University of Zurich, philosophical seminar

Spring semester 2022

Term paper «political philosophy»

lecturer: Prof. Dr. Jennifer Page

The conditions for shared intentions and their impact on

collective responsibility

Date of submission second draft: 17. Mai 2022

Signs with space: 42’187

written by:
Samuel Dürr
Rötelstrasse 27
8006 Zürich

078 847 26 24
samuel.duerr@uzh.ch

matriculation number: 19-751-627

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Inhalt
Introduction........................................................................................................................................... 3
Bratman on shared intentions................................................................................................................ 4
Bratman’s conditions for shared intentions................................................................................... 4
Why meshing subplans are necessary............................................................................................ 4
Meshing subplans in competition?................................................................................................. 5
The pressure of engaging in a shared intention ............................................................................. 6
Bratman’s conclusion..................................................................................................................... 6
Sadler on shared Intentions and shared responsibility........................................................................... 6
Structure of the argument.................................................................................................................. 6
Sadler on Bratman.............................................................................................................................. 7
Bratman’s answer........................................................................................................................... 7
The problem of temporal asymmetry............................................................................................. 7
Sadler’s alternative to the “we” intention...................................................................................... 7
Possible objection to the necessity of an assumption and it’s invalidation ........................................ 8
Sadler’s conditions for a shared intention.......................................................................................... 9
The limitations of Bratman’s approach.............................................................................................. 9
No meshing subplans needed......................................................................................................... 9
The vagueness of sharing................................................................................................................. 10
A clear case of no shared intention.................................................................................................. 10
Proposal for an additional necessary condition............................................................................ 10
Objections to my objection.............................................................................................................. 11
My reply to the counterarguments.................................................................................................. 12
Sadler’s problem of the relevant intention...................................................................................... 12
Objection to his seeming solution................................................................................................ 13
Sadler on the relationship between shared intentions for collective responsibility .........................13
Application of his argument on different examples......................................................................... 13
“I never intended for you to do that”........................................................................................... 14
Where I agree with Sadler................................................................................................................ 14
Are there different implications for moral responsibility resulting out of our different approaches?
......................................................................................................................................................... 14
Conclusion............................................................................................................................................ 15
References............................................................................................................................................ 18

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Introduction
There is something special about experiencing a shared intention. A unification takes place, where
two individuals decide to engage in something connecting them. Shared intentions built a great
motivator in our society for lots of actions that people usually wouldn’t engage in for different
reasons. Specifically, the text talks about intentions and their relationship with each other. However,
Bratman and Sadler disagree on further details about the definition of shared intentions. Where they
agree on is that the intention of each party must conditionally depend on the others intention.

One can do the same thing independent of a shared action and it might be completely different. The
social dependency doesn’t give people just a reason to act but can make the difference between a
meaningful action and an action without any sense. For example, if we both plan to throw a stone
into the water on a specific time of the day on two different continents around the globe and
unfortunately you oversleep, then my whole attempt to engage in the shared activity is meaningless.
All the effort involved in the exact timing of my action at the specific time becomes meaningless if
you fail to do your part as planned. So not only did you fail to do your part, but you also took away
the meaning of my action, which is quite a drastic difference to what was actually planned. It is the
difference between a magic synchronicity, respectively, a conscious and perfectly timed action of two
people only made possible by reliable watches, and me throwing a stone into the water. This little
difference in action, but drastic difference in meaning is explained by the value of shared intention,
which is definitely worth investigating further.

In this term paper, two different perspectives about the nature of shared intentions are compared.
Bratman and Sadler each tried to give conditions that must be fulfilled for intentions to become
shared intentions. In addition, Sadler builds a bridge from shared intentions to collective
responsibility and showed that shared intentions are not just sufficient for causal responsibility, but
also moral. I take the side of Sadler’s approach rather than Bratman’s, although there is a lot of
overlapping between both. However, I believe that Sadler’s conditions for a shared intention are not
complete yet, because he didn’t specify any conditions for the content of the intention. Furthermore,
I am not satisfied with his answer to the question, which of the intentions are relevant for the shared
intention, because he assumed that the question dissolves since both parties know implicitly, which
intention the relevant is. The biggest difference between Sadler and Bratman is that Sadler doesn’t
include an intention that “we do x” as necessary for each intention to become shared. (Sadler, 2006)

To sum up, I believe that the intention of both parties must be based conditionally on the intention
of the other initiated through an assumption about the others intention. However, I argue that there
must be at least one more condition for the relationship between the content of the intentions that

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differentiates such intentions having nothing to do with others regarding the content from intentions
that have some overlapping and are therefore shared.

