International Masterclass “Shared Agency” with Professor Michael Bratman

Starting with his groundbreaking ‘Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason’ (1987), Michael Bratman has made highly influential contributions to topics such as agency, planning, intention and moral responsibility. His work has been influential in various areas of scientific research ranging from artificial intelligence to the social sciences. Bratman is also a pioneer in the investigation of collective intentionality. In his new book ‘Shared Agency’, he outlines how his planning theory of individual agency can be used to provide the basis for an account of shared agency:

Bratman's book "seeks a framework for understanding these basic forms of sociality:  What concepts do we need?  In what do these forms of sociality consist?  How are they related to relevant forms of individual agency? What norms are central to such sociality? How are these social norms related to norms that apply in the first instance to individual agency?  These are questions about the conceptual, metaphysical and normative foundations of our sociality.  And a conjecture of this book is that a rich account of individual planning agency facilitates the step to these forms of sociality.  There is independent reason – grounded in the diachronic organization of our temporally extended agency – to see planning structures as basic to our individual agency.  And once these planning structures are on board we can expect them to play central roles in our sociality. The planning theory of individual agency highlights distinctive roles and norms of intentions, understood as plan states.  And the conjecture is that appeal to these planning structures enables us to provide adequate resources – conceptual, metaphysical and normative – for an account of sufficient conditions for these basic forms of sociality.  Shared agency emerges, both functionally and rationally, from structures of interconnected planning agency. This is a deep continuity between individual and social agency. And this is an aspect of the fecundity of planning structures, the idea that planning structures ground a range of practical capacities that are central to our lives." 

(Bratman, M., forthcoming, Shared Agency, Oxford University Press)

Organized by Angelica Kaufmann and Jens van 't Klooster

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