WE-INTENTIONS REVISITED · 2014. 4. 30. · WE-INTENTIONS REVISITED is based on their various...

RAIMO TUOMELA

WE-INTENTIONS REVISITED

ABSTRACT. This paper gives an up-to-date account of we-intentions andresponds to some critics of the author’s earlier work on the topic in question.While the main lines of the new account are basically the same as before, thepresent account considerably adds to the earlier work. For one thing, it showshow we-intentions and joint intentions can arise in terms of the so-called BulletinBoard View of joint intention acquisition, which relies heavily on some under-lying mutually accepted conceptual and situational presuppositions but does notrequire agreement making or joint intention to form a joint intention. The modelyields categorical, unconditional intentions to participate in the content of thewe-intention and joint intention (viz. shared we-intention upon analysis).

The content of a we-intention can be, but need not be a joint action. Thus aparticipant alone cannot settle and control the content of the intention. Instead theparticipants jointly settle the content and control the satisfaction of the intention.These and some other features distinguish we-intentions from “action intentions”,viz. intentions that an agent can alone settle and satisfy. The paper discusses we-intentions (and other “aim-intentions”) from this perspective and it also defendsthe author’s earlier account against a charge of vicious circularity that has beendirected against it.

I. INTRODUCTION

You and I may share the plan to carry a heavy table jointly upstairsand realize this plan. In this case we both can be said to have thejoint intention jointly to carry the table upstairs: the content of theintention here involves our performing something together and thepronoun ‘we’ of course refers to us, viz. you and me together. In myearlier work I have often taken joint intentions to be expressible bymeans of locutions like “We will do X”, where the word ‘will’ isused conatively (rather than predictively, in the future tense) and Xis a joint action type (cf. Tuomela, 1984, 1995, 2000a, b; Tuomelaand Miller, 1988). However, as joint intentions can also have othercontents, I will in this paper speak of the jointly intending agents’jointly seeing to it (jstit) that a state or event obtains. They can thus

© Springer 2005Philosophical Studies (2005) 125: 327–369

RAIMO TUOMELA

jointly see to it that they jointly build a house, that one of thembuilds it, or that some outsiders are hired to do the job, and so on.I have chosen jstit as my umbrella term as it covers many kinds ofactivities – e.g. jointly performing actions in a direct or in an indirectsense, jointly bringing about states, jointly maintaining states, andso on (cf. Sandu and Tuomela, 1996; Belnap et al., 2001). Noticehowever, that in the context of joint intention the actions in questioncan be of various kinds, as just mentioned, and they can be non-equivalent (e.g. jstit does not entail direct performance nor is theconverse true). I take jstit to be a necessarily intentional notion. Thisfits well with its appearance in the content of joint intention as onecannot non-intentionally satisfy an intention.

For some agents jointly to perform an action there must of courselogically be an opportunity for them to do it. Thus they cannot opena window if it is already open. Let us call the state of the worldwhere the window is open the result state of the action of openingthe window. Seeing to it that the window is open expresses inten-tional control over the state of the window’s being open and requiressuccess (viz., the agents have not seen to it that the window is openunless it is open).

The following cases of intentional activity fall under an agent’sseeing to it that the window is open: The agent opens the window (byhis own direct actions), if it is closed; he keeps it open, if some otheragent or something else tries to close it; the agent gets some otheragent to open the window, if it is closed; he refrains from preventinganother agent from opening the window (see Sandu and Tuomela,1996; also cf. Belnap et al., 2001, for stit and jstit.)

The content of a joint intention has, as it were, two parts. In thecase of single-agent intention I take the intention to have the form “Aintends, by his actions, to perform X” or “A intends, by his actions,to see to it that X”. Analogously with this, we have – correspondingto the second alternative – in the case of joint agency (here thedyadic case) “A and B jointly intend by their actions to perform jointaction X” or “A and B jointly intend to see to it jointly that X” (or,from their perspective, “We will perform X together”). Accordingly,I suggest that we take the joint intention now to be about jstitingsomething. This could be also called the first part of the contentof the joint intention. What is to be jstited constitutes the second,

328


“variable” part of the content, and this part need not be performedas a joint action. The first part is the same in all joint intentions. Itindicates that the joint intention is oriented towards joint action. Wecan add that jstiting involves that each participant of joint intentionis in principle actionally involved: he has a share or part in theparticipants’ jstiting that X. I accordingly claim that the structureof the joint intention here can be expressed by the following in thedyadic case: Agents A and B jointly intend to see to it jointly that X.Here X can be the participants’ joint action, somebody else’s action,some other agents’ joint action, a state in the world (like that a houseis painted or the window is open). Consider the special but centralcase in which X is a joint action to be performed by A and B. Thenmy formula becomes, using jstit for joint action allover: A and Bjointly intend to see to it jointly that they jstit X, which due to the“collapsing” property of jstit amounts simply to “A and B jointlyintend to see to it jointly that X”.

All intentions are necessarily related to one’s own actions. Thisapplies also to joint intentions. In the single-agent case, an agentmay intend to see to it that his car is fixed. This intention has asits satisfaction condition that the agent by his own actions sees toit that his car becomes fixed – e.g. he can get a mechanic to fix thecar or fix it himself. Similarly, in the case of joint intention withthe jstit content the participants have to see to it jointly by theiractions that the intended state or event comes about. If the intentionconcerns the direct performance of an action (e.g. when an agentintends to open the window) the agent must himself bring about thesatisfaction solely by his own action. This kind of intention I willcall (direct) “action intention”. A minimal rationality condition foran action intention, at least a prior intention, is that the agent mustat least lack the belief that it is impossible for him to perform theaction. Assuming that at least a prior or future-directed intentioninvolves commitment to the content of the intention, we can groundthe previous claim by saying that if he would not so believe it wouldbe pointless for him to commit himself to his task.

An action intention contrasts with an “aim-intention”. In thelatter case it is not required that the agent believes that he withsome likelihood can alone bring about or see to it that the actionor its result event comes about. The kind of aim-intention that will

329

RAIMO TUOMELA

concern us in the present paper is we-intention. A we-intention is aparticipant’s “slice” of their joint intention, so to speak. Or the otherway round, it can technically be said that a joint intention consistsof the participants’ we-intentions about the existence of which theparticipants have mutual belief. Even if we assume that a joint inten-tion is (ontologically) composed of the agents we-intentions aboutwhich there is mutual knowledge (or belief), these we-intentionsare different from ordinary action intentions not only in being aim-intentions but also in that they conceptually depend on the jointintention in question.

