Abstract
“Team reasoning”—understood as fundamentally different from individual instrumental reasoning—has been proposed as a solution to a problem of strategic interaction discussed in game theory. But this form of reasoning has been deployed recently in philosophical discussion about shared agency and joint action, in particular to characterize the special “participatory” intention an individual has when acting with another. The main point of the chapter is that constraints on intending raise some challenges for this approach to participatory intention. If team reasoning rationally yields a participatory intention to A, it would require a belief or presumption on the part of the agent regarding what fellow participants will do—namely, that they or enough of them will also employ team reasoning. But what warrants this assumption? I contend that some ways of defending it are incompatible with what originally motivates team reasoning as a solution to a problem of strategic interaction. I will argue that if, as its proponents insist, team reasoning is to be fundamentally distinct from individual instrumental reasoning, then it must invoke a notion of a rational yet non-evidential warrant for belief. The distinctiveness of team reasoning would require, in general, that a team reasoner’s belief or expectation that other participants are also team reasoners is rational, but not acquired in the way that rational belief as it is usually understood should be acquired, that is, on the basis of evidence.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Gold and Sugden (2007) give examples of individual actions that are coordinated (in the sense of being in Nash equilibrium), and yet intuitively do not count as shared activity. See also Bratman (2009) in this regard. But the difference is not just a third-personal fact about the nature of the coordination between individuals; it is also reflected in how it is for each participant, which is what the what one is up to locution is meant to capture. There is, moreover, the normative difference between the cases emphasized by Gilbert, who introduced this example. For recent discussion, see her 2009. I discuss the normative issue in Roth (2004).
- 2.
Searle (1990), Bratman (1992), and Velleman (2001). Bratman (1993) makes clear that a commitment on everyone’s part to the entire activity makes sense of the coordination; it would not be reasonable to rely on others the way we do in shared activity unless there is some such commitment. And the thought is that this commitment can be understood in terms of intention.
- 3.
- 4.
In the end, I don’t think that such an authority is incompatible with shared activity. See Roth (2013).
- 5.
- 6.
What about the intention not merely to walk at a certain pace, but to keep pace with you, where keeping pace is cooperatively neutral? It’s not clear that this captures what I’m up to when acting with you. Stalking involves the intention to keep pace with someone, and yet what one is up to when stalking someone is far from what one is up to in walking with them.
- 7.
This is over and above the worry that such a specification of the intention threatens circularity. The circularity worry is that an account in terms of the robust intention presupposes an understanding of the concept of shared activity which, if not the very notion we’re trying to elucidate, is awfully close (Searle 1990, p. 405).
- 8.
I don’t mean to suggest that nothing can be said to address this problem. For example, perhaps I can form the intention because I predict your contribution. See below. I discuss my concerns with the predictive strategy more fully elsewhere.
- 9.
See Velleman (1997).
- 10.
My intention to move my arm just so, when prompted by the intention of offending you, is quite different from my intention of moving my arm the same way when prompted by the intention to let off steam.
- 11.
Bratman (1987).
- 12.
Unless, as Gold and Sugden (2007) point out, we supplement standard game theory with assumptions regarding imperfect rationality (see also Bardsley 2006, p. 147). E.g. I think you are as likely to play A as to play B, so maximizing leads me to pick A. But it’s odd to have to appeal to the idea that you’re so irrational as to be as likely to pick A as you are to pick B. A further thought would be that I remain entirely agnostic about what you will pick (as was suggested by a referee). Wouldn’t maximizing expected benefits then point me to pick A? No, because I wouldn’t have any expected benefit. If I’m truly agnostic about what the other person will do, then I should be agnostic about what the expected benefit will be.
- 13.
See Bardsley (2006, p. 147).
- 14.
Actually, one figure in the team reasoning literature, Sugden, doesn’t seem to argue for the rationality of team reasoning. See Sugden’s editorial note 22 in Bacharach (2006, p. 141), where he rejects Bacharach’s interpretation of him.
- 15.
We need to understand the team reasoning approach correctly. If it is to address the problem of how individuals can come together to share an intention and act jointly, the team reasoning approach has to be addressed to the individual: it’s an account of how the individual reasons toward the intention that might represent her commitment to shared activity. Some presentations of team reasoning occasionally sound as if the question, what should we do? is entertained not by an individual but by the entire group or group-like entity comprising the individual participants, where it’s unclear what implication this is supposed to have for the rationality of each of those participants.
- 16.
- 17.
Regarding the assumption of rationality: in the philosophy of action, intentional action is tied to rationality; intentional action is understood as acting for reasons and explained in terms of reasons (Anscombe 1963; Davidson 1963). Given this tradition, the goal is to understand shared activity as a form of rational action. So it wouldn’t do us any good if selecting the cooperative option weren’t rational. It would, in this tradition, be problematic if shared activity and interrelated structure of intentions couldn’t be rationally willed.
- 18.
I leave open the question of circularity, of whether the proposal smuggles in the notion of collectivity by invoking some robust conception of parthood that presupposes the concept of joint or shared activity.
- 19.
- 20.
The line of criticism to be pursued here is in the tradition of those given by Tuomela and Bratman, each of whom also draws on the distinctiveness of intention in questioning the team reasoning proposal. Tuomela (2009) focuses on schema 4 from Gold and Sugden (2007, see Sect. 5 below) as encapsulating the team reasoning proposal. He points out that the pro tanto considerations serving as premises in the schema are not strong enough to establish the all out conclusion needed for an intention in the conclusion of the schema.