Bratman on shared intentions

Bratman calls the analysis of intention being an analysis of planning. He defines shared intentions as
intentions, other attitudes of the individuals as well as the relation between those attitudes. Shared
intentions help to bring about goal-directed coordination for shared activity, by coordinated
planning. (Bratman, 1992)

Bratman’s conditions for shared intentions

He proposes 4 different views:

View 1: A group of two intends to x if and only if

1. ..one intends that they do x and the other’s intention is likewise

The missing part here is that one must know about the intention of the other, which is added in the
second view. (Bratman, 1992)

2. ..1. Is known between them

The problem here shown by a kidnapping example shows that the kidnapper can make the other
person intend the same action as the kidnapper intends to do because the other person doesn’t
want to die. He argues that this isn’t the kind of collective agency meant by shared attention.
(Bratman, 1992)

The next additional step to integrate in View 3 is an interdependence which describes the
requirement that the intention to do x only makes sense, because the other person also intends to
do x, which is why he provided another condition. (Bratman, 1992)

3. ..Each intends that they do x because of 1

 Now the second condition must include that 1 and 3 are common knowledge between them.

Why meshing subplans are necessary

Moreover, Bratman mentions that View 3 doesn’t make sense in a scenario where both cooperators
are not willing to act upon their intention. Another absurd possibility is that, because of a lack of
similarity in intention, one is trying to trick the other to make that person do x. The problem is that
shared intention is there to unify the intended action by supporting coordinated planning. (Bratman,
1992)

He points out that the sameness of intention doesn’t have to reach the level of identical subplans,
but at least meshing subplans are required. What he means is that lots of details aren’t relevant, but
some are for having a shared intention. For example, if we have the shared intention to play football
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in Zurich, then it doesn’t matter if they didn’t have the same football in mind, but if one intends
playing on the field in the city as usual and the other in the agglomeration, they have a problem of
subplans. However, he shows that subplans are not yet needed to mesh for having a shared
intention, but the shared intention must imply to do x by meshing their subplans. (Bratman, 1992)

In View 4, the second point is changed to the following:

-> One intends that they do x in accordance with and because of 1., and meshing subplans of 1.; the
other intends that they do x in accordance with and because of 1., and meshing subplans of 1..
(Bratman, 1992)

In addition, Bratman illustrates, that intense discussions about the subplans can take place, which
doesn’t mean that the shared intention is cancelled as long as the discussion is about how to
implement the intention and not if. On the one hand he makes the claim that if one party puts a lot
of pressure on the other about how things will be done, then it might end in the dissolution of the
intention, on the other hand he claims that even though the activity might not be fully cooperative
anymore, it might still base on a shared intention as well as coordination in planning and acting.
(Bratman, 1992)

Again, the missing link of View 3 is the condition for aiming at meshing subplans. What it does imply
is a consistent individual plan that supports to bring about joint x activity, where each intention that
they do x is successful, which doesn’t imply the consistency of both subplans. Again, if we go back to
the football example. Both intended to play soccer in Zurich, partly because the others intention to
do the same. The intention of both implies that the other succeeds in doing his or her part, but
because the condition of the subplans isn’t included yet, it might still be the case that both go to
different pitches, because details were not discussed yet. This problem is solved by View 4. Another
advantage of view 4 is, that shared intention can coexist with different motives for the action.
(Bratman, 1992)

Meshing subplans in competition?

