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\title {Joint Action \\ Lecture 09}

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Lecture 09

Joint Action

[email protected]

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\section{Aggregate Animals, Aggregate Subjects}

What are aggregate subjects? I suggest we think of them on the model of aggregate animals such as Physalia Physalis. But how can such a thing as an aggregate subject exist? Humans do not mechanically attach themselves in the way that the polyps and other animals making up Physalia Physalis do. So how are aggregate agents possible?

On accounts like Bratman’s or Gilbert’s, ‘it makes some sense to say that the result is a kind of shared action: the individual people are, after all, acting intentionally throughout.

However, in a deeper sense, the activity is not shared: the group itself is not engaged in action whose aim the group finds worthwhile, and so the actions at issue here are merely those of individuals.

Thus, these accounts ... fail to make sense of a ... part of the landscape of social phenomena’

\citep[pp.~20--1]{helm_plural_2008}

Helm (2008, pp. 20-1)

Start with Helm’s challenge ([because I can answer it at the end]).

This is bad: who can explain what sharing amounts to? This is just a metaphor. Our problem is to discipline the metaphor, not to write as if we already understood it.

It is hard to understand what Helm is aiming for here, but I think the idea is that the actions should be not merely those of individuals but of the group itself.

The objection says something is missing, but actually our interest is driven by the thought that both Gilbert’s and Bratman’s approaches are inadqeuate as attempts to characterise shared agency.

How to make sense of this idea?

aggregate subject

I think Helm wants what I will call an ‘aggregate subject’. (He uses the term ‘plural robust agent’, but this is because he ignores a distinction between aggregate and plural subjects which will be important later.)

Meet an aggregate animal, the Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), which is composed of polyps.

Here you can say that ‘the group [of polyps] itself’ is engaged in action which is not just a matter of the polyps all acting.

To illustrate, consider how it eats. Wikipedia: ‘Contractile cells in each tentacle drag the prey into range of the digestive polyps, the gastrozooids, which surround and digest the food by secreting enzymes that break down proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, while the gonozooids are responsible for reproduction.’

This jellyfish-like animal is a crude model for the sort of aggregate agent Helm (and others) suggest we need.

But how can such a thing exist? Humans do not mechanically attach themselves in the way that the polyps making up that jellyfish-like animal do.

So how are aggregate agents possible?

Gilbert: All joint commitments are commitments to emulate, as far as possible, a single body which does something (2013, p. 64).

In manifesting any collective phenomenon, we can truly say ‘We have created a third thing, and each of us is one of the parts’

\citep[p.~269]{gilbert:2014_book}

Gilbert (2013, p. 269).

The collective value, belief or intention or whatever is primarily a value, belief or intention of this third thing.

What is this third thing?

I take it to be the single body we have emulated

in doing many things together, the point of doing them together is precisely not to emulate a single body: e.g. in lifting a table, or in foraging for berries, two bodies allow strategies that are impossible with just one body

Emulating as far as possible a single body that intends to wash up is not generally the most efficient way for several people to get the washing up done—Andrea and Heinrich had better exploit the fact that they are two than pretend to be an aggregate animal. The ‘emulating a single body’ form also seems to rule a shared intention to make out after washing up. And if it doesn’t preclude shared intentions to tango outright, it has unfortunate stylistic consequences in implying that those with such intentions are jointly committed to emulate a single body that intends to tango.

What is the motivation for this claim?

If, as Gilbert holds, joint commitments are all commitments to emulate a single body which does something, then the thing to which there is commitment involves nothing collective. Joint commitment thus serves, for Gilbert, as a device which transforms ordinary, singular phenomena (intention, belief or whatever) into collective phenomena with added commitments. To this extent Gilbert’s programme is reductionist: shared values, collective beliefs and the rest are reduced to joint commitments plus ordinary, individual values, beliefs and the rest.

Are There Joint Commitments?

\section{Are There Joint Commitments?}

Do joint commitments exist?

Gilbert: joint commitment is irreducible to personal commitment

Compare blocking.

Sometimes when trying to sprint through an airport there is one sizeable individual blocking your way, while at other times it is several people ambling side-by-side who hold you up. If the several’s blocking your way is not a matter of each individually blocking your way, then they are *collectively* blocking your way. As this illustrates, some properties permit both singular and plural, collective predication.

Is collective blocking reducible to individual actions? Of course, collective blocking is ultimately a matter of the individual people and their interactions. But we can recognise this while remaining neutral on whether any kind of informative reduction is possible.

