## 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 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 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 ph-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 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. 



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
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 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 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 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)
> 



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 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]



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 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 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 (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 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 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 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 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 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 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 |
| Group | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes\No |



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 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 explores ways in which plural self-awareness is and is
not analogous to the self-awareness each of us as individuals exhibit.