He sees a possible problem in competitive games, because of a lack of meshing subplans. All
competitors try to keep their plan in the dark to win, but I personally believe the only necessary
subplans that need to be clarified are the range of possible activities within the rules, when and
maybe who to start, when to end and the conditions for winning. There might be more things to
clarify depending on the competition. (Bratman, 1992)

The pressure of engaging in a shared intention

He further explains how View 4 can come to the above explained: There is pressure on both
participants to bring about x, because of the necessity to have a coherent plan and of course also not
to do things that run contrary to the intended action. He clarifies that the pressure might not be
necessary but surely the aiming for coordinated implementation of the intention. (Bratman, 1992)

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View 3 brings up this kind of pressure, because each participant intends to do x partly, because the
other does likewise and therefore, they aim at the efficacy of the others intention. The difference
between View 2 is that the connection between the cooperators is not just cognitively, because it
means having the goal that the others intention is succeeding and to act upon it. (Bratman, 1992)

View 3 involves the conditions that both must follow their intention in consensus with the other’s
subplans. The point he tries to make is that the pressure, which might result out of this condition
pushes the participants to coordinate their planning and action as well as discussing details about the
joint activity. (Bratman, 1992)

Bratman’s conclusion
Until now he laid out personal intentions and shared intentions. He states that individual intentions
are stable parts of their bigger plans. The plans follow a means-end-coherence and consistency,
which I understand as a concrete idea for regulating one’s own behavior and thereby also the
external world in a way that follows a certain goal. Bratman points out that those facts about the
nature of intentions produce some problems, which will be mentioned later. However, what a shared
intention certainly consist of is coordinated planning and acting as well as discussions about subplans
of the intended activity. Furthermore, it mainly persists of a set of attitudes of each cooperator. The
attitudes and especially the intentions must satisfy certain conditions of stability across time and a
meaningful connection between them depending on the specific intention itself. Now these
intentions are followed by the right planning, discussions of subplans and acting, which ends up in
the right coordinated planning and collective shared activity. The latter is essentially explained by a
smooth performance of the former. All those sub elements are part of the shared intention. His core
idea is that shared intentions persist of attitudes from individuals and their interrelations while
negating, that shared intentions can be deviated by things external to the individual. (Bratman, 1992)

Sadler on shared Intentions and shared responsibility

Structure of the argument
The goal of Sadler’s essay „Shared Intention and Shared Responsibility” is to bring clarity into the
topic of collective responsibility by shining the light onto collective intentions. (Sadler, 2006)

Sadler on Bratman
His first argument against Bratman is very fundamental, namely, Bratman’s belief that shared
intentions are held by individuals, meaning that an Individual can intend an action of a group,
contradicts the characteristic of intentions relating to one’s own actions, which one is in control of,
which also settle a deliberative question for oneself. Practically, this means that Bratman’s first
proposition, that if one intends that they do x, then that person violates the criteria above for
multiple reasons. It isn’t just his or her intention because all participants must intend x. The intention
isn’t explicitly under one’s control, because if one person does the best to bring the intention into

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manifestation, it might still be the case that the other person fails to act alike. Furthermore, it settles
not just things for the person intending that they do x, but also for the other person because of the
necessary interrelation, which constitutes the needed connection differentiating separate intentions
from shared intentions. (Sadler, 2006)

Bratman’s answer
Bratman’s answers to this first objection with a conditional that each participants intention that they
do x is depending on the other’s intention that they do x. Consequently, no intention individually
determines what they do, which should leave the problem away that one person settles anything for
the group. This Conditional makes the intention a shared intention and at the same time still meets
the criteria for an intention. (Sadler, 2006)

Since it is hard to imagine how this two-sided conditional can be dissolved, Bratman replied to this
difficulty by showing that behind the conditional is an implicit assumption made about what the
cooperator might intend. So additionally, to the Conditional described above, an assumption seems
to be included in the intention, which can be described as a certain confidence that the other party
involved will act in the way necessary to trigger the actions in the Conditional. (Sadler, 2006)

The problem of temporal asymmetry

According to both Bratman and Sadler, usually a shared intention contains the problem that there is
asymmetry in time happening, because the intention of one person exists first and this is the trigger
for the other’s intention. The former already expresses an intention that is based on an assumption
at a point of time where the latter probably didn’t have one. I understand the problem as the
question, that if we can talk about such a case being a shared intention given that the action was
triggered by one person’s assumption-based intention, then it means that the shared intention
depended on this asymmetry unless both parties transmit their intention at the same time. (Sadler,
2006)