I propose a stronger thesis

joint commitment is irreducible

If you’ve read Bratman (chapter 4 on Gilbert), you’ll know he thinks this is terrible because uninformative. But I think that lots of collective phenomena (including non social phenomena in biology and elsewhere) may turn out not to have informative reductions. And there’s plenty of informative things to say about joint commitment without reducing it to something else.

So I don’t think irreducibility is a big deal.

Are there joint commitments?

So far I have been suggesting that a joint commitment is simply a commitment. But when we talk about joint commitments we mean a commitment that two or more people have collectively. Is this possible?

Are there collective infections?

- collective addictions?

- collective deaths?

- collective feelings?

- ...

Just because it is theoretically coherent doesn’t mean that it is empirically motivated.

As far as I understand her, Gilbert’s most convincing attempt to show that there are joint commitments is an attempt to show how they come into being ...

‘what is needed, to put it abstractly, is expressions of readiness on everyone’s part to be jointly committed [...]. Common knowledge of these expressions completes the picture.’

\citep[p.~253]{gilbert:2014_book}

Gilbert (2013, p. 253)

‘In order to \emph{create} a new joint commitment each of the would-be parties must openly express to the others his readiness together with the others to commit them all in the pertinent way. Once these expressions are common knowledge between the parties, the joint commitment is in place—as they understand’ \citep[p.~311]{gilbert:2014_book}

‘this is pretty much the whole story’

Gilbert (2013, p. 48)

‘[i]t is not clear that there is any very helpful way of breaking down the notion of expressing one’s readiness to be jointly committed’ \citep[p.~48]{gilbert:2014_book}

‘this is pretty much the whole story regarding the creation of a basic case of … joint commitment’ \citep[p.~48]{gilbert:2014_book}.

Not: I’m ready if you are.

(Because this would get us back into Roth’s problem that the readiess is conditional on itself.)

Another attempt on how joint commitments get established...

Are there joint commitments?

‘Jessica says, “Shall we meet at six?” and Joe says, “Sure.”’

This is the phenomenon Gilbert is analysing. She says it amounts to expressions of readiness. But put that aside. Is it plausible that this could explain how joint commitments are formed?

Joint or merely symmetric contralateral commitments?

Here I think it is unobvious that the commitments are joint rather than merely contralateral commitments. (Recall that Jessica and Joe have contralateral commitments if each has a personal commitment to the other.)

So where have we got to? I claim that claims 1 and 2 are inconsistent, as are claims 1 and 3.

1. A joint commitment is a commitment we have collectively.

(So joint commitment is a commitment.)

2. Gilbert shows joint commitments exist.

3. Joint commitments ground contralateral commitments.

I have no idea which claims we should reject.

Unless we reject 2 and 3, Gilbert is so catastrophically wrong that it seems we must have misunderstood her.

Further some philosophers and some psychologists accept Gilbert’s view; e.g.:

‘We agree with Gilbert that joint action goes, intuitively, with the sort of joint commitment that she describes.’ \citep[p.~32]{pettit:2006_joint}

On the other hand, you could take a completely different view. You might say Gilbert is not radical enough and that joint commitments allow us to make sense of plural subjects in a more robust sense than interests her. You might say, the point of joint commitments isn’t to allow us to make sense of the contralateral commitments, but to allow us to make sense of the idea that commitments and mental states can be had by collectives.

But if we don’t reject 2 and 3, it seems we must reject 1, and without this it seems we have no idea what joint commitments could be. This is also implausible; surely Gilbert has explained this.

To be honest I suspect that I am missing something. But I have no idea what it is.

In any case, I want to finsih with a quick look at how Gilbert applies her account of joint commitment. If the applications seem illuminating, that would motivate further consideration of her research.

Joint and Contralateral Commitment: Objection to Gilbert on Shared Intention

\section{Joint and Contralateral Commitment: Objection to Gilbert on Shared Intention}

Do joint commitments explain contralateral commitments?

For us to have

a shared intention that we φ

is for us to be jointly committed

to emulate a single body

which

intends to φ

Gilbert offers several arguments in favour of this position which I encourage you to review if you are exploring it (and certainly before rejecting it).

However, I want to concentrate on just one argument ...

I already mentioned this earlier, in a different context.

‘When people regard themselves as collectively intending to do something, they appear to understand that, by virtue of the collective intention, and that alone, each party has the standing to demand explanations of nonconformity [...]. A joint commitment account of collective intention respects this fact. ’

Gilbert (2013, pp. 88–9)

1. Shared intentions are associated with contralateral commitments.

2. This is a fact which stands in need of explanation.

3. That shared intentions are joint commitments (to emulate a single body which intends to ...) explains this fact.

Recall what a joint commitment is ...

