Lecture 01

\title {Joint Action \\ Lecture 01}

\maketitle

What did you do today? It is likely that some of your answers to this question refer to things you did individually and others to things you did jointly with others. In commonsense thinking about action and intention, the notion that many of the things that matter most in our lives are things we do with others seems unproblematic.

But theoretically things are rather different. In developmental, cognitive and philosophical research there is a long tradition of focusing exclusively on actions with just one agent.

There is no theoretical justification for the focus on just one individual acting alone---it simply makes things easier. But to restrict attention to actions with just one agent is to exclude many of the things that matter most.

We humans are, after all, one of those species that nurture babies cooperatively. It’s not just that we care to do things with others: capacities for joint action are critical for our species’ survival.

We need, therefore, to shift focus from one individual acting along to cases in which two or more individuals act together. That is, we need to shift from individual to joint action---such as moving a log together, sharing a smile, or ...

... cycling to school together.

The examples are deceptively simple. Philosophically, shifting from individual to joint action turns out to be surprisingly tricky.

Our aim in this Blockseminar is to understand some of the puzzles we face in trying to understand, at a very basic level, what is involved in joint action. And maybe we will even solve some of them.

\section{The Question}

Introduces the question around which this module is organised. Getting a pre-theoretical handle on joint action is best done by contrasting joint actions with actions that are merely individual but occur in parallel. (The method of contrast cases is familiar from Pears (1971), who used contrast cases to argue that whether something is an ordinary, individual action depends on its antecedents.)

Let’s start by trying to get a pre-theoretical handle on the notion of joint action. I’ve already given you some examples, but it’s even better to use contrast cases ...

You have two minutes to think of another pair of examples which contrast joint action with parallel but merely individual action.

These and other contrasting pairs invite the question, What distinguishes joint action from parallel but merely individual action?

A natural first thought is that in joint action, our actions are coordinated. But this turns out not to be a distinguishing feature of joint action because ...

... when two strangers cycle side by side, their actions may need to be highly coordinated so that they do not crash even if they are merely acting in parallel.

Another idea is that in joint action, our actions have a common effect. So, for example, when the flash mob open their newspapers, there is a strikingly loud rustle of paper. None of them individually cause this loud rustle: instead it is a common effect of their actions.

But consider the actions of the flash mob together with those of the onlookers. All of these actions have a common effect---the strikingly loud rustle of paper is produced by the simultaneity of their actions. And this applies to the onlookers who merely happen to open their newspapers just as the flash mob starts no less than to the members of the flash mob.

So what does distinguish joint action from actions which occur in parallel but are merely individual? Not coordination, not common effects. So what is it?

[This is just to say that the question, What distinguishes joint action from parallel but merely individual action? is not straightforward to answer. ]

Question

What distinguishes genuine joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions?

This is the organising question for our project (the project to be investigated in this series of lectures). Of course there will be lots of further questions, but I like to have something simple to frame our thinking and this question serves that purpose.

My hope is that by answering this seemingly straightforward question, we will be in a position to answer the hard question about which forms of shared agency underpin our social nature.

The first two contrast cases are supposed to show that this question isn’t easy to answer because the most obvious, simplest things you might appeal to---coordination and common effects---won’t enable you to draw the distinction.

Requirement

An account of joint action must draw a line between joint actions and parallel but merely individual actions.

This invites us to think in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Of course, there are all kinds of reasons why this might be problematic, and we will consider many such reasons. But as I just said, having simple ideas to frame our thinking is good, and that’s why I take this as my working aim. (The ultimate aim is a ‘Blueprint for a Social Animal’, but it is difficult to be precise about what that will involve at this stage.)

Aim

Which forms of shared agency underpin our social nature?

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

In philosophy of mind and action, it is normal to focus just on a single individual who might as well be acting in isolation. But if you think about almost any aspect of cognition and agency, it is striking that it can’t be fully understood in isolation. Our capacities for knowledge, emotion and action depend in numerous ways on our interactions with others.

By contrast with philosophy, many disciplines such as economics and sociology do treat multiple individuals. But on the whole this involves treating individuals as indistinguisable from one another.

So once again, on the aggregate perspective, there is no room for shared agency.

There is growing awareness in cognitive science and philosophy that in missing shared agency we may be missing something that shapes our lives and explains much about why we humans are the way we are. Excitingly, new techniques and technologies to investigate shared agency are being developed too.

At the same time there is an amazing degree of uncertainty and even confusion among philosophers and theoretically-minded scientists. It’s not just that there are different theories of shared agency; there is fundamental disagreement about what sort of conceptual and ontological resources are needed, and about the questions such a theory should answer. As you’ll see, there are even two completely unconnected articles on this topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

So we face lots of challenges ...

So here you have the question for this course, our aim and the reason it matters.

But what is the Simple View? I’m so glad you asked ...