Sadler’s alternative to the “we” intention

Furthermore, Sadler tries to show in an example, where the second participator isn’t concurring in
the shared activity that the shared intention might not be an intention that we do x, but rather an
intention that one intends to do x if the other will join the first. The argument for this assumption is
that in a case where the second person doesn’t participate as planned, Bratman would argue that the
thought process is focused on the false assumption, which will end in giving up the intention. Sadler
argues that it makes more sense to assume that the failure of action will be attributed to the
unwillingness of the other person. Conclusively, he states that it might depend on the situation,
which approach seems more reasonable, meaning that sometimes a shared intention fails because of
a failed assumption and sometimes because of one person’s unwillingness to do one’s part of the
shared intention. (Sadler, 2006)

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I made my own example here for the latter case. Let’s assume that you found a new buddy in school
with big muscles, and you intend to work out with him, and you believe that he accepts your offer,
because he looks like a guy that spends hours every day in the gym and loves working out.
Unfortunately, he refuses to join you, because not only doesn’t he like working out in the gym, but
he also never did. In such a case you wouldn’t be mad at him or anything alike respectively you
probably wouldn’t attribute giving up your intention, because of his unwillingness to join you but
rather because of your unexpected bad assumption. (Sadler, 2006)

Possible objection to the necessity of an assumption and it’s invalidation

A possible objection I thought of might be that believing an assumption is necessary for a shared
intention to come about is wrong, because there can be other reasons for somebody trying to
engage in a shared activity via shared intention. For example, if somebody is bored and just wants to
engage with a person out of boredom by asking another person to play soccer, then there doesn’t
have to be an assumption as the foundation for this question. The thought process of the person
asking could be something like “Let’s ask this person if she wants to play soccer even though I have
absolutely no clue what her answer will be and I don’t even feel like playing football, but if she says
yes, then I’ll play soccer with her.” In this thought process is no assumption involved, but if the other
person replies with “yes, let’s play soccer”, then there is a shared intention where the person putting
the idea about a possible shared activity on the table, does this without having an assumption about
the possible intention of the other person.

This objection seeming to contradict Sadlers argument, even though I believed it at first sight, I argue
that it isn’t a valid one. The only difference between this potential scenario and the common one is
that here the person assuming what the other person intends and with that, initiating the shared
intention, is different from the person asking for the shared activity. By answering “yes, let’s play
soccer”, the second person is making an assumption about the first person asking to play soccer,
namely, that he wants to play soccer, and on that ground, she forms a condition-based intention. In
response, he will either let her intention dissolve for example by admitting that he was just asking for
fun and doesn’t want to play or reacts maybe with an “alright”, meaning that he has now also
formed a condition-based intention making the situation sufficient for a shared intention.

Sadler’s conditions for a shared intention

Sadler defines the following conditions for a shared intention:

1. I intend to act because you do too.

2. You intend to act because I do too.
3. I see your intention as sufficient reason for my intention to act and
you see my intention to act as sufficient for your intention to act.
4. Each intention is defined as “I intend to x”.
5. 1-3 are common knowledge between both.
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X in 4. doesn’t have to be necessarily the same. He specifies criteria 5 as both knowing or believing
the stated facts. He further mentions that things tend to get much more complex if one goes into
detail of what this “knowing” or “believing” means. He argues that this is the case because shared
intention is often expressed nonverbally by different complicated, but often little reactions. (Sadler,
2006)

The limitations of Bratman’s approach

Sadler describes his proposal as less limiting in the sense that individual intentions can differ from
participating in joint activities. Each cannot just act differently, but cross-purposed without seeing
one’s action as essential part to fulfill a shared goal and without thinking of the action as being
cooperative. By omitting “joint activity” as a necessary condition for the individual’s intention, the
problem of competitive games is dissolved, because meshing subplans aren’t required without this
criterion. The competitive game shows a situation where each intention is sufficient reason for the
other participant to act, which makes it coordinated, but serving no hidden purpose as Sadler argues.
However, the interdependence gives us motives to act in a way, which would otherwise be rather
absurd. Although this activity might not be cooperative, the interdependence between the intentions
comes along with responsibility and reactive attitudes. (Sadler, 2006)