Gilbert: joint commitment

‘a commitment

by two or more people

of the same two or more people.’

joint commitment is ‘the collective analogue of a personal commitment’

Gilbert (2013, p. 85)

Contrast contralateral commitment (by me, of me, to you)

joint vs contralateral

- compare -

orgy vs reciprocal

we teach ourselves to code vs we teach each other to code

The first thing we want joint commitments for is to explain contralateral commitments. Allow me to recap ...

Observation: shared intentions are associated with contralateral commitments.

Question: What is their source?

- individual intentions? no!

- conditional intentions? no!

- joint commitments? no!

So our first reasons for being interested in joint commitments is that they might turn out to be the grounds for the existence of contralateral commitments. But are they?

‘Once the idea of joint commitment has been clarified, one may find it obvious that the parties to any such commitment … owe each other such actions in their capacity as parties to the joint commitment’

\citep[p.~400-1]{gilbert:2014_book}

‘What each is committed to, through the joint commitment, is to do his part [...] These actions are owed solely by virtue of the existence of the joint commitment’

\citep[pp.~401--2]{gilbert:2014_book}

‘just as—in the case of a personal commitment—you are in a position to berate yourself for failing to do what you committed yourself to do, all of those who are parties with you to a given *joint* commitment are in a position to berate you for failing to act according to that joint commitment’ (p. 401).

\citep[p.~401]{gilbert:2014_book}

Gilbert (2013, p. 401)

Isn’t this a more accurate parallel: parties to a joint commitment are in a position to jointly berate themselves for failing to act according to the joint commitment? It doesn’t follow from this, of course, that any individual has the standing to berate, nor that any individual can be berated. Aren’t shared commitments more plausibly a source of directed obligations than joint commitments?

Let me explain this further ...

Collective entails individual?

- blocking: no

- state of disarray: no

- blame: no?

Let me pause over blame because this is quite intuitive and will be useful later (when we contrast collective with shared)

- commitment: no

Let us return to Gilbert’s argument for her account of shared intention ...

For us to have

a shared intention that we φ

is for us to be jointly committed

to emulate a single body

which

intends to φ

Gilbert (2013, pp. 88–9)

I think Gilbert is actually wrong about this ... or at least she has provided no argument for this claim.

(This does not establish that her account of shared intention is wrong, of course. But I think it removes a key reason to attempt to defend it. For my part, I cannot identify any considerations which favour invoking joint commitments in explaining shared intention.)

So in terms of the argument presented earlier, ...

1. Shared intentions are associated with contralateral commitments.

2. This is a fact which stands in need of explanation.

3. That shared intentions are joint commitments (to emulate a single body which intends to ...) explains this fact.

I reject the third claim.

So where have we got to? I claim that claims 1 and 2 are inconsistent, as are claims 1 and 3. (Claim 2 was considered in Lecture 04; several people disagreed.)

1. A joint commitment is a commitment we have collectively.

(So joint commitment is a commitment.)

2. Gilbert shows joint commitments exist.

3. Joint commitments ground contralateral commitments.

I have no idea which claims we should reject.

4. Shared intentions are joint commitments to emulate a single body that intends ...

Unless we reject 2 and 3, Gilbert is so catastrophically wrong that it seems we must have misunderstood her.

Further some philosophers and some psychologists accept Gilbert’s view; e.g.:

‘We agree with Gilbert that joint action goes, intuitively, with the sort of joint commitment that she describes.’ \citep[p.~32]{pettit:2006_joint}

But if we don’t reject 2 and 3, it seems we must reject 1, and without this it seems we have no idea what joint commitments could be. This is also implausible; surely Gilbert has explained this.

To be honest I suspect that I am missing something. But I have no idea what it is.

conclusion

In conclusion, ...

conclusion on joint commitment

Gilbert: joint commitment

‘a commitment

by two or more people

of the same two or more people.’

Questions

Are joint commitments simply commitments we have collectively?

Has Gilbert shown that joint commitments exist? (Or can you?)

Do joint commitments ground contralateral commitments?

Are shared intentions joint commitments to emulate a single body which intends something?

Keyboard Shortcuts?

Lecture 09

Joint Action

[email protected]

Are There Joint Commitments?

Joint and Contralateral Commitment: Objection to Gilbert on Shared Intention

Keyboard Shortcuts`?`