Abstract
This is a reply to discussions by David Copp, Tamar Schapiro, and Sergio Tenenbaum of Michael E. Bratman, Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together.
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Notes
In this essay I reply to Sergio Tenenbaum, “Representing Collective Agency,” David Copp, “Social Glue and Norms of Sociality,” and Tamar Schapiro, “‘Let’s J!’: On the Practical Character of Shared Agency”, all in this issue of this journal. These are discussions of my Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). For further discussion of related issues see the symposium on my book in The Journal of Social Ontology 1:1 (2015). In my replies here I have benefitted from comments from Facundo Alonso and Sarah Paul.
Primarily for reasons I note in my discussion in Shared Agency of similar concerns. See pp. 92–96, building on ideas at pp. 56–57.
See Shared Agency at 56–57.
“Shared Cooperative Activity,” as reprinted in my Faces of Intention (Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. 104–105. I called this a condition of minimal cooperative stability and noted that while this is a fairly minimal requirement, it does go beyond a simple requirement that each intends the joint action.
Shared Agency, 56–57.
Shared Agency, 47.
Frank Hindriks independently made a similar point in conversation.
As Tenenbaum says in a different part of his essay: “one might think that the co-occurrence of these sufficient conditions is explained exactly by the joint commitment, representation of joint activity, or we-intention that the more expansive theory postulates.”
Shared Agency, 48–56.
Shared Agency, 3.
I take some small steps toward an extension in this direction in my “The Intentions of a Group,” in Eric Orts and Craig Smith, eds., The Moral Responsibility of Firms (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Shared Agency, 28–30.
Shared Agency, 90.
Shared Agency, 29.
Shared Agency, 146–149.
Shared Agency, 32–34, 149–150.
See e.g., my “Intention, Practical Rationality, and Self-governance,” Ethics 119 (2009): 411–43. For further references see Shared Agency, chap. 1 note 38.
One point I would like to make, however, concerns Copp’s emphasis on “a kind of self-control that dampens our susceptibility to temptations.” I agree with Copp that this is an important capacity. But I think it is actually quite puzzling and that its explanation will touch on deep issues about the interaction between the temporal structure of our agency and our rationality. But these are matters for another day.
“The moral truth is a function of the content of the moral code the currency of which in society would do most to ameliorate the problem of sociality…. morality is the solution to the problem of equipping people to live comfortably and successfully together in societies.”
Shared Agency, 38, 101–102.
In Shared Agency at 70–73 I note these three forms of persistence interdependence of relevant intentions. I reflect further on obligation-based persistence interdependence, and its relation to the generic interrelation of persistence interdependence that is central to my model of shared intention, at 110–113.
See Shared Agency, 111.
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Bratman, M.E. Shared Agency: replies to Tenenbaum, Copp, and Schapiro. Philos Stud 172, 3409–3420 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0566-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0566-2