A we-intention is a special kind of aim-intention involving thatthe agent we-intends to bring about a state jointly with the otherparticipants or we-intends to perform an action jointly with theothers or, to use my general formulation, to see to it jointly with theothers that a certain state or event comes about. Considering the jointaction case where the agents jointly intend to perform a joint actiontogether, the central condition of satisfaction of the we-intentionis that the we-intending agent should intend to participate in thejoint action in question. That is, he should intend by his own action,his part or share, to contribute to the joint action. Thus the agent’shaving the we-intention to perform a joint action entails his partici-pation intention, which is an action intention in my terminology.(This matter will be discussed in detail in Section VI.)

An obvious rationality constraint on we-intention is that an agentcannot we-intend unless he believes not only that he can performhis part of their joint action X, but also that he together with hisfellow participants can perform X jointly (can jstit X with them) atleast with some nonzero probability. The jointly intending agentsmust believe that the “jstit opportunities” for an intentional jstitingof X are (or will be) there at least with some probability. Yet anotherproperty of a we-intention is that in each participant’s view it mustbe mutually believed by the participants that the presuppositions forthe (intentional) jstiting of X hold or will hold with some probability.

The formation of a joint intention (and hence we-intention, apersonal “slice” of the joint intention) requires that the participantsjointly make up their minds to jstit something, thus exercising jointcontrol over the possible courses of action and settling for a partic-ular content of jstiting. The formation of a joint intention (or plan)

330


is based on their various personal and, especially, joint desiresand mutual and other beliefs. In this sense a joint intention canbe said to “summarize” or reflect the motivation underlying jointaction. Of course, this final motivation underlying the joint inten-tion need not be anything like an aggregation of private motivationsbut may instead be a compromise based on discussion, negotiation,or bargaining. In contrast, joint desires and wants do not simi-larly involve making up one’s mind and do not lead to intentionaljstiting, to attempts to function rationally in a coordinated way,so as to fulfil the already formed plan; and desires and wants donot require success beliefs as their normal (or “normal-rational”)accompaniments. Joint intentions (and hence shared we-intentions)entail collective (or, here equivalently, joint) commitments to action,and this joint commitment also includes that the participants aresocially committed to each other to perform their parts of thejstiting.

The notions of stiting and jstiting clearly cover more than directaction performance, and this is one reason for employing thesenotions. Another reason is that they serve to make the structureof joint intention more perspicuous, as seen. Thus they help us tosee that joint intentions typically involve not one but two kindsof activity. There is the activity in which the participants see to itthat the (second part of the) content comes about and there is thevery activity that makes the content obtain. Thus the participantsmight hire some other agents to build a house. Here the first kind ofactivity is hiring the agents and monitoring their work; and buildingthe house (performed by the hired agents) is the second kind ofactivity. Having made these points, I will, however, mostly in thispaper speak as if the content of joint intention were a joint action(directly) performed by the jointly intending agents. This is becausespeaking in terms of jstit becomes rather clumsy.

Section II, The Bulletin Board View of Intention Formation, ofthis paper discusses the conceptual and “structural” aspects of jointintention formation. While it in part draws on published material,the ideas of this section are extended and deepened later in SectionIII, We-Intentions and Joint Intentions Analyzed. This section givesa summary account of my theory of joint intention and adds somenew aspects to the account. Section IV discusses in more detail the

331

RAIMO TUOMELA

epistemic and normative bonds between jointly intending partici-pants. Taken together II–IV give an up-to-date theory of jointintention and we-intention. Another central task of this paper isto answer some criticisms directed against my account by SeumasMiller and John Searle. These criticisms relate to the issues ofwhat one really can intend and whether my original (viz. 1984 and1988) account of we-intention is viciously circular. These prob-lems are assessed, respectively, in Section V, Collective Ends andWe-Intentions, and Section VI, On the Alleged Circularity of theConcept of We-Intention. The concluding section VII summarizesthe main achievements of the paper.

II. JOINT INTENTION FORMATION

In joint-intention formation each participating agent accepts toparticipate in the participants’ seeing to it jointly that some state orevent X obtains. Concentrating on the central case in which X is ajoint action, the agents jointly intend, as a group, to see to it that theyperform X jointly. Here each participant accordingly is assumed tointend with a we-perspective together with the others. What doesthis involve? The agents jointly intend as a group to further thecontent of the joint intention that they have accepted as the group’sintended goal (broadly understood). I have elsewhere used the term“we-mode”, contrasting with the private or “I-mode”, to describe thepresent kind of thinking as a group member or thinking with the we-perspective and have offered the following analysis of a we-modeintention (Tuomela, 2002b, p. 30):

(WM) Agents A1, . . . , Am forming a group, g, share the inten-tion to satisfy a content p (e.g. in our example p = X isjointly performed by the participants) in the we-mode ifand only if p is collectively accepted by them qua groupmembers as the content of their collective intention andthey are collectively committed to satisfying p for g.

Here functioning as a group member entails for our example thatthe participants function so as to satisfy their shared intention toperform X together (and in more general cases function to furtherthe group’s constitutive or main interests, goals, beliefs, and stand-ards). Collective commitment in the joint intention case need not

332


be stronger than what joint intention conceptually entails: Whenour agents jointly intend X (e.g. a joint action) they must collec-tively bind themselves to X and what its satisfaction requires. ThisI call the instrumental sense of collective commitment. This senseis intention-relative and, strictly speaking, non-normative. (In thissense my non-normative account sides with Bratman and Milleragainst Margaret Gilbert; see Bratman (1999, p. 125ff.), Miller(1995, p. 64), and Gilbert (1990, p. 6f.).)

In all, the we-mode in the case of joint intention amounts tosaying that the participants must have collectively accepted “Wetogether will do X” (or one of its variants) for their group, andthey must have collectively committed themselves to doing X. Here“We together will do X” applies to each participant, and in thecase of a single participant it expresses his we-intention. An agent’swe-intention then is his “slice” or part of the agents’ joint inten-tion, and conversely a joint intention can, upon analysis, be saidto consist of the participants’ mutually known we-intentions. Thecollective acceptance of an intention as the group’s intention entailsthe satisfaction of the so-called Collectivity Condition. Applied tosatisfaction, the Collectivity Condition says, roughly, that neces-sarily, if the joint intention (goal) is (semantically) satisfied for oneof the participants, then it is satisfied for all participants. (For amore detailed recent discussion of the we-mode versus the I-mode orindividual mode, see Tuomela (2002b, c); note that I-intentions, viz.personal intentions, can be either in the we-mode or in the I-mode.)

