Objectives first.
This is very important: Pacherie’s objectives are not the same as Bratman’s (nor Gilbert’s),
and Pachiere is very clear about them.
Useful illustration of the method:
state your objectives so that **you** set the criteria for success
(rather than leaving this to your reader).
Pacherie’s ‘shared intention lite’
[Not] ‘all intentional joint actions require the sophistication in ascribing propositional
attitudes that Bratman’s account appears to demand.
Pacherie’s view is not that Bratman is wrong in every case:
she thinks he is right about some but not all case. You’ll see
why this is important later.
[I construct] ‘a modest or ‘lite’ notion of shared intention, less cognitively demanding than what the analyses proposed by leading philosophical accounts suggest and constituting a plausible basis from which more sophisticated forms of shared intentions can [...] emerge’
(Pacherie, 2013, p. 2)
importance: not aiming to tell the whole story
‘philosophers who appeal to shared intentions are trying to capture
a stronger notion of intentional joint action.
For a joint activity
to be a joint intentional action in this strong sense, the
individuals who engage in this activity must think of its goal
not
just as bringing about outcome O, but
as bringing about outcome O
together.’
(Pacherie, 2013, p. 5)
‘Two persons P1 and P2 share an intention to A, if:
(i) each has a self-conception as a member of the team T, consisting of P1 and P2 (collective self-framing);
(i’) each believes (i) (group identification expectation);
What is a team?
Pacherie follows Bacherach here.
Psychological group identification. Not a matter of rational
control, nor even of choice. It is involuntary.
‘In identifying as a member of a group, an agent conceives this
group as a unit of agency acting in pursuit of some group-goal.’
(Pacherie, 2013, p. 16)
(ii) each reasons that A is the best choice of action for the team (team reasoning from a group viewpoint); and
(iii) each therefore intends to do his part of A (team reasoning from an individual viewpoint).’
(Pacherie, 2013)
see also Gold & Sugden (2007); Pacherie (2011)
Step 2b: Pacherie on ‘Shared intention lite’ (best account linking
shared intention to team reasoning)
Objections: (a) very limited model (decision theory and team reasoning); (b) requires frames;
(c) counterexamples to Pacherie (too ‘lite’)?
(d) Not ‘lite’ enough (depending on what intentions are),
(e) Still fails the requirements on inferential and normative integration of shared intentions with intentions.
*TODO:
Does team reasoning or Pacherie’s account meet Searle’s constraint:
‘The notion of a [shared intention] ... implies the notion of cooperation’
Searle (1990, p. 95)?
Yes, beautifully
Does team reasoning meet
Bratman’s constraints
1. Shared intentions are inferentially integrated with ordinary, individual intentions.
2. Shared intentions are normatively integrated with ordinary, individual intentions (e.g. aggregation).
If no clarificatory questions, is the account true? Counterexamples?
consider this case. You and I each meet conditions (i)-(iii). However, we are each
doubtful that the other meets condition (i); this appears to be possible because there
is no explicit knowledge requirement. Despite these doubts, we also meet (ii) for we
each intend to do our parts in A in part because we recognise that there is still a
small chance that the other meets (i) and in part because we each think doing our parts
in A will have positive side effects (perhaps we each think that this result in being
viewed as a good team player by some observers). So here it seems that we meet
conditions (i)-(iii) and have a shared intention, although if asked whether we have
a shared intention we could each reasonably deny that we do (because we each doubt
that the other will meet conditions (i)). I suspect that this case is either not
possible or not a problem; but it may illustrate why further elaboration of the account
could be helpful at this point.
This deals with the potential objection but now the same objection applies with
respect to the other conditions.
But check what Pacherie herself says:
‘(i’) [...] isn’t independent from condition (i), but rather constitutes
a default assumption given the nature of the psychological processes
that are supposed to automatically induce group- identification. In
other words, had ‘non-group’ cues be present and salient enough, the’
(Pacherie, 2013, p. 19)
