: 149–165.
–––, 2009c. “Shared Agency”, in Philosophy of the social sciences :
philosophical theory and scientific practice, C. Mantzavinos, ed.,
Cambridge, UK; New York : Cambridge University Press, 41–59.
–––, 2014. Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together, New
York: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2015. “Shared Agency: Replies to Ludwig, Pacherie, Petersson, Roth,
and Smith”, Journal of Social Ontology, 1(1): 59–76.
Broome, John, 1999. “Normative requirements”, Ratio, 12: 398–419.
Chant, Sara Rachel, 2007. “Unintentional Collective Action”,
Philosophical Explorations, 10: 245–256.
Chant, Sara Rachel and Zachary Ernst, 2008. “Epistemic Conditions for
Collective Action”, Mind, 117(467): 549–573
Darwall, Stephen, 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint: Respect,
Morality, and Accountability., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Davidson, Donald, 1978. “Intending,” reprinted in Essays on Actions and
Events, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980: 83–102.
Dennett, Daniel C., 1987. The Intentional Stance, Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Dietz, Alexander, 2016. “What We Together Ought to Do”, Ethics, 126:
955–982.
Epstein, Brian, 2015. The Ant Trap, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gilbert, Margaret, 1989. On Social Facts, London: Routledge. Reprinted
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
–––, 1990. “Walking Together: A Paradigmatic Social Phenomenon”,
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 15: 1–14.
Summer 2017 Edition 25
 Shared Agency
–––, 1993. “Is an Agreement an Exchange of Promises?” Journal of
Philosophy, 90: 627–49. Reprinted in Gilbert 1996.
–––, 1996. Living Together, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
–––, 1997. “What Is It for Us to Intend?”, in Contemporary Action Theory,
vol. 2: The Philosophy and Logic of Social Action, G. Holmstrom-
Hintikka and R. Tuomela (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 65–85. Reprinted with minor revisions in Gilbert 2000.
–––, 1999. “Obligation and Joint Commitment”, Utilitas, 11:143–63.
Reprinted with minor revisions in Gilbert 2000, 50–70.
–––, 2000. Sociality and Responsibility, Lanham, MD.: Rowman &
Littlefield.
–––, 2002. “Considerations on Joint Commitment: Responses to Various
Comments”, in Social Facts & Collective Intentionality, G. Meggle
(ed.), Frankfurt am Main: DR. Hansel-Hohenhausen AG, pp. 73-101.
–––, 2006. A Theory of Political Obligation: Membership, Commitment,
and the Bonds of Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2008. “Two Approaches to Shared Intention: An Essay in the
Philosophy of Social Phenomena”, Analyze & Kritik, 30: 483–514.
–––, 2009. “Shared Intention and Personal Intention”, Philosophical
Studies, 144: 167–187.
–––, 2011. “Three Dogmas about Promising”, in Promises and
Agreements, Hanoch Sheinman (ed.), New York: Oxford University
Press, 73–101.
Gold, Natalie & Robert Sugden, 2007. “Collective Intentions and Team
Agency”, Journal of Philosophy, 104(3): 109–137
Goldman, Alvin, 1968. “Actions, Decisions, and Books of Life”,
American Philosophical Quarterly 5(3): 135–151.
–––, 1970. A Theory of Human Action, New York: Prentice-Hall.
Hampshire, Stuart, 1965. Freedom of the Individual, New York: Harper &
Row.
Hampshire, Stuart & H.L.A. Hart, 1958. “Decision, Intention and
26 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
Certainty”, Mind, LXVII: 1–12.
Harman, Gilbert, 1976. “Practical Reason”, Review of Metaphysics, 79:
431–63.
–––, 1986. Change in View, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hobbes Thomas, 1651. Leviathan, in E. Curley (ed.), Leviathan, with
selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1994.