No meshing subplans needed

Because Sadler doesn’t include joint activity as an essential part, meshing subplan aren’t necessary
either, which is exactly what brings problems to Bratman’s proposal, because of the lacking ability to
apply to cooperative activities. He further replies to the objection that the necessity of the individual
intention taking the form “I intend to do x” instead of “I intend that we x” would make it impossible
to come from interdepending intentions to joint activities. His answer contends the argument, that it
is exactly the intention of an individual to do x, which gives the other individual reason to intend the
interlocked intention to do y. This shows that there is no Intention that we do x needed to bring
about a joint activity. (Sadler, 2006)

The vagueness of sharing

Sadler states that the main difference between him and Bratman is that compared to Bratman he
doesn’t include a “we” intention into the definition. He admits that if one takes the idea of a shared
intention literally, meaning that there must be one intention that is shared, then his proposal isn’t
sufficient for this criterion. However, he believes that by showing that there is interlocking between
the participants intention happening, it generates value that distinguishes shared intentions from
individual intentions that aren’t interlocked. (Sadler, 2006)

A clear case of no shared intention

I thought about a case where the criteria for a shared intention brought forward by Sadler are met,
but where I still wouldn’t call it a shared intention. The following example seems to me as sufficient
to meet that criterion.

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Let’s assume that two friends talk to each other on the phone, and one asks the other “do you want
to talk to your father?” while the second person is surprised of the question, because he never talks
to his father, neither has he intended to do so anytime soon and replies “Why”? The first answers “If
you talk to your father, then I’ll eat some more chocolate” and the second replies “Fine let’s do this”.
Despite the fact that this might be an uncommon situation, there are many cases like this or to make
it more abstract, there are many cases where two people form an intention based on an assumption
about the others intention that is condition based, but other than that seem to have nothing to do
with each other. I think we wouldn’t talk about such a case being a shared intention, because there is
nothing about the content of the intention, that is shared. What follows is a very fundamental critic
on Sadler’s approach, namely, that the content of the intention must be specified, because
additionally to the other criteria there must be something shared in the content of the intention to
make it a shared intention. What the relationship between the content of each person could look like
is proposed in the following passage.

Proposal for an additional necessary condition

I can imagine two appropriate things that would fulfill that condition, either there is an essential
characteristic shared of the activity each intends or the relationship between each person and the
activity is similar. For example, if two friends build a condition-based intention that one friend
touches a spider and the other friend takes an elevator on the 5th floor, then there still seems
nothing “shared” about the contend of this intention and consequently, I wouldn’t call this coexisting
intentions “shared”. However, if one knows that the content of each intention is each biggest fear,
then it seems much more like a shared intention. In this example, the relationship between each
agent and the action is what connects them in addition to the interdependency of the intentions.
One might categorize both activities as fearful, but this is only the case for each participant in relation
to one’s own intended action, not necessarily the intended action of the other, but what they share
is that each fears the action they plan to do the most. I also believe that it is not enough for both
intentions to share some abstract category. Additionally, the shared category of the action or
relationship between each individual and action must be the reason part of the cause for the
intention to feel shared. There might be cases where people aren’t conscious about the specific this
abstract relationship, but they must know at least implicitly that there is something shared about the
content of the intention. Specifically, the condition could sound something like “I intend x because
the content of your intention and mine share an abstract category and you intend y because the
content of your intention and mine share an abstract category.”

I would localize my claim as somewhere between Sadler and Bratman meaning, I think my demand is
stronger than the one of Sadler but weaker than Bratman’s demand since it rules out less cases than
Bratman’s approach but more than Sadler’s. For example, if one agrees with my assumption then a
competition is still fitting the criteria, because both participants are part of the same game and share

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therefore an abstract category in the content of their intentions, where this is a problematic case for
Bratman, because of a lack of meshing subplans.

Objections to my objection
Let’s go back to the example with the condition-based intentions that followed in a coordinated
action, precisely, eating chocolate and talking to one’s father, which both seem to have no relation in
their content and are therefore not worthy of being called shared intention, I argued. Surely, there
are people disagreeing with me, so it makes sense to think about possible reasons why I might be
wrong, and why the stated example might indeed be a shared intention.

