Joint Actions and Shared Intentions: An Expressive Conception of Collective Agency

Sean Bowden (Deakin University )

Abstract: Philosophers working on the ontology of collective action tend to take as their starting point the idea that a genuinely collective action must be based on some form of collective attitude such as a shared intention. Although a number of standard accounts of shared intentions have becomes points of reference in the field, there is little agreement between them. Moreover, these standard accounts all seem to face a number of common problems. First of all, because they tend to presuppose that the group members involved in joint actions possess a sophisticated theory of mind, they seem unable to account for collective actions in infants and animals. Secondly, because of their focus on future-directed shared intentions, they seem unable to account for spontaneous or rapidly unfolding joint actions that occur without prior planning, as well as for joint actions in which the shared intention that animates it cannot be specified in advance of participants finding ways of practically realising that intention. The aim of this paper, then, is to start to build a framework for an account of shared agency – which I will call an ‘expressive’ conception – capable of responding to these problems.