Hurley, Susan, 1989. Natural Reasons, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Kornhauser, L. A., 1992a. “Modelling collegial courts. I. Path-
dependence”, International Review of Law and Economics, 12: 169–
85
–––, 1992b. “Modelling collegial courts. II. Legal doctrine”, Journal of
Law, Economics and Organization, 8: 441–70
Kornhauser, L. A. and L. G. Sager, 1986. “Unpacking the court”, Yale Law
Journal, 96(1): 82–117.
–––, 1993. “The one and the many: adjudication in collegial courts”,
California Law Review, 81: 1–59
Korsgaard, Christine, 2009. Self-Constitution—Agency, Identity, and
Integrity., Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kutz, Christopher, 2000. Acting Together. Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 61: 1–31.
Laurence, Ben, 2010. “An Anscombian Approach to Shared Agency”, in
A. Ford, J. Hornsby, and F. Stoutland (Eds.), Essays on Anscombe’s
Intention, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 270–298.
Lewis, David, 1969. Convention: a Philosophical Study. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
–––, 1983. Philosophical Papers, (Volume 1), New York: Oxford
University Press.
List, Christian and Pettit, Philip, 2006. “Group Agency and
Supervenience”, in Southern Journal of Philosophy (Spindel
Summer 2017 Edition 27
 Shared Agency
Conference 2005), 44: 85–105. [Preprint available online]
–––, 2002. “Aggregating Sets of Judgements: An Impossibility Result,”
Economics and Philosophy, 18: 89–110
Ludwig, Kirk, 2007. “Collective Intentional Behavior from the Standpoint
of Semantics”, Noûs 41, 3: 355–393.
–––, 2016. From Individual to Plural Agency (Collective Action: Volume
1), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McMahon, Christopher, 2005. “Shared Agency and Rational
Cooperation”, Noûs 39:2: 284–308.
–––, 2001. Collective Rationality and Collective Reasoning, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Miller, Seumas, 2001. Social Action: A Teleological Account, New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Pacherie, Elisabeth, 2007. “Is collective intentionality really primitive?”,
in M. Beaney, C. Penco & M. Vignolo (Eds.), Mental processes:
representing and inferring, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press:
153–175.
Peterssen, Björn, 2007. “Collectivity and Circularity”, Journal of
Philosophy, 104(3): 138–156.
–––, 2015. “Bratman, Searle, and Simplicity. A comment on Bratman,
Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together”, Journal of
Social Ontology 1(1): 27–38.
Pettit, Philip, 2001. “Collective Intentions” in N. Naffine, R. Owens, and
J. Williams (eds.), Intention in Law and Philosophy, Ashgate,
Dartmouth, pp. 241–54.
–––, 2003. “Groups with Minds of Their Own”, Socializing Metaphysics:
the Nature of Social Reality, F. Schmitt, ed., Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield: 167–93.
–––, 2009. “The Reality of Group Agents”, in Philosophy of the social
sciences : philosophical theory and scientific practice, C.
Mantzavinos (ed.), Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University
28 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
Press: 67–91.
–––, 2014. “Group Agents are Not Expressive, Pragmatic or Theoretical
Fictions”, Erkenntnis, 79: 1641–1662
Pettit, Philip and Christian List, 2011. Group Agency: The Possibility,
Design, and Status of Corporate Agents, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Pettit, Philip and Schweikard, David, 2006. “Joint Actions and Group
Agents”, Philosophy of Social Sciences, 36: 18–39. [Preprint
available online]
Quinton, Anthony, 1975–6. “Social Objects”, Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, 75: 1–27.
Robins, Michael H., 2002. “Joint Commitment and Circularity”, in Social
Facts & Collective Intentionality, G. Meggle, ed., Frankfurt am
Main: DR. Hansel-Hohenhausen AG: 299-321.
Roth, Abraham Sesshu, 2003. “Practical Intersubjectivity”, in Socializing
Metaphysics: the Nature of Social Reality, F. Schmitt, ed., Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 65–91.