I think the strongest argument against my objection is probably also what the main point of Sadler is,
namely, that it is enough for intentions to become shared if they are condition-based instead of
adding another condition. This interdependence of the intention creates already a bond that gives
meaning to the intentions and the following actions, which can be seen as sufficient for calling them
a shared intention. By fulfilling this criterion, both intentions have a value that they wouldn’t have
otherwise, meaning that each action would be very different without it. The argument I see is that
the bond resulting out of this dependency is strong enough to call it a shared intention and this
would make my claim, that there must be something shared in the content unnecessary.
Conclusively, this counterargument looks to me very much like the argument from Sadler against
Bratman, that a “we intention” isn’t needed for intentions to become shared.

A second objection could focus more on what a “shared intention” literally means and is also one
Sadler would agree with. One could argue that the shared thing in a shared intention neither means
having the same intention nor having sameness in the abstract category of the intention but sharing
the knowledge of what one’s own intention and the other’s intention is and what the implication of
each intention is, meaning that there isn’t one mind created, but sameness in the content of the
mental states concerning the structure of this condition-based intentions besides having condition-
based intentions.

My reply to the counterarguments

I believe it is hard to show a direct counterargument against the first possible objection since I rely in
my argument mainly on intuition, respectively, what I believe to be the common use of shared
intention and this might differ from an intuitive understanding of the term from somebody else.
However, I argue that a case like my example without an abstract category of the contents in the
intention of both participants should be called an agreement rather than a shared intention, because
as I already pointed out, there is nothing shared in the content of those intentions.

My reply to the second possible argument is very similar to the first answer persisting of a different
interpretation than the one stated, which I believe to be more accurate. Again, I think that what we
mean by a shared intention is that there literally must be something shared in the content of the
intention besides recognizing that there is an interdependency between the intentions, because
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otherwise we could just call it an agreement. In an agreement both parties formulate a condition-
based intention to do something, where one person intends to do x at least partly because the other
person intends to do y etc. If one party tries to fool the other, then the agreement dissolves just as in
the case of Sadler’s “shared intention”. My final point is, therefore, that since the conditions
described, which are basically Sadler’s conditions formulated in a different manner, are no different
from an agreement, they must be incomplete, because we don’t think shared intentions are equal to
agreements. It seems to me that the shared intentions must have a stronger connection in the
intention, which I believe must manifest itself in the content of the intention.

However, there might be better arguments against or for my approach, which is why the conviction
in my argument is limited, but I still believe it to be the explanation most likely to be true.

Sadler’s problem of the relevant intention

Another question that is more of a problem to Sadler is, which of the intentions is the relevant for
the shared intention. In Bratman’s case, the answer is easy, because it must be the intention of both
parties that have the same content, namely, to intend that they do x. But because the intention of
joint activity isn’t essential in Sadlers proposal, the question remains open. Sadler explains that the
best one can intend is to participate in x. Consequently, the “sharing” part gets lost, which shows
again that the intentions of both participators might be quite different, because their actions must
only be interlocked. He continues by arguing that the problem can be solved since each participant
knows what the other intends and this doesn’t have to be seen from the outside. (Sadler, 2006)

Objection to his seeming solution

In my opinion this isn’t an answer to the problem since it only answers the question, which of the
intentions interlock by saying that the participants implicitly know which one is relevant. We don’t
have to know how this often-nonverbal consensus comes into actuality, but the question is what
those intentions look like explicitly. The whole problem of shared intention is about clarifying things
by making implicit processes explicit. I believe one could answer all the questions with “people know
implicitly what shared intentions are, because they act it out, problem solved” if one accepts the
argument above. Thus, the question, how do the relevant intentions look like, remains open for
Sadler, but is answered by my proposal, since I argued that there must be an abstract category
shared in the content of both intentions, which I believe to be both necessary and sufficient for being
the relevant intention in a shared intention. (Sadler, 2006)

Sadler on the relationship between shared intentions for collective responsibility

Sadler brings up the point that the literature hasn’t addressed the relationship between collective
responsibility and shared intention yet. He’d like to focus on the possibility that some kinds of
responsibilities are based on collective or shared intentions, not just being part of some group, being
part of the causal chain of collective action or on pragmatic justifications. (Sadler, 2006)

12
First, he differentiates between different kinds of responsibilities. For moral responsibility, the action
must be intended by the actor, but not in the case of causal and legal responsibility. Sadler is
interested in the possibility of a nonpragmatic and nonconsequentialist justification for collective
responsibility as well as the possibility of a similar link between individual responsibility and
individual intention as there is between individual responsibility and individual intention. (Sadler,
2006)