In the joint intention to perform a joint action X, it is preciselythe content of the intention that is shared, viz., the content of doingX jointly is shared. Each agent tokens this content, and because anecessarily act-relational intention is involved this amounts to hisintention to perform his part or share of X. The basic argument forassuming that each participant must intend to perform his part ofthe joint action is that the joint intention can only be satisfied if eachparticipant performs his part – for only then will the intentional jointaction satisfying the joint intention come about. The part perfor-mance must be intentional, of course, and thus based on the agent’sintention.

In the general case, each agent can be taken to accept “Wetogether will jointly see to it that X” (or its equivalent) and “I

333

RAIMO TUOMELA

will participate in, or contribute to, our jointly seeing to it that X”,while in the case of directly performable joint action the (“vari-able”) content of a we-intention can accordingly be taken to be“to perform X together”, entailing a participation intention for eachparticipant. A we-intention is not by itself an “action intention” butan “aim-intention” involving that the agent intentionally aims atX and is “aim-committed” to X, while his action commitment isto performing his part of X. The agent’s intention to perform hispart of the joint action accordingly is a proper action intention, thussomething the agent believes he can, at least with some probability,satisfy by his own action (given, of course, that the others performtheir parts).

In this section I will consider the presuppositions of joint inten-tion and the central conceptual elements involved in joint intentionformation. I will focus on plan-based joint intentions which expressjointly intending as a group and which are public in a group context.A central subclass of such joint intentions is formed by joint inten-tions based on the participants’ (explicit or implicit) agreement toact jointly. The making of an agreement in the full sense (viz.,accepting a jointly obligating plan) is a joint action which is neces-sarily intentional. The point about emphasizing this kind of case isobviously that it is conceptually central and also common in actualsocial life (see Tuomela (1995, Chapter 2; 2002a), on which I willdraw below).

What does this kind of plan-based joint intention presuppose?Firstly, it must obviously be required of the participants that theyunderstand – at least in some rudimentary sense – that a joint actionin some sense, however weak, is being proposed. The joint actionmust be taken to include a “slot” for each participant’s intention. Ingeneral, all the relevant generic action concepts need to be possessedto a relevant extent by the participants – a kind of “hermeneuticcircle” is at play. Thus the notion of joint action opportunity needsto be available. Secondly, there is much other background knowl-edge, most of it culture-dependent, that is presupposed. Thirdly, andthis is most significant, there is situation-specific information thatmust be presupposed. If the performance of a joint action, X, ina situation, S, is at stake, the concept of X must be possessed bythe potential participants, and they must also understand what S

334


involves concerning the performance of X. It is also required thateach participant believes that the participants mutually believe thatthe joint action opportunities for X hold in S (cf. the third clause inmy analysis (WI) of we-intentions below in Section III). Some director indirect communication (or signaling) between the participants isneeded for the reason that the participants are autonomous agentswho, nevertheless, must make up their minds depending on whatthe others are thinking and doing. More concretely, communicationis required for them rationally to arrive at unconditional intentions(we-intentions as well as intentions to perform one’s part of thejoint action). The indirect communication may be previously “codi-fied” and may relate to certain specified types of situations (cf. “insituation S we always form a joint plan of a certain kind and acttogether”).

We can view the joint intention formation in intuitive terms fromthe group’s angle and say in functional terms that we want to haveunified group action as a result of a group’s intention being properlysatisfied. This involves that the group members’ actions must besuitably bound together and coordinated with each other. Part ofthis will have to take place at the level of the group’s plan of action,assuming that we are dealing with intentional action. The bond hereis due to the group’s intention to act and its ensuing commitment toaction, which makes the members collectively or jointly committedto the action. In cases of jointly intending as a group and thus beingcollectively committed as group members, the participants are alsosocially committed to each other to participate.

Viewing the matter from the “jointness” level, viz. on the level ofthe group members, jointly intending as a group amounts to jointlyintending to realize a joint plan. Intuitively, the participants mustbe suitably bound together for proper collective action purportingto realize the shared plan to come about (and accordingly for theiracting as a group). As seen, this activity in general requires publicexchange of information between them if it is to lead to mutuallyknown (and not only mutually believed) unconditional participationintentions.

Another philosophical reason for publicity in a group contextis that such central social notions as the speech acts of agree-ment making, promising, commanding, and informing – all relevant

335

RAIMO TUOMELA

to joint-intention formation – are in their core sense not onlylanguage-dependent but public.

The view to be developed below takes all this into account. Itpresupposes that the participants understand in a colloquial sensewhat acting together and a plan (or an agreement) to act togetherare. I will below analyze the conceptually central elements in theformation of a full-blown joint intention to act together and do it interms of a metaphor, the “Bulletin Board” metaphor. The resultingBulletin Board View (BBV) bases joint intentions on a publiclyshared plan of joint action and thereby emphasizes the epistemicpublicity (the public availability of relevant information) of full-blown joint intention, as will be seen. While publicity is central inthis view, in principle one can also formulate a similar view withoutthe publicity requirement (see below).

Suppose that one of us comes up with the idea of cleaning a park.This is the proposed joint action content. That person may publiclycommunicate this to other group members. We may conceptualizeand illustrate the present situation in terms of the following BulletinBoard View of joint intention formation. The initiating member’s ororganizer’s proposal (or, more generally, plan for joint action) canbe thought to be written on a public bulletin board: “Members ofgroup g will clean the park next Saturday. Those who will partici-pate, please sign up here.” Here ‘will’ in the latter sentence istaken to express intention and not only prediction. Supposing thatthe ensuing communicative signaling of acceptance to participate(under the presupposition that sufficiently many others participate)results in a wide uptake and “whole-hearted” acceptance (signing)of this proposal, then – given (communication-based) mutual knowl-edge about this – there will be an adequate plan involving a jointintention to clean the park. The participants’ whole-hearted accept-ance is assumed to entail that the participants form the intention toparticipate in joint action. As seen, this is a two-faced intention, soto speak. There is, firstly, each signed-up participant’s we-intentionto clean the park, and, secondly, his intention to carry out his part orshare of the cleaning (qua his share of it). Furthermore, the partici-pants – because of having expressed their personal participationintentions – have jointly exercised control over what to do together

336


and made up their minds to clean the park. Thus their joint intentionto clean the park has come into existence.