–––, 2004. “Shared Agency and Contralateral Commitments”,
Philosophical Review, 113(3): 359–410
–––, 2014a. “Indispensability, the Discursive Dilemma, and Groups with
Minds of Their Own”, in From Individual to Collective Intentionality,
S. Chant, F. Hindriks, and G. Preyer, eds., Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 137–162.
–––, 2014b. “Prediction, Authority, and Entitlement in Shared Activity”,
Noûs, 48:4, 626–652.
–––, 2015. “Practical Intersubjectivity and Normative Guidance: Bratman
on Shared Agency,” Journal of Social Ontology, 1(1): 39–48.
–––, 2016. “Intention, Expectation, and Promissory Obligation”, Ethics,
127:1, 88–115
Rovane, Carol, 1997. The Bounds of Agency: An Essay in Revisionary
Metaphysics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Summer 2017 Edition 29
 Shared Agency
Scanlon, Thomas, 1998. What We Owe to Each Other, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Schmid, Hans Bernhard, 2008. “Plural Action”, Philosophy of the Social
Sciences., 38:1: 25–54.
Schmid, Hans Bernhard, 2014. “Plural Self-Awareness”, Phenomenology
and the Cognitive Sciences., 13: 7–24.
Searle, John, 1990. “Collective Intentions and Actions”, in Intentions in
Communication, edited by P. Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. Pollack,
401–415. Cambridge: MIT Press.
–––, 1995. The Construction of Social Reality, New York: Free Press.
Sellars, Wilfred, 1963. “Imperatives, Intentions, and the Logic of
‘Ought’”, in Morality and the Language of Conduct, edited by
Hector-Neri Castaneda and George Nakhnikian. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press.
–––, 1968. Science and Metaphysics, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Setiya, Kieran, 2010. “Intention”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
(Spring 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/intention/>.
Shiffrin, Seana, 2008. “Promising, Intimate Relationships, and
Conventionalism”, Philosophical Review, 117(4): 481–524.
Smith, Thomas, 2015. “Shared Agency on Gilbert and Deep
Discontinuity”, Journal of Social Ontology, 1(1): 49–58.
Stoutland, Frederick, 1997. “Why are Philosophers of Action So Anti-
Social?”, in Commonality and Particularity in Ethics, L. Alanen, S.
Heinämaa, and T. Walgren (eds.), New York: St. Martin’s.
Stroud, Sarah, 2010. “Permissible Partiality, Projects, and Plural Agency”,
in J. Cottingham and B. Feltham, (eds.), Partiality and Impartiality:
Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Thompson, Michael, 2004. “What is it to Wrong Someone? A Puzzle
about Justice”, in Reason and Value, R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit,
30 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
Samuel Scheffler and Michael Smith (eds.), Oxford University Press,
333–384.
–––, 2008, Life and Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Tollefsen, Deborah Perron, 2002. “Collective Intentionality and the Social
Sciences”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 32(1): 25–50.
Tuomela, Raimo, 2003. “The We-Mode and the I-Mode”, in Socializing
Metaphysics: the Nature of Social Reality, F. Schmitt (ed.), Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield: 93–127.
–––, 2007. The Philosophy of Sociality: The Shared Point of View, New
York: Oxford University Press.
Tuomela, Raimo, & Miller, Kaarlo, 1988. “We-Intentions”, Philosophical
Studies, 53: 367–389.
Velleman, J. David, 1997a. “How to Share an Intention”, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 57: 29–50.
–––, 1997b. “Deciding How to Decide”, in Ethics and Practical
Reasoning, Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (eds.), Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 29–52.
–––, 2001. Review of Michael Bratman’s Faces of Intention, The
Philosophical Quarterly, 51(202): 119–121.
Wallace, R. Jay, 2013. “The Deontic Structure of Morality”, in Thinking
about Reasons: Essays in Honour of Jonathan Dancy, David
Bakhurst, Brad Hooker, and Margaret Olivia Little (eds.), Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 137–167.
Watkins, J.W.N., 1957. “Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences”,
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 8(30): 104 –117.
Wilson, George, 1989, The Intentionality of Human Action, Stanford:
Stanford University Press
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953. Philosophical Investigations, G.E.M.