Application of his argument on different examples

In a shared intention, one person consciously provides the other person with enough reason to act.
Additionally, if the first person fools the second in many ways, namely, not doing what he or she
made believe to do, then that person takes away the others intention for the action and makes the
other person participate in a normatively unbased action (the normative base should have been the
others intention), which is according to Sadler enough reason to say that the first person is
responsible for the others action even if he or she didn’t act as intended. The person is directly
involved in the situation, even when one hasn’t been part of the action, intended the act or tried to
initiate it. Furthermore, this doesn’t mean that one’s responsibility in such a case is alleviated like in a
case where the cause is just indirect. Sadler concludes that because of the reciprocal interlocked
intention, the responsibility is moral indeed additionally to causal. (Sadler, 2006)

“I never intended for you to do that”

Another good example to implement the conclusions above is the following:
Sadler mentions the common response of somebody saying, “I never intended for you to do that”.
What happens here is that the subject claims that he or she didn’t give the other subject reason to
act as he or she did. Moreover, the claim is that the other subject misinterpreted some expression of
the first subject to intend something he or she didn’t intend. The demand of the claim is to refuse
taking any responsibility for that action, at least the responsibility that would have followed out of
the wrongful assumed intention. (Sadler, 2006)

Where I agree with Sadler

I agree with Sadler’s approach on the morality of shared intention because the interdependence of
both intentions is of such central importance that it can’t be another way. The punishment of an ac-
complice in a crime for example is everything else but mild, because it is usually based on a shared
intention. The intention of the initiator depends on the intention of the accomplice, because the for-
mer probably wouldn’t participate in the crime without the latter or at least the risk of failing would
be much higher. The accomplice just standing outside to see if somebody is coming along won’t be
punished for his individual action, but for his part in the shared activity following out of a shared in-
tention. The action alone is completely different as when it is a part of a crime scene. The person was
conscious of the others intention, formulated also an intention depending on the others intention
and knew that the intention of the other also depends on his or her. This seems sufficient for me to

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make the claim that being part of a shared intention according to Sadler’s definition that brings
about a shared action meets the criteria to be morally responsible for the other person’s action in
the sense of moral blameworthiness in addition to causal responsibility even when the former didn’t
act upon the intention.

Are there different implications for moral responsibility resulting out of our different
approaches?
Finally, I think it is interesting to compare my additional demand for shared intentions with Sadler’s
approach by looking at the different implications for collective responsibility. I argue that the degree
of moral responsibility resulting out of a shared intention is also dependent on the question if there
is a shared abstract category in the content of the intentions. If we go back to the example of two
friends formulating a condition-based intention contending “I talk to my father if you eat some more
chocolate and you eat some more chocolate if I talk to my father”, we can think about a horrible sce-
nario where the person meant to call the father says “if I call my father, I know it ends in a catastro-
phe, where he’ll probably get so upset and sad that he’s going to kill himself.” If the other person still
wants to implement the intended actions, then that person is morally responsible as a result. Al-
though the other person will just eat more chocolate, she is still morally responsible, even when the
high likely outcome won’t manifest itself, because that person was conscious of what might happen,
still contributed to the condition-based intention, and knew that one reason the other person calls
his father is, because of her intention to eat more chocolate.
The interesting point here is that even though they don’t share an abstract category in the content of
their intentions, the collective responsibility seems to be the same as if it would be the case, for ex-
ample, if the other person also called his father (hopefully with better expectations). Therefore, it
seems that whether there is something shared in the content of the intention seems to have no im-
pact on the collective responsibility. One might use this as a counterargument against my demand for
an additional criterion because it seems to have no further implications for collective responsibility,
but that doesn’t seem to be a necessary conclusion. However, it seems to be a reasonable claim be-
cause the intention is very important in the question of responsibility especially moral responsibility
and categorical differences in intentions should therefore also manifest themselves in different impli-
cations for responsibility.
My response to this claim is that only because a small but significant difference exists between my
approach for shared intention and the one of Sadler, it doesn’t follow that this essentially results in a
significant change in the implications for collective responsibility, besides the fact that both defini-
tions are much more similar than different.