In a slightly stronger case the participants not only accept ashared plan of joint action but in effect make an explicit or implicitagreement (made up of interdependent promises) to perform it (cf.the discussion in Gilbert, 1993; Bach, 1995). Here it holds, onconceptual grounds, that making an agreement in this sense giveseach participant a reason for action, viz., his promise. Furthermore,promising also gives a reason for the other participants to norma-tively expect that the other participants indeed will participate. Thus,we can say that here a participant has the right to expect thatthe others will perform their parts and is also obliged to respecttheir analogous rights. In this sense they are normatively sociallycommitted.

The central thing about BBV is of course its general conceptualcontent, although I have in part used concrete and partly meta-phorical language in stating the view. From a conceptual andtheoretical point of view, the present model of joint intention forma-tion involves the following elements. First, the content of the jointintention must be brought to the participants’ attention. I call this thetopic problem. There may be an initiator who proposes the topic, orthe participants may arrive at the topic by means of their negotiationor joint decision making. They might thus consider their preferencesfor the different action alternatives and arrive at a joint decision by asuitable decision rule, e.g. the majority vote. In this kind of case theparticipants of course, so to speak, sign the bulletin board proposalonly after the topic has been decided upon. In other cases, the topicmay be suggested to them by their shared history or backgroundknowledge in conjunction with some relevant contextual informa-tion. For instance, the participants may share the standing want tokeep the park clean and when they learn that a garbage collectorwill arrive the next morning they may gather that the park cleaningis the thing to do tonight. In BBV this element can be indicated bythe appearance on the bulletin board of the description of the topic(here park cleaning).

The set of potential participants will be the members of a group,g, and this must be knowable to the potential participants. The actualparticipants – or at least a suitable subset of them sufficient to get

337

RAIMO TUOMELA

the joint action initiated and under way – will have to be publiclynamed or indicated. The central element again is the public avail-ability of the information about the intention to participate; thisaspect is also relevant concerning newcomers and persons who haveto change plans for some reason. The participants will pick up thatinformation and this will lead them to believe that those signed upwill participate. What is more, they will also be able to acquiremutual knowledge (or minimally mutual true belief) about this, forthey will come to know that the others know that those persons willparticipate; and this can be iterated if needed.

The publicity requirement in BBV is a kind of public communi-cation requirement in the sense discussed earlier. It is a particularcontingent feature of BBV that the information gathering anddelivery is centralized so that, e.g., pairwise communication is notneeded. However, this is a practical feature that is not conceptuallyessential and can easily be changed. But publicity in group contextis still philosophically central in that it creates a quasi-objectiverealm, viz., a realm which is objective for the participants, and whichis more prone to lead to actual objective knowledge than weakerviews (as the participation intentions are “objectively out there” asstated on the bulletin board). There is thus a kind of group-relativeobjectivity both ontically and epistemically involved here. Further-more, as compared with less public methods, in the case of largegroups, new participants, and participants that have changed theirintentions, etc., knowledge can then better be gathered and checked.

In our metaphor, there may be information written on the boardand there is also information in a special box beneath the boardcalled “Presuppositions and Background Knowledge”. Typicallyonly situational information is written on the board, and the rest,viz., general background assumptions and maybe some obvious kindof situational information is available in the presuppositions box.Somewhere there should also be information about whether theparticipants only are forming a shared plan for joint action basedon publicly expressed intentions or are also making a full-blownagreement (in terms of interdependent promises) to act jointly andin this “thick” normative sense accept a joint plan (see Section IV).

The present approach has several virtues. Firstly, it gives categor-ical joint intentions (without the problems concerned with decondi-

338


tionalization or with “change of view” – see Tuomela, 2002a). BBVis not concerned with proper conditional intentions at all (althoughextendable to deal with them as well). The belief that sufficientlymany participate can be regarded as a presupposition rather thana (contingent) condition, and this is of course a presuppositionbinding all the participants (a collectivity condition is at play here).A participant thus categorically commits himself when signing up,although he may retract his commitment if he comes to believe thata relevant presupposition is not satisfied. Secondly, there is no needfor a prior joint intention to form a joint intention, as mere personalintentions are enough for entering one’s signature on the board.Thirdly, the view can treat the participants either symmetrically orasymmetrically, depending on the demands of the situation (e.g.,Bach’s (1995) offer-acceptance model concerns pairwise communi-cation and is asymmetric). Fourthly, BBV is capable of yieldingepistemically strong (if not the strongest) joint intentions in thesense that all the information that so to speak goes into the jointintention is publicly available and publicly checkable.

The BBV covers all public joint intentions to act jointly or, forthat matter, to jointly see to it that a state or event obtains. Thus itcovers all publicly indicated and accepted joint intentions, be theacceptance thick or thin, and all “group-public” cases subsumableunder the label “jointly intending as a group”. In such cases it willtypically also be correct in general to attribute the joint intention tothe group in question and to say that the group intends to performthe action in question – see Tuomela (1995, Chapter 5) for somequalifications.

However, in contrast to the public BBV spoken above, one canalso formulate and deal with a purely intersubjective and non-public BBV in which everything is based only on beliefs andmutual beliefs – viz., beliefs about who are potential and actualparticipants and beliefs about the topic of the joint intention andabout the participants’ participation intentions, about their sharedbackground knowledge and situational information. Thus, if theparticipants accept a content (intention content or belief content)which they purport to be for the group, if they are collectively (andsocially) committed to the content, and if there is mutual belief(but perhaps not mutual knowledge about the participants accept-

339

RAIMO TUOMELA

ances), then the group intersubjectively intends as a group – e.g.the account in Tuomela and Miller (1988), allows for this possi-bility. (In the case of the merely intersubjective kind of BBV themetaphorical bulletin board will exist only in the minds of theparticipants – or believed participants, and no communication isrequired.) Between the epistemically full-blown BBV and the purelysubjective BBV there are various intermediate views or models,depending on what is assumed about objectivity and about thereasons for the participants beliefs (see the discussion in Tuomela,2000, 2002b).