Anscombe and R. Rhees (eds.), G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford:
Blackwell.
Summer 2017 Edition 31
 Shared Agency Abraham Sesshu Roth

Academic Tools 2. Compare the passage from Wittgenstein (PI 621): “…when ‘I raise my
arm’, my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I
How to cite this entry. subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?”
Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP
Society. 3. This point is implicit in Searle, as when he describes the case of mere
Look up this entry topic at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology aggregation by saying that “there is just a sequence of individual acts that
Project (InPhO). happen to converge on a common goal” (403, emphasis added). The point
Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers, with links is more explicitly made in the discussion of Searle in Pacherie 2007.
to its database.
4. A passage from Hobbes (1651, 3) is suggestive of the view: “By art is
Other Internet Resources created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State—(in Latin,
Civitas) which is but an artificial man…” See Rovane 1997, Tollefsen
Collective Intentionality, entry on the Internet Encyclopedia of 2002, Pettit 2003. See below for discussion of Pettit's discursive dilemma
Philosophy argument for group minds.
Categories at PhilPapers on
collective intentionality Gilbert (1989, 163; 1990; 1997) has spoken of plural subjects, insisting
collective intentions that several individuals can be subject to a mental state, and rejecting the
collective action idea that, properly speaking, only a single individual is the subject of a
particular mental state. But she also disavows a supra-individual entity.
Related Entries Her talk of plural subject agents is, arguably, best interpreted not as a
metaphysical claim, but one about the nature of the special obligations and
action | agency | intentionality: collective | practical reason: and the rights holding between participants in shared activity. See below.
structure of actions | responsibility: collective | rights: group Velleman 1997a speaks of a concrete, public event as being an intention.
And Bratman 1993 thinks of a shared intention as a feature of a group of
Acknowledgments individuals (see below). But neither endorses any claim about groups
having minds.)
I would like to thank Michael Bratman for helpful comments on a draft.
5. Consider an action description such as:
Notes to Shared Agency
We are singing the national anthem.
1. To take examples from Gilbert 1990, Bratman 1992, and Searle 1990.
On the Davidsonian approach, the verb phrase is handled by existential
quantification over event types — in this case singings of the national

32 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Summer 2017 Edition 33

 Shared Agency
anthem. Part of what is being said, then, is that there is some event of the
singing of the national anthem type. But who or what is doing this
singing? Not the group, says Ludwig. Rather, we have some implicit
restricted quantification over individual members: each individual
amongst us bears the agent relation to an event that is a singing of the
national anthem. At this point, there is a scope ambiguity, depending on
the ordering of the two quantifiers. If the first is the restricted quantifier
over each of us, then each individual is the agent of what could be her own
singing of the anthem. This yields the distributive reading of the action
description. Alternatively, the event quantifier can come first and have
wide scope, in which case there is a single event that is a singing of the
national anthem, and each of us is an agent of it. This yields the collective
reading of action description. (See Ludwig 2016, Chapter 9). Notice that
neither reading requires a supra-individual group agent. In particular, all
that’s required for the collective reading is that there be a single event of
which there are a number of agents.
6.It is widely held that the commitment associated with intention
distinguishes it from attitudes such as desire, and accounts for the
distinctive role it plays in practical reasoning. Harman 1976, 1986;
Bratman 1987.
7. The term ‘participatory intention’ is coined by Kutz 2000. The Intention
Thesis might make it sound as if one is prejudging the matter in favor of
reductivists. But we’ll see that some theorists who are in some respects
non-reductive satisfy the Intention Thesis. Searle, for example, does; and
even Gilbert does (if we interpret her talk of derived personal
commitments as entailing an intention or intention-like state).
8. Regarding mutual belief, see Lewis 1969. For some recent discussion,
see Chant & Ernst 2008.
34 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
9. In a related vein, Gold and Sugden (2007, 111) point out that Tuomela
and Miller's analysis would entail that every Nash equilibrium—even
when both parties defect in the Prisoner's Dilemma—as a case of shared
activity. Strictly speaking, that is not the case, for as Gold and Sugden
recognize, Tuomela and Miller talk of the individuals intending to do their
parts, which is not how players in a Prisoner's Dilemma see themselves.