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Conclusion
The term paper started with Bratman’s approach. First, he talks about the functions of shared
intentions, namely, planning, acting, bargaining in alignment with another to support one goal.
Afterwards, he came up with a set of conditions for intentions to become shared intentions.

The first was that one must intend that they do x and the other must do likewise. He further
concluded that the other person must know about the intention of the other, to make it “shared”.
Furthermore, he showed through the kidnapping example that for a shared intention each person’s
reason to intend that they x must be partly the case, because the other person also intends that they
do x. This excludes cases where one person forces another person to join him or her in the activity.
However, it is still possible that one person tricks the other e.g., by filling the others can with a
different color while they paint as their shared activity. The consequences are that the criteria would
still allow cases like that to be shared intentions despite of the fact that there are differences in
subplans that the participants might find compromise. Conclusively, he took the last condition into
his argument, namely, that each must intend that they do x in accordance with meshing subplans.
The subplans doesn’t have to be defined at the moment when the intention is formulated, but they
must intend trying to make them mesh.

Sadler’s text was on the one hand a reply to Bratman’s conditions on the other hand an attempt to
build a bridge between shared intention and collective responsibility. He starts by bringing up the
most fundamental critique against Bratman, namely, that an intention of a person contending that
they do x isn’t possible since an individual can only intend one’s own action. Moreover, he argued
that what makes an intention shared is that the intention is reciprocal and condition-based following
out of an assumption about what the other might intend. Meaning, that each intention must depend
on the others intention, because the meaning of a shared intention depends at least partly on this
interdependent relationship and since each has this intention partly because of the dependency, one
must assume that the other contributes to this dependence. In this way Sadler can explain
competitive cases without messing subplans and where people never intended to engage in the
same activity, but just to do their part.

Afterwards, I proposed a possible objection that came into my mind, that assumptions might not be
needed to trigger a shared intention, because the one starting the interaction and asking to do the
activity could do this without an intention in mind. By thinking about it, I found out that this
objection can be dissolved through further explication of the situation, namely, that the person
asking to engage in the shared activity could be different from the one formulating the assumption
and with that, fulfilling the first criterion of the shared intention. The more fundamental objection to
Sadler was, where I claimed that his conditions are too loose, meaning that there are possible cases,
where the content of each intention is unrelated in a way where we wouldn’t call it a shared

15
intention anymore. I recommended that there must be at least one more condition, additionally to
Sadler to avoid this problem.

I stated that the additional criterion implies that an abstract category in the content of both
intentions must be shared. Furthermore, I brought up two possible objections against my proposal.
The first gives reason why Sadler’s condition are already sufficient by creating a meaningful bond
because of the condition-based intentions. The second focuses on an alternative understanding of
what the term “shared intention” literally means.

My reply implied that if one defines shared intentions as Sadler did, then they are equal to
agreements, which is a problem since we believe them to be different. I argued that there must be a
stronger connection in the intention than in agreement, which is sufficiently fulfilled by my extra
condition.

The last part is about Sadler’s proposal showing the relationship between shared intentions and
collective responsibility. He argues that because the intention of one person is conditionally based on
the intention of the other and because that person made the other person believe that he or she
intends to do x, the impact is not just causal, but moral. The first person isn’t just part of the causal
chain, but also intended to do x knowing that it gave the other person reason to intend y.
Conclusively, the person shares moral collective responsibility, even when he or she didn’t act as
intended, which is in accordance with my believe.

Finally, I compared the implications of my approach with the one of Sadler and recognized that there
seems to be no difference, but I don’t believe that this is a valid argument against the usefulness of
my additional condition since both definitions are mostly alike and a small difference in the
conditions doesn’t have to result in different implications for moral responsibility.

If there isn’t already elaborated work out there about a necessary condition for the content of shared
intention that I haven’t read about, then it would be great to see this point further investigated in the
future, assuming that my argument is reasonable.

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References
Bratman, M. E. (1992). Shared Cooperative Activity. The Philosophical Review, 101(2), 327–341.

https://doi.org/10.2307/2185537

Sadler, B. J. (2006). Shared Intentions and Shared Responsibihty. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 30,

115–144. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4975.2006.00131.x

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