III. WE-INTENTIONS AND JOINT INTENTIONSANALYTICALLY ELUCIDATED

In accordance with the grounds presented in the previous section,I will next discuss we-intentions and joint intentions in a moreanalytical and precise fashion. These analyses will be needed notonly for the sake of clarity but also for the sake of our discus-sions later in this paper. I will start with my earlier analysis ofwe-intention to act jointly. Such a we-intention is expressible by“We together will do X jointly”. The analysis of core we-intentionis assumed to apply also to the mutual belief-based case which isnot is not (fully) public (cf. my treatments in Tuomela, 1984, 1995,2000a, b; Tuomela and Miller, 1988). This analysis, formulated forthe case of X being a joint action, can summarily be stated as followsfor a collective assumed to consist of some agents A1, . . . , Ai, . . . ,Am:

(WI) A member Ai of a collective g we-intends to do X if andonly if(i) Ai intends to do his part of X (as his part of X);(ii) Ai has a belief to the effect that the joint actionopportunities for an intentional performance of X willobtain (or at least probably will obtain), especially that aright number of the full-fledged and adequately informedmembers of g, as required for the performance of X,will (or at least probably will) do their parts of X, whichwill under normal conditions result in an intentional jointperformance of X by the participants;

340


(iii) Ai believes that there is (or will be) a mutual beliefamong the participating members of g (or at least amongthose participants who do their parts of X intentionally astheir parts of X there is or will be a mutual belief) to theeffect that the joint action opportunities for an intentionalperformance of X will obtain (or at least probably willobtain);(iv) (i) in part because of (ii) and (iii).

I have assumed that the participants actually exist, but I allowthat a participant might in principle be mistaken in his beliefs (ii)and (iii).1 Thus a single agent can in principle have a we-intention,although of course this is an exceptional case. In such a case a we-intention is not a “slice” of a joint intention but at best of a believedjoint intention. Below I will mostly use formulations which presup-pose that the beliefs (ii) and (iii) indeed are true and, what is more,that all the agents in question really have the we-intention and thatwe in this sense are dealing with “genuine” we-intentions. (Noticethat intentional performance of X, dealt with by (ii) and (iii), canin some cases come about without all the participants having thewe-intention.)

I will not here argue for the present analysis except that its clause(i) will be discussed later. The presupposed beliefs, expressing theminimal rationality of the we-intender, and condition (iv) accord-ingly will not be commented on here (see the mentioned references,especially Tuomela and Miller, 1988, for justification).

It is presupposed by my analysis that a minimally rational we-intender should in the standard case of direct joint action be disposedto reason in accordance with the following two schemas (W1) and(W2) of practical inference (or in terms of their variants):

(W1) (i) We will do X.Therefore:(ii) I will do my share of X.

(W2) (i) We will do X.(ii) X cannot be performed by us unless we perform actionZ (for instance, in the case of an action type X, teachagent A, who is one of us, to do something related to hisperformance of actions required of him for X).

341

RAIMO TUOMELA

(iii) We will do Z.Therefore:(iv) Unless I perform Y we cannot perform Z.Therefore:(v) I will do Y (as my contribution to Z).

The first of these schemas in an obvious way connects we-intending to the we-intender’s own action – to his performance of hispart or share of the joint action X. The second of the schemas appliesto all “normally rational” we-intenders, too, but of course only whenthe contingent clauses (ii) and (iv) apply, and it is to be exhibitedby the we-intenders’ dispositions to reason in appropriate circum-stances. This schema expresses a part of what is involved in sayingthat a we-intention involves a joint commitment to contribute to therealization of the content of the we-intention. This joint commit-ment also involves social commitment, viz. that the participants arecommitted to one another to participation in the joint performanceof X. Accordingly, (W2) clearly makes we-intentions cooperativeto a considerable extent and shows that in they require interactionbetween the individuals – or at least disposition to interact.2

Supposing that joint intentions can be expressed by “We togetherwill do X” or its variants, in order to cover also “standing” intentionsin addition to “action-prompting” intentions, we must also take intoaccount dispositions to we-intend, as argued in Tuomela (1991). Thefollowing, elucidation of the notion of joint intention in the directjoint action case can now be given:

(JI) Agents A1, . . . , Ai, . . . , Am have the joint intention toperform a joint action X if and only if(a) these agents have the we-intention (or are disposed toform the we-intention) to perform X; and(b) there is a mutual belief among them to the effect that(a).

In the case of joint intention the conatively used “We will do X” istrue of each participant Ai.

I would like to emphasize that my analysis of joint intentions andwe-intentions is conceptually non-reductive, although it is onticallyindividualistic or, better, interrelational (cf. Tuomela, 1995, Chapter9, also cf. Section VI below). These notions presuppose at leasta pre-analytic notion of joint intention – viz. one involved in the

342


participants’ minds when engaged in joint intention (and joint plan)formation such as expressed by simple exchanges of the kind: (i)“Let’s go swimming”; (ii) “OK” (recall BBV and cf. Section VIbelow). Thus the full concept of a person A’s we-intention to do Xentails that he we-intends to do X – and hence intends to do hispart of X – in accordance with and because of the agents’ endorsed“plan”, thus preanalytic joint intention, to do X together. A centralargument for this kind of partial reflexivity is based on the view thatan intention, firstly, cannot be fulfilled non-intentionally. If A doeshis part of X accidentally – e.g. does something that unbeknownstto him turns out to be describable as his part of X – that does notqualify as fulfilling his we-intention to do X: A intended to performhis part intentionally and not unintentionally. Indeed, secondly, notonly must A act intentionally in the right way, he must act on thebasis of the agents’ preanalytic joint intention to do X. Otherwise theparticipants would not properly satisfy their joint intention in termsof their intentional joint action (cf. the analogy with the single-agentcase). Another argument for the reflexive nature of joint intentioncomes from the requirement that the participants must accept thejoint intention (goal) as their joint intention.

The upshot of our present analysis is this. In the direct joint actioncase, joint intentions are intentions that several agents among them-selves have, and they are expressible by an intention-expression ofthe form “We together will do X” endorsed by these agents. We cansay, using the terminology that Mathiesen (2002) suggests, that theintentional subject of a we-intention is “we” while the ontologicalsubject of a we-intention is a single person (or more generally, anagent, if we consider the possibility of groups as agents).2

IV. WHAT CONTEXTUALLY DIFFERENT KINDS OFJOINT INTENTION ARE THERE?

As seen, joint intentions can involve bonds of different strengthbetween the participants. They can be bound by explicit or implicitagreements, by public acceptances of joint plans involving jointintentions or even only by mutual beliefs about joint plans. In thissection I will discuss these matters at some length under the assump-tion that the analyses of joint intention and we-intention given in

343

RAIMO TUOMELA

Section III still hold true in the different contexts and cases to becovered below. Thus, in a sense there is only one kind of joint inten-tion, but it can so to speak appear in different contextual guises.These have to do with the normative and epistemic connections thathold between the participants – either due to their voluntary choiceor due to environmental factors.

