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Joint and Contralateral Commitment: Objection to Gilbert on 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 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

‘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)

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}
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.