The Circularity Objection

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The Circularity Objection

Recall that the Simple View is an answer to our question, What distinguishes joint action from parallel but merely individual action?

We each intend that we, you and I, cycle to school together.

Consider a first objection to the Simple View, a threat of circularity. You might imagine that appealing to togetherness in the specifying the content of the intention introduces circularity.

\textbf{Doesn’t doing something together involve exercising shared agency? And if it does, aren’t we explaining shared agency by appeal to intentions to exercise shared agency?}

Schweikard and Schmid (2013) offer one formulation of the circularity objection a challenge:

‘[H]ow can an individual refer to a joint activity without the jointness [...] already being in place?’ (Schweikard and Schmid, 2013)

To see how this objection arises, consider two possible intentions:

Contrast:

We each intend that we, you and I, cycle to school together.

We each intend that we, you and I, cycle to school apart.

Suppose we each had and acted on the latter intention (that we, you and I, cycle to school apart). Then our actions would not be joint actions. So apparently, appealing to togetherness is essential.

But doesn’t invoking the togetherness of our this mean assuming the very thing we were supposed to be characterising---namely joint action?

acting together vs exercising shared agency

Many of the things we do together involve exercising shared agency. We play duets, move pianos together and drink toasts together. But we also do things together without exercising shared agency. We fill rooms with noise together, damage furniture together and spill drinks together, for example. Who woke the baby? It wasn’t me alone, and it wasn’t you alone either---neither of us was laughing quite loudly enough to do so alone. Rather, waking the baby was something we did together. But in waking the baby we were not exercising shared agency.

Two ropes hanging over either side of a high wall are connected to a heavy block via a system of pulleys. Ayesha and Beatrice pull the ropes simultaneously, causing the heavy block to rise as a common effect of their actions. Each individually intends to raise the block. Each can see the block’s rise but, because of the high walls, neither of them is aware of the other, nor even that anything other than her own action is necessary for the block to rise.

In fact neither is aware that they are acting with another individual. Each believes, falsely, that there is a simple motor on the other end of the pulley, and that when the rope tenses the motor will turn.

Consider two questions ...

Are Ayesha and Beatrice
acting together?

Is Ayesha and Beatrice’s
lifting the block together
a joint action?

This question is less straightforward to answer than the first two. There actions are coordinated and have a common effect, but we saw earlier that this is true of many things which merely involve people acting in parallel rather than exercising shared agency.

I think most people working in this area would say that Ayesha and Beatrice’s lifting the block together is not a joint action. But in this area there is a real danger that we are just trading intuitions. So let’s see if we can find a basis for deciding whether this is a joint action.

We each intend that we, you and I, cycle to school together.

Recall that Schweikard and Schmid (2013) offer one formulation of the circularity objection a challenge:

‘[H]ow can an individual refer to a joint activity without the jointness [...] already being in place?’ (Schweikard and Schmid, 2013)

How should we respond? I think: (a) not everything we do together is a joint action (e.g. waking the baby); (b) in each intending that we, you and I, cycle to school together, we are referring to what is in fact a joint activity but we are not referring to it \emph{as} a joint activity; instead, we are referring to it merely as something we do together.

For comparison, suppose that we intend that these papers serve as a means of exchange between us and a store of value. This intention is, let’s say, what makes it the case that these papers are money. So there’s nothing problematic with referring to money without the money already existing (or ‘being in place’).

terminology:

shared agency

joint action

A \emph{joint action} is an exercise of shared agency.

Joint actions include very small scale interactions such as hugging or sharing a smile, larger small group efforts like dancing together, going for a walk or paining a house, and also epsiodes involving multiple agents and long periods of time like buidling a city or founding a democracy.

‘collective’ action / agency

People sometimes use ‘collective’ rather than ‘joint’ or ‘shared’. These terms tend to be used interchangeably rather than to mark significant differences. (Although Tomasello has made a reasonable suggestion.) Terminology is a mess; as usual.

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acting together

I’ve just suggested that that not all cases of acting together involve shared agency.

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The Circularity Objection

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