In the full-blown case of joint intention we speak of “thick”,normative acceptance of a plan (or intention) of joint action. Myanalysis thus distinguishes between thick, normative acceptanceof a plan (or intention) to perform X and a thin, non-normativeacceptance of a plan. For instance, if the participants have madean agreement (consisting of mutual, interdependent promises) toperform X together, they accept the intention in the thick, normativesense. This can be called the full or fullest case of joint intention.

As claimed, in the case of accepting an intention to participatein a joint action a participant can be taken to accept “We togetherwill perform X jointly”. Taken in the thick sense he here makes thepromise to perform X together with the others. If only the thin senseis involved, he merely expresses his intention to take part in the jointaction X. In the case of thin acceptance a participant merely formsthe intention to participate, without promising to do it or acceptingpublicly to do it (cf. below).

Generally speaking, our present distinction relies on the distinc-tion between the “promise” family and the “intention” family ofconcepts. To the promise family belong agreements and acceptancesof plans (when acceptance is understood in the thick, normativesense of “I accept to do this together with the others”) and to theintention family belong plain intentions, be they language-based“acceptance” intentions or “mere” intentions of the “lower” kindapplicable also to children and possibly chimpanzees and the like.In the collective case the promise family involves a joint obligationto the agreed-upon content while this is not the case for intentionsand intention-based notions. The possibility of thin, non-normativeacceptance of a plan is indicated by the legitimacy of statementssuch as “I accept to participate in this plan but cannot promise to doit”.

The Bulletin Board View explicates intention formation both inthe case of thick and thin acceptance. In the case of thick, norma-

344


tively accepted (e.g. agreement-based) joint intention BBV servesto explicate the central idea in the practice of forming a joint planof action in the intersubjective public space. If agreement making isin question, there will also be a publicly existing social (or, if youlike, “quasi-moral”) obligation to participate in joint action. Thisentailment of an obligation can be regarded as a conceptual truthabout the notion of agreement. An agreement consists of mutualinterdependent promises, and a promise involves putting oneselfunder an obligation. Each signed participant is taken to endorse theobligation in question and to be committed to the agreed-upon jointaction and to his share of it. That he is thus committed will showup in the practical reasoning he may engage in. Such reasoning willhave a content that may be described by him, roughly, by locutionslike “On the basis of our agreement I am socially obligated to do mypart of the joint action and hence I think I ought to do it”. The partic-ipant cannot be released from this obligation merely by changing hismind (as he can in the mere mutual belief-based account) because ofthe interdependence involved in agreement (cf. the discussion e.g. inGilbert, 1993; R. Tuomela and M. Tuomela, 2003).

To summarize the case of a thick, agreement based joint inten-tion to joint action, there are the following conceptual elements inan accepted, effective agreement, assumed to be mutually believedby the participants: (1) An intersubjective obligation to fulfill thecontent, say X, of the agreement, and (2) a joint commitment toX by the participants in virtue of their accepting (1). The jointcommitment (2) entails that each participant is (i) committed tothe participants’ collectively performing X, thus sharing the partici-pants’ collective responsibility to perform X, and (ii) committed toperforming his part of X (this is expressible roughly as thoughtsof the form “I will perform my part of X because of (1)”), andthat (iii) each participant is suitably persistent but also flexible inhis performance of his part of X. Relative to the joint intention toperform X and the joint commitment to X, (iv) in virtue of (ii) eachparticipant is also committed to intending to perform his part (andnot only committed to performing it), as this intention is concep-tually part and parcel of the joint intention in question. The jointintention to perform X here basically consists of the participants’we-intentions (and non-private personal commitments) to perform X

345

RAIMO TUOMELA

(cf. singing a duet), and therefore a participant is committed to bothintending to perform his part of X and to performing it. Further-more, there is also (v) a social commitment by the participantsto each other concerning their part-performances – based on theendorsement of the intersubjective obligations concerning the part-performances entailed by (1). This social commitment involves thateach participant is committed to responding to the others’ normativeexpectations related to his performance and is thus responsible to theothers for performing of his part. Correspondingly, he is also entitledto expect that the others perform their parts.

Here are some examples of joint intentions involving only thin,non-normative acceptance falling within the standard BBV. Firstly,there is the park cleaning example discussed earlier. It can havetokens satisfying BBV, even if only some kind of behavioral indica-tion of togetherness is involved (e.g., the participants show by theirbehavior which area they leave to the other). Next, there could be alarge number of people sharing the joint intention to push a brokenbus up the hill without a socially grounded obligation to do it.The joint intention could be based on only the participants’ mutualknowledge about the others’ pushing action being expressive of theintention to participate in joint pushing (rather than of their explicitagreement). Here the bus pushers jointly intend as a group and actas a group. A third example is provided by a group of people goingout for a drink after a talk. There might be some leaders or, better,“operative” members who agree about joint action, but many othersmerely follow suit. In this asymmetric case only (and at most) theoperative members would be obligated to perform the joint task.3

In these kinds of thin cases there are joint or collective commit-ments generated by joint intentions. These commitments are inten-tion-relative and instrumental concerning the satisfaction of the jointintention. There are no (or need not be) intrinsic obligations forthem either to keep their intentions (we-intentions and intentionsto perform their parts) or to participate in the joint action and henceto perform their part actions. These joint we-mode commitmentsare appropriately persistent and are not properly consummatedbefore the agents have jointly achieved what they we-intend orhave achieved relevant consensus about the unachievability of theintended goal (or if some other mutually recognized “revocability”

346


condition comes to apply). Note, furthermore, that the agents can ofcourse collectively change their mind, and thus joint commitmentsare changeable.