Even if we set aside Tuomela’s worry and assume some sort of all things considered judgment can be secured by reasoning along the lines of Schema 4, it’s still not clear that the resulting judgment corresponds to an intention. My participatory intention might be to J, even though the value judgment via team reasoning regarding what we should do is some J’ distinct from J. To take an example from Bratman (Shared Agency), weak willed lovers might through team reasoning judge it best not to elope. But they elope regardless, each intending his/her part in it. The judgment not to elope may reflect what is best for us. But we nevertheless elope, and do so together, and we each have the corresponding participatory intention to elope. In assuming that valuing most the option of not eloping is or directly converts to the corresponding intention (of not eloping), the team reasoning proposal fails to appreciate how intending is distinct from valuing.
- 21.
In the case of the cards, it does seem that I can pick and intend to pick the King, irrespective of what you do. However, it is not clear that I can pick and intend to pick the King as part of each of us picking the King, or as a way of carrying out the intention to pick the same card as you (unless I have some reason to think that you’ll pick it as well). Picking the King because you are also picking it is not something I can do or intend without information about you also picking it.
- 22.
See Bratman (2014) on enabling interdependence.
- 23.
See Bratman (2014), on reasons-for interdependence.
- 24.
- 25.
That’s why team reasoning points to a solution even when what we have is a one-off interaction with individuals with whom we have not interacted previously.
- 26.
Gold and Sugden’s use of ‘A’ differs from mine in that for them it denotes the shared act, rather than just one’s component in it.
- 27.
This is especially so if we modify premise 3 as Tuomela (2009, p. 299) rightly insists we should. See note 20 above.
- 28.
See for example Bacharach (2006, p. 137) who refers to a theory of entification involving framing as psychological, drawing a contrast with a normative theory of rationality.
- 29.
See Bacharach (2006, pp. 143–44) for suggestive remarks here.
- 30.
- 31.
It’s not as if we have positive evidence for thinking that the other is a team reasoner; rather, it’s a presupposition that might be defeated. In contrast, the predictive view doesn’t seem to be committed to any thought about the rationality of fellow participants (although perhaps it may—in which case it would have to explain the rationality). That is, on the predictive view, one can base the requisite prediction on whatever evidence one may have about fellow participants, irrespective of whether one takes them to be rational or irrational. For example, maybe it’s just a matter of habit that the other person tends to behave as she does, and this is something I come to know through experience in observing her.
- 32.
Contrast the status of prediction for e.g. Bratman, where the warrant for prediction is based on one’s experience of what the other does. Bratman works in a different literature and doesn’t feel that we need to build our account of joint action around the special case of Hi Lo. Whereas, the team reasoning view thinks of this special case as definitive of shared agency, and thus having a significance that extends to cases where this sort of reasoning is not necessarily required for coordination.
References
Anderson, E. 1996. Reasons, attitudes, and values: Replies to Sturgeon and Piper. Ethics 106: 538–554.
Anscombe, G.E.M. 1963. Intention. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bacharach, M. 2006. Beyond individual choice. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bardsley, N. 2007. On collective intentions: Collective action in economics and philosophy. Synthese 157(2): 141–159.
Bonjour, L. 1980. Externalist theories of empirical knowledge. In Midwest studies in philosophy 5: Studies in epistemology, ed. P.A. French, T.E. Uehling Jr., and H.K. Wettstein, 53–73. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bratman, M. 1987. Intentions, plans, and practical reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bratman, M. 1992. Shared cooperative activity. Philosophical Review 101: 327–341.
Bratman, M. 1993. Shared intention. Ethics 104: 97–113.
Bratman, M. 2009. Modest sociality and the distinctiveness of intention. Philosophical Studies 144: 149–165.
Bratman, M. 2014. Shared agency: A planning theory of acting together. Oxford: Oxford University Press (in print).
Burge, T. 1993. Content preservation. Philosophical Review 102: 457–488.
Davidson, D. 1963. Actions, reasons, and causes. Journal of Philosophy 60: 685–700.
Gilbert, M. 2009. Shared intention and personal intentions. Philosophical Studies 144: 167–187.
Gold, N., and R. Sugden. 2007. Collective intentions and team agency. Journal of Philosophy CIV(3): 109–137.
Hurley, S. 1989. Natural reasons: Personality and polity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kutz, C. 2000. Acting together. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61: 1–31.
Roth, A.S. 2004. Shared agency and contralateral commitments. Philosophical Review 113: 359–410.
Roth, A.S. 2013. Prediction, authority, and entitlement in shared acitiviity. Noûs 47(3): 1--27 DOI: 10.1111/nous.12011.
Searle, J. 1990. Collective intentions and actions. In Intentions in communication, ed. P. Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. Pollack, 401–415. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Sugden, R. 1993. Thinking as a team. In Altruism, ed. E.F. Paul, F.D. Miller, and J. Paul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tuomela, R. 2005. We-intentions revisited. Philosophical Studies 125(3): 327–369.
Tuomela, R. 2007. The philosophy of sociality: The shared point of view. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tuomela, R. 2009. Collective intentions and game theory. The Journal of Philosophy 106(5): 292–300.
Tuomela, R., and K. Miller. 1988. We-intentions. Philosophical Studies 53: 367–389.
Velleman, D. 1997. How to share an intention. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57: 29–50.
Velleman, D. 2001. Review of faces of intention by Michael Bratman. The Philosophical Quarterly 51(202): 119–121.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Roth, A.S. (2014). Team Reasoning and Shared Intention. In: Konzelmann Ziv, A., Schmid, H. (eds) Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6934-2_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6934-2_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-6933-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6934-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)