10. For discussion of circularity, see Kutz 2000, Bratman 1997, and
Petersson 2007. Whether this is a real problem depends on what the aims
of the proposal are. A metaphysical reduction of collective action and
intention might tolerate appeal to intentions whose content involves
unreduced concepts of collective intentionality (Setiya 2010).
11. See Sellars (1963; 1968, 217). Tuomela's later view is similar to Searle
in that there there is no reduction to individual intentions. But he wouldn't
be described as primitivist; unlike Searle, Tuomela characterizes “we-
mode” intentions functionally. There is no reduction of ‘we-mode’
intentions to ‘I-mode’ intentions because each has a distinctive holistic or
functional characterization. See Tuomela 2003, 2007.
12. Commentators have had some difficulty assimilating Searle's rejection
of anti-individualism with his treatment of collective phenomena. For a
helpful critical discussion see Pacherie 2007, who (perhaps uncharitably)
charges Searle with inconsistency. In particular, she tries to show that
Searle is committed to describing certain cases (where one is under an
illusion that one is acting with someone) in a way that is at odds with his
rejection of anti-individualism.
13. There may be ways to elaborate and extend to the interpersonal the
means-end structure which, according to Searle, relates collective with
individual intentionality within a single mind. But it's not something he
explores.
Summer 2017 Edition 35
 Shared Agency
14.See Bratman 1993, 113 (1999, 129) for an explicit characterization of
the view as reductive.
15. “Shared Intention”, Faces, 112. The strategy is to apply to groups of
individuals the theoretical framework of Lewisian functionalism (see
papers in Lewis 1982).
16. Though, as Bratman (1992, 340) points out, this requirement must be
qualified in light of competitive games. See also Searle (1990, 413–13).
17. Interestingly, Bratman's requirement does not explicitly require the
actual meshing of subplans. What would happen if each intends the
meshing of subplans, but they simply do not succeed at it? For shared
activity, Bratman requires that our intentions lead to the activity by way of
mutual responsiveness (1992, 339), so our failure in meshing our plans
would presumably prevent us from engaging in the activity, or do so only
with difficulty. However, Bratman's account of shared intention (1993)
only requires the intention to mesh, and would seem to allow that
individuals share intentions even though they fail utterly in their attempts
to mesh their subplans.
18. Bratman 2009a seems to think of these constraints as wide-scope, in
the sense of Broome 1999. But there is some worry that Broome's
conception of normative constraints doesn't address the element of
commitment and stability that is distinctive of intention.
19. The example is due to S. Shiffrin. Bratman's view can handle these
cases. He does not require the meshing of super-ordinate intentions,
motives, or reasons. See his 1999, 122.
20. Unless, perhaps, fellow participants understand this to be your motive
and are willing nevertheless to act with you.
36 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
21. At least in the basic cases that don't involve authority relations
established by more basic shared activity (Gilbert 2008, 180). For Gilbert's
notion of joint commitment, see below.
22. Gilbert 2008, 494–5; there is also discussion of the no unilateral
withdrawal condition in earlier work, such as Gilbert 1990.
23. For Bratman 1993, the structure of related intentions serve to
coordinate action and planning, as well as structure bargaining between
participants.
24. Searle 1990, Bratman 1992. Velleman 2001 has also come around to
this view about the object of what is intended.
25. Velleman 1997a. Others: Baier 1997, Stoutland 1997. One issue is that
some think that you cannot intend more than your own actions; or, if you
can, it is only as a result of one's own actions. But even if one is more
liberal about the possible objects that may fall into the range of what's
directly intended, such that one may intend more than one's own actions,
there remains the worry that this is precluded in the case of shared activity.