To end this section, I will summarize my classifications of thedifferent cases that BBV allows. While the characterization of jointintention in Section III explicates what a joint intention is, theclassification below concerns various contexts of jointly intending.The cases below are claimed to exhaust jointly intending as a groupto perform a joint action:

(1) Joint intention in a thick, normative context. There are twocases: (a) Agreement-based joint intention, a strong case ofBBV involving agreement making in conditions of mutualknowledge or “group-knowability”. (b) Expressed acceptanceof plan in conditions of mutual knowledge. Here the acceptanceis normative, thick acceptance. (This case requires the analysansof the “bridge principle” of Tuomela (1995, Chapter 3) to holdtrue.4)In (a) the participants make an agreement to act jointly; forinstance, the participants make an agreement to paint a housetogether tomorrow. In contrast, (b) includes the somewhat widerkind of case where the participants can sign up for joint action.(Thus, if sufficiently many persons sign up e.g. to go for a bustour next Sunday, then joint intention is created and, normally,action ensues.) In general terms, case (1) is (strongly) norma-tively group-binding on the basis of a joint obligation andcollective commitment.

(2) Joint intention in a weakly normative context. In these casesthere are normative participation expectations based on anagent’s leading the others to expect normatively that he willparticipate in the joint action in question. When all the agents dothe same, there will be a base for the participants’ mutual beliefabout collective commitment to participate and thus about theothers’ participation intentions. We may speak of this case asbeing based on mutual weak promises to participate. Example:By expressing – by his words or by his actual action – that hewill help to clean a park an agent leads the others normatively toexpect that he will participate in the joint action. When this kindof weak promise is mutual (and understood to be mutual among

347

RAIMO TUOMELA

the participants) a weakly normative joint intention to partici-pate is at stake. Each of the participants is committed to thisjoint task under conditions of mutual belief, and thus we havecollective commitment here. (Recall, however, that there can bea joint intention to clean the park, etc., also in a non-normativesense.)

(3) Joint intention in a non-normative context. In this case there isa publicly shared plan-based joint intention which falls shortof being even a weak promise in the sense of case (2). In thiscase there, because of the publicity requirement, will be anexpression of intention, which nevertheless is based on non-normative, thin acceptance (cf. I intend to participate but I donot promise that I will). In all we can say that this type of case ofBBV is based on mutual-knowledge -based explicitly expressedintention to share a plan (involving a non-normative acceptanceof the plan). The participants will be collectively (or jointly)committed to the plan partly because of the mutual knowledgethat they share a plan, and thus intention.

(4) Non-standard cases of joint intention not satisfying the publicityrequirement. This is the weakest case of joint intention. Whilethe publicity requirement is not satisfied and while there thus areno public participation expressions, there must still be a mutualbelief concerning participation and this creates intersubjectivitysufficient for joint intention and collective commitment. Thiscase thus falls outside the standard BBV (but not the mentionedmerely intersubjective version of it).

For instance, a participant may be personally collectivelycommitted, I say we-committed, to the joint action in question on thegrounds that he will not achieve his goal that the joint action comesabout without the others performing their parts properly; thus he andthe others commit themselves to the action at least in an instrumentalsense based on mutual belief. (Think here e.g. of the Roman militarywhere the soldiers in a military unit were punished or rewardedcollectively.) This case is not normatively group-binding in a senseallowing for justified criticism of violation (for such justified criti-cism would have to be based on public facts, e.g. public intentionexpressions).

348


In all, cases (1)–(4) entail group-binding intentions, and thusgroup-binding group action can and normally will ensue. Cases (1)and (2) are normative cases while in (3) only mere joint intentionformation (e.g. joint decision) is involved. In (4) joint intentionformation cannot even be based on a joint decision but must bebased on some kind shared implicit understanding of the situationand the other participants’ relevant mental attitudes.5

V. COLLECTIVE ENDS AND WE-INTENTIONS

It is often claimed that one can intend only one’s own actions.Recently, Baier (1997), Velleman (1997), Stoutland (2000), and S.Miller (2001) have presented versions of that view. I will belowdiscuss this thesis, which at least seemingly is a criticism againstmy notion of we-intention as an aim-intention. As Seumas Millerhas explicitly criticized my account concerning this point in his2001 book, I will discuss primarily his formulations. The considera-tions in this section seem not to be sensitive to the distinctionbetween the use of different action concepts – such as performing,bringing about or jstit. I will therefore mainly speak of performanceor bringing about, as they fit best the joint action case involvedhere. Furthermore, I will use the words ‘collectively’ and ‘jointly’interchangeably.

I take Seumas Miller to claim that in the case of joint social actionthe participants’ can only have as their collective end that the actionin question (or, alternatively, its logically inbuilt result event or state)comes about but that no participant of joint action can intend thatthe action or its result comes about (see Miller, 2001, p. 64).6 Letme state this as:

(1) When intentionally performing a joint action no partici-pant can (on conceptual grounds) intend the action, or itsresult event, to be brought about by the participants.

In contrast, I claim this:

(2) When intentionally performing a joint action every partic-ipant must intend, viz. we-intend, the action, or its resultevent, to be brought about by the participants.

349

RAIMO TUOMELA

(1) and (2) contradict each other. (1) is based on Miller’s stipula-tion, but when the stipulation is removed there is no incompatibility.We-intentions, viewed as aim-intentions, are perfectly acceptableintentions. Intentions are conations and so are collective ends inMiller’s sense (by his own admission). The main idea involved inconation is intentional striving towards a goal (“content”) to whichthe agent has bound himself. If an intention is rational, the agentmust believe that there is some chance that the intended contentwill be realized – not necessarily due to the person’s own actionbut e.g. due to his group’s action. However, Miller claims that anend is a conation but not an intention. This I find a conceptuallyimpossible combination. ‘Conation’ is an old-fashioned term forintention (and striving) and that is at bottom all there is to the matter,fine distinctions apart.

According to Miller, collective end is not only a conative notionbut even the intentionality of action seems to be analyzable in termsof ends (cf. Miller, 2001, p. 112). This strongly suggests to me thatends form a kind of aim-intentions (rather than that a new account ofthe intentionality of action is being proposed). I accordingly claimthat basically collective end in Miller’s account has, and must havefor it to work, the same function as it has in my account, exceptthat in my account collective intentions (in the sense of Section III)explicitly deal with the strong notion of jointly intending as a group.

