Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Planning Agents in a Social World
- PART ONE ACCEPTANCE AND STABILITY
- PART TWO SHARED AGENCY
- 5 Shared Cooperative Activity
- 6 Shared Intention
- 7 Shared Intention and Mutual Obligation
- 8 I Intend That We J
- PART THREE RESPONSIBILITY AND IDENTIFICATION
- PART FOUR CRITICAL STUDIES
- Index
7 - Shared Intention and Mutual Obligation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Planning Agents in a Social World
- PART ONE ACCEPTANCE AND STABILITY
- PART TWO SHARED AGENCY
- 5 Shared Cooperative Activity
- 6 Shared Intention
- 7 Shared Intention and Mutual Obligation
- 8 I Intend That We J
- PART THREE RESPONSIBILITY AND IDENTIFICATION
- PART FOUR CRITICAL STUDIES
- Index
Summary
Our intentions are sometimes shared. You and I might intend to sing a duet together, to paint the house together, to play basketball together, to have a conversation together. Such shared intentions help to organize and to unify our intentional agency in important ways. Further, as Margaret Gilbert has emphasized, in many cases in which you and I have such a shared intention we see each other as in some ways obligated to each other to play our respective roles.
In “Shared Intention” I sketched an account of the nature of shared intentions of small groups, in the absence of authority relations. With respect to a group consisting of you and me, and concerning joint activity J, my proposal was as follows:
Shared Intention Thesis (SI thesis): We intend to J if and only if
(a) I intend that we J and (b) you intend that we J.
I intend that we J in accordance with and because of (1)(a), (1)(b), and meshing subplans of (1)(a) and (1)(b); you intend that we J in accordance with and because of (1)(a), (1)(b), and meshing subplans of (1)(a) and (1)(b).
(1) and (2) are common knowledge between us.
I argued that such a complex of interlocking intentions of the individuals would play the basic roles characteristic of shared intention, namely, coordinate the intentional conduct and planning of each of us, and structure relevant bargaining between us, in ways that track the goal of our J-ing. My argument for this claim made no explicit appeal to obligations and entitlements that may be generated by such an interlocking web of intentions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Faces of IntentionSelected Essays on Intention and Agency, pp. 130 - 141Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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