26. So called by Bratman (1997). For some, the settling condition implies
belief: the sense in which I’m settled on A-ing when I intend to A entails
that I believe that I will A (Harman 1976, Velleman 1989). Even if one
doesn’t have such a strong belief requirement on intention, there remains
the worry of how to reconcile the respect with which one should regard
the agency of fellow participants with the idea that one’s intention settles
the matter. Thus, Bratman takes this problem seriously, even though he
doesn’t endorse the strong belief condition on intention.
27. This makes Velleman's concern to be one of reconciling shared activity
with the autonomy of the participants. This is certainly one aspect of
Velleman's worry. But he also is concerned with the problem of shared
Summer 2017 Edition 37
 Shared Agency
discretion, which, if anything, is closer to worries about causal exclusion:
if whether we J is up to me, how could it also be up to you?
28. Velleman 1997a, 36ff. Velleman is inspired by a plausible reading of
some earlier work of Gilbert such as Gilbert 1990, 7. Gilbert 1989 is also
cited. No page references are given, but presumably he has in mind pp.
198, 409-10.
29. To be fair to Velleman, it should also be noted that the thesis of
interdependent conditional intentions is only a part of his proposal. A
further element of the view is that the public event constituted by the
expressions of these conditional intentions by each party is, on
causal/functional grounds, an intention. It's in this way that individual
(participatory) conditional intentions are supposed to “add up” to a joint or
shared categorical intention. Note also that at the individual level—i.e. the
participatory intention—the conditional character of the intention is never
lost. See Velleman 2001. Presumably, it's the crucial element to capture
how intentions are shared in a way that respects the agency of other
participants, or in a way that makes them genuinely interdependent.
(That's why Velleman doesn't really hold the view that one person has the
conditional intention and the other intends categorically, a view that would
avoid the problem with the settling condition.)
30. Bratman 1997, in Bratman 1999, 155. For debate about prediction of
one's own actions, see Goldman 1968, 1970 and Hampshire 1965. Roth
2014b expresses some skepticism about the predictive strategy.
31. See note 10 above for references concerning circularity.
32. The reasoning must be characterized in a way that doesn't presuppose
the notions we're seeking to explicate.
38 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Abraham Sesshu Roth
33. For team reasoning, see Bacharach 2006, Hurley 1989 and Anderson
2001. For application of team reasoning to characterizing participatory
intentions, see Bacharach 2006, 138; Gold & Sugden, 2007. Tuomela
2003 holds a related view, although not motivated from considerations of
game theory.
34. Another passage: “As long as people are out on a walk together, they
will understand that each has an obligation to do what he or she can to
achieve the relevant goal.” (1996, 184). See also Gilbert 1989, 162, 409,
411.
35. Korsgaard 2009, 189 understands “everyday interaction” (which
presumably includes acting together) along similar lines, invoking the
notion of ownership, but also that of promising. See also Scanlon's
Principle F mentioned above. One advantage Scanlon sees for his view
over the rival social practice view of promising is that it better reflects the
directed nature of the obligation, and thus better captures who is primarily
wronged when one fails to keep a promise (Scanlon 1998, 316).
36. For example, though Sue might be able to release Jack from the
commitment, if they are doing something together, she might in addition
have more of an active role in determining how he goes about fulfilling his
commitment, and how he modifies the commitment in changing
circumstances.
37. Although Gilbert 2009, 183 does appeal to ownership again in
showing how her notion of joint commitment explains directed obligation.
38. Something that would be secured if individuals could act directly on
each other’s intentions much in the way each may act on his or her own
prior intentions. See Roth 2004.
Summer 2017 Edition 39
 Shared Agency

39. Pettit is less clear in earlier pieces on how the decision procedure—
and the policy of maintaining rationality at the collective level—is
implemented (Pettit 2001, 2003). More recently, Pettit and Schweikard
2006 have dispelled some of this mystery, with the suggestion that shared
activity (understood along Bratmanian and Tuomelan lines) figure in
implementing the decision procedure and rationality at the collective level.
They do so, however, at the risk of weakening the case for group minds.

Copyright © 2017 by the author

Abraham Sesshu Roth

40 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy