Here’s the Simple Theory again. My aim now is to present the most convincing objection
to it that I can.
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Michael Bratman offers a counterexample to something related to the Simple Theory.
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 Theory are met (or almost met) and yet there is
no shared agency.
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Is this a good counterexample? If not, why not
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We’re considering that Bratman’s ‘mafia case’ provides a counterexample to
the Simple Theory. But does it really?
The mafia case fails as a counterexample to the Simple Theory 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 Theory 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 Theory.
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 Theory.
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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 Theory 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 Theory, let me consider other ways to generate what seem to be more
plausible candidates for counterexamples to the Simple Theory ...
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Here is my attempt to improve on Bratman’s counterexample.
Contrast friends walking together in the way friends ordinarily walk,
which is a paradigm example of joint action,
with two gangsters who walk together like this ...
... Gangster 1 pulls a gun on Gangster 2 and says: “let’s walk”
But Gangster 2 does the same thing to Gangster 1 simultaneously.
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We might call this ‘walking together in the Tarrantino sense’.
The conditions of the Simple Theory are met both in ordinary walking together
and in walking together in the Tarantino sense. [*Discuss ‘appropriately related’].
So according to the Simple Theory, both are intentional joint actions.
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The interdependence of the guns means that our actions can be appropriately
related to our intentions.
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Now I wanted to say that walking together in the Tarantino sense
is not an intentional joint action unless the central event of Reservoir Dogs
is also a case of joint action.
And I think it’s pretty clear that that isn’t a joint action.
But I was surprised to find that at least two people responded, independently of each other,
to this suggestion by saying that walking together in the Tarantino sense really is a joint action.
My opponent reasoned that each is acting intentionally, and that coercion is no
bar to shared agency.
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Just here we come to a tricky issue.
There is a danger that we will just end up trying to say something systematic
about one or another set of intuitions, where nothing deep underpins these intuitions.
I think this is a real threat; you’ll see that most philosophers are not careful
about their starting point in theorising about shared agency. They merely give
examples or a couple of contrast cases and off they go.
Adopting this undisciplined approach risks achieving nothing more than
organising one’s own intuitions. (It’s fine to organise intuitions on weekends and evenings,
but it shouldn’t be your day job.)
That’s why I want to go slowly here --- maybe this is very frustrating and you want to get
into the really exciting, weird and crazy stuff about plural subjects, shared emotions
or aggregate animals. But before we can do this seriously we need some sort of foundation
that will ensure we aren’t merely organising intuitions.
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Imagine two sisters who, getting off an aeroplane, tacitly agree to exact revenge on
the unruly mob of drunken hens behind them by standing so as to block the aisle together.
This is a joint action.
Meanwhile on another flight, two strangers happen to be so configured that they are
collectively blocking the aisle.
The first passenger correctly anticipates that the other passenger, who is a
complete stranger, will not be moving from her current position for some time.
This creates an opportunity for the first passenger: she intends that they,
she and the stranger, block the aisle.
And, as it happens, the second passenger’s thoughts mirror the first’s.
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The feature under consideration as distinctive of joint action is present:
each passenger is acting on her intention that they, the two passengers, block the aisle.
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Is it really a counterexample?
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Recall our earlier contrast cases ...
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I’ve been arguing that the Simple Theory is either outright wrong or else radically incomplete
as an account of shared agency.
Apparently, it is possible for two or more agents to each intend that
they do one thing together and to act on these intentions without them thereby
exercising shared agency a strong-ish sense.
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So the Simple Theory fails to provide a satisfying answer to the question, What distinguishes
genuine joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions?
Let me pause to say why this matters and how it fits into the big picture ...
Philosophers have offered a tremendous variety of incompatible, wildly complicated and
conceptually innovative theories about shared agency.
The Simple Theory is an obstacle to discussing these theories.
If the Simple Theory is correct, none of the complexity philosophers have offered is needed.
The first problem I encounter in thinking about shared agency is that philosophers
seem to take for granted without argument that the Simple Theory can be excluded.
In fact it is surprisingly difficult to show that the Simple Theory is wrong.
The usual argument against it is that it is circular, but we saw that this argument
depends on the mistaken assumption that all cases of acting together involve joint action.
A better objection to the Simple Theory involves counterexamples.
But we saw that the standard counterexample, Bratman’s mafia cases, does not work.
However refining that counterexample does appear to present a problem for the
Simple Theory.
Note that I don’t claim that the objection to the Simple Theory is decisive;
in fact one of my aims (but not in these lectures) is to show that it is possible to
save the Simple Theory.
Nevertheless I do think that the objections to it are serious enough that we
must now explore what proper philosophers have to say about shared agency.
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But before we get there I want to cover a question from last week
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I shout ‘Actung!’
You wonder why.
And in wondering why you are seeking a rationalizing explanation:
one which makes sense of the action from my point of view.
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We are concerned with the thesis that
rationalizations are causal explanations.
Davidson is attempting to make the thesis clearer by introducing some terminology.
primary reason
(‘Giving the reason why an agent did
something is often a matter of naming the
pro attitude [ie. desire] (a) or the related belief (b) or both;
let me call this pair the primary reason why the agent performed the action’
(Davidson, 1980, p. 4).)
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This is Actions, Reasons and Causes