\section{The Simple View}

The Simple View is an answer to the question, What distinguishes genuine joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions? According to the Simple View, two or more agents perform an intentional joint action exactly when there is an act-type, φ, such that each of several agents intends that they, these agents, φ together and their intentions are appropriately related to their actions.

Recall our question, What distinguishes joint action from parallel but merely individual action?

As we saw, it isn’t just that joint actions are coordinated, nor just that they have common effects.

Maybe we need to think in not in terms of the actions but in terms of the intentions behind them?

We can understand this idea by comparison with a claim about ordinary, individual action. What distinguishes genuine joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions? For example, suppose the coffee in cup in your hand ends up all over my face. This event might involve an action on your part, or it might be a mere happening. What distinguishes the two?

One quite standard idea is that it is intention. Where the event is an action, you must have an intention to throw coffee in my face and this intention must be appropriately related to your action. By contrast, where there is no such intention the event is merely an accident.

\emph{The Simple View}

Two or more agents perform an intentional joint action
exactly when there is an act-type, φ, such that
each agent intends that
they, these agents, φ together
and their intentions are appropriately related to their actions.

Explain: ‘I wish I had done that’.

We are no longer talking about joint action generally, only about intentional joint action. Compare individual action: much individual action is arguably purposive but not intentional. Similarly, we might think that there are non-intentional but purposive joint actions.

A further problem concerns the link between intentional joint action and intention. Consider individual action. Bratman has good arguments for holding that actions can be intentional under a description even when no intention specifies that description; and he also holds that agents incapable of intending may nevertheless perform intentional actions. So it is conceivable that not all intentional joint action will involve intention. In that case, the Simple View may not even be a fully general account of intentional joint action.

I’m not going to pursue these issues yet, but we will come back to them. For now I just want to note that, for all its simplicity, the Simple View raises some tricky questions.

For now I am treating the Simple View as offering necessary and sufficient conditions for intentional joint action, because I want to start with an ambitious claim. But reflecion on the relation between intention and intentional action may force us to back down later.

Explain: deviant causal chains.

Can you think of an objection to the Simple View?

\section{The Circularity Objection}

According to the Simple View, what distinguishes a joint action from parallel but merely individual actions are the agents’ intentions that they, these agents, act together. But does invoking acting together make this idea circular?

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

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:

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

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?

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 ...

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.

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

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’).

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.

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.

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

\section{Walking Together in the Mafia Sense}

Does Bratman’s ‘mafia case’ provide a reason to reject the Simple View?

Here’s the simple view again. My aim now is to present the most convincing objection to it that I can.

Michael Bratman offers a counterexample to something related to the Simple View. Suppose that you and I each intend that we, you and I, go to New York together. But your plan is to point a gun at me and bundle me into the boot (or trunk) of your car. Then you intend that we go to New York together, but in a way that doesn't depend on my intentions. As you see things, I'm going to New York with you whether I like it or not. This doesn't seem like the basis for shared agency. After all, your plan involves me being abducted.

But it is still a case in which we each intend that we go to New York together and we do. So, apparently, the conditions of the Simple View are met (or almost met) and yet there is no shared agency.

We’re considering that Bratman’s ‘mafia case’ provides a counterexample to the Simple View. But does it really?

The mafia case fails as a counterexample to the Simple View because if you go through with your plan, my actions won’t be appropriately related to my intention.

And, on the other hand, if you don’t go through with your plan, that it is at best unclear that your having had that plan matters for whether we have shared agency.

I suggest that what is wrong in the Mafia Case is not that the agent’s need further intentions, but just that if their intentions don’t connect to their actions in the right way then there won’t be intentional joint action.

But the mafia case fails as a counterexample to the Simple View because if you go through with your plan, my actions won’t be appropriately related to my intention.

And, on the other hand, if you don’t go through with your plan, that it is at best unclear that your having had that plan matters for whether we exercise shared agency.

Bratman uses the Mafia case to motivate adding further intentions to those specified by the Simple View. But I suggest that an alternative response to the Mafia case is no less adequate and simpler: what is wrong in the Mafia Case is not that the agents need further intentions, but just that, if they act as they intend, their intentions won’t all be appropriately related to their actions.

So Bratman’s ‘mafia case’ is not a counterexample to the Simple View.

I note that Bratman is clearly aiming to identify intentions whose fulfilment requires shared agency. But I don’t think this is necessary. It seems to me that what matters is that the Simple View as a whole distingiushes shared agency from parallel but merely individual agency, not that it does so by way of fulfilment conditions of intentions.

Rather than continuing to discuss whether the Mafia case really motivates rejecting the Simple View, let me consider other ways to generate what seem to be more plausible candidates for counterexamples to the Simple View ...

In conclusion, ...

Joint Action

s.butterfill@warwick.ac.uk

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The Simple View

The Circularity Objection

Walking Together in the Mafia Sense

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