Let us now apply the above ideas to the case of a group of partici-pants who collectively or jointly intend to perform an action, X,jointly or to jointly bring about a certain end, E. We can say thatjointly bringing about E amounts to performing a joint action, X.(In the case of E being a collective end, it is not in general requiredthat E be brought about by the agents’ joint action, but here I willassume this for the sake of exposition.) The following now holds:

(3) The participants can (‘can’ in at least a conceptual andmetaphysical sense) rationally jointly intend to achieve Eif and only if they mutually believe that E can with someprobability be brought about by it.

Rationality here only means that there is a subjective successcondition involved: the intention is realizable with some probability.

In order not to lose the collective conation that (3) involves wemust here require that each individual has the conation in ques-

350


tion, because otherwise we cannot arrive at intentionally performedjoint action when the joint intention is realized. Furthermore, I willrequire that intentions are reflexive in the sense that successfulsatisfaction of intention must take place as intended (see Searle(1983, Chapter 8) and Tuomela (1995, Chapter 3) for argumentsand discussion).

Moving to the individual level corresponding to the collectivelevel, we arrive at we-intentions:

(4) When some participants jointly intend E each individualparticipant must we-intend E and consequently “actionintend” to participate in the bringing about of E, viz. toperform his share or part of the participants’ joint actionto bring about E.

Seumas Miller adopts the view that one can only intend what onecan bring about by means of one’s own actions. Thus, accordingto him, one can only intend one’s bodily actions and their directconsequences. But this is a stipulation and a not a very happy one,although it contains the acceptable core idea that intentions are act-relational (viz. always related to one’s actions, see below). I haveclaimed that one can strive for (“conate”) and thus intend that a jointaction, X, or a state, be realized by the participants’ collective action.One can claim this while accepting that intentions also concernone’s own actions. Thus:

(5) Individual agent A intends to perform an action Xtogether with the other participants only if A intends bymeans of his actions to bring about some result such thatwhen all the other participants similarly perform their partactions, a performance of X is intentionally generated atleast with some probability.

An intention of the present kind I have called an “aim-intention”in contrast to an “action intention” (viz. basically the only kind ofintention that Miller accepts in his theory). An aim-intention canbe satisfied without the aim-intending agent alone satisfying theintention, whereas in the case of an action intention the agent mustbelieve, if rational at all, that he can (with some probability) satisfythe intention by means of his own actions. An aim-intention canin typical cases be rendered as “agent A intends, by his actions,

351

RAIMO TUOMELA

to bring about state or event E”, where E can in principle (viz.on conceptual grounds) be any kind of (non-contradictory or non-tautological) state (including another agent’s mental state of hishaving an intention). While, trivially, nobody can (directly) intendanother person’s actions, one can still – depending on the circum-stances and one’s success beliefs – intend to bring about, by hisactions, e.g. that another person comes to intend or to perform acertain action.7 An aim-intention can be called an end (or goal) inthe sense that its content E is an end that the agent has. In the contextof a joint action the end is collective. A collective end according tomy view is, roughly, one that the agents have collectively acceptedas their collective end, assumed to satisfy the Collectivity Condition(recall Section II).

It is essential that there is an individual conation (intention) inthe present context concerning also E (or X) and not only one’spart action. An intention involves commitment, and the crux is thatin the case of joint intention – required of intentionally performedjoint action – there must be collective and, consequently, alsoindividual-level commitment concerning end E (recall the discus-sion in Sections II and IV). For instance, you and I can intend andbe committed to some joint activity, e.g. you and I can jointly intendto build a bridge together. This joint intention consists of our we-intentions to build a bridge. Each we-intention is an aim-intentionbut it entails a participation intention in the case of each partic-ipant: I intend to participate in our building the bridge, and similarlyfor you, provided the right presupposition beliefs are present. Asemphasized in Section III, the we-intending participants are accord-ingly entitled to infer according to schemas (W1) and (W2). Whilethe participation intentions are personal intentions, they are notprivate intentions but we-mode intentions, thus intentions qua groupmembers.

To summarize, Seumas Miller has not succeeded in showing inhis 2001 book that intentional joint action can be based on collectiveends which are not intentions. I agree of course that collective endsneed not be action intentions. However, aim-intentions must bepresent. The collective end that Seumas Miller speaks about (butdoes not sufficiently clarify in the book) is an aim-intention, morespecifically an intention satisfying the intention expression “We

352


together will bring about E” accepted basically by all participants inthis context. Miller says that his notion of an end is a conative notionand bases the intentionality of action on it. This indicates that it isan aim-intention, for conation involves striving for an end to whichone has bound oneself. The conflict here is partly if not completelyterminological, as collective ends are conative states (intentions – atleast as I understand conation). Furthermore, collective ends are inany case on a par with intentions in that one can ask how one canhave ends that one cannot by one’s own actions reach. The answeris that ends and intentions at bottom concern one’s own acting,although it cannot be required that one alone make the end staterealized.

To end this section, I will discuss the problem at hand in some-what more general terms. Bratman’s account of shared intention(reprinted as Chapter 6 in his 1999 collection) has been criticizede.g. by Velleman (1997), and Stoutland (2002) on the ground thathis notion of a person’s intending that we (his group) perform ajoint action, J, or briefly “I intend that we J” is not an intentionnotion at all. This discussion of course is closely related to the issuesconsidered above. The following principles have been suggested forsingle-agent intentions (see Bratman, 1999, pp. 148–149):

(1) Own action condition (OA): One can intend only to dosomething herself.

(2) Control condition (C): One cannot intend what one doesnot take oneself to control.

(3) Settle condition (S): One can only intend what onebelieves her so intending settles.

The settle condition entails that “for me to intend that we J I must. . . see my intention as settling whether we J” (p. 149). There is alsoan additional principle that Stoutland (2001) suggests:

(4) Responsibility condition (R): To intend to do something isto commit oneself to do X so as to thereby commit oneselfto take full responsibility for having done X (if and whenone does X).

I take conditions (1)–(4) to be on the right track and (almost)acceptable for action intentions. (I say “almost”, because at leastthe control condition seems somewhat too strongly formulated –

353

RAIMO TUOMELA

less than full control will suffice – and full responsibility in (4) alsoneeds relaxation.) Leaving a more detailed discussion of (1)–(4) foranother occasion, we can notice that these conditions clearly do not– not at least without modification – apply to aim-intentions (suchas we-intentions).

Assuming for simplicity’s sake that the presupposition beliefs(ii) and (iii) in the analysis (WI) of we-intention in Section II aretrue, our discussion in that section (and Section II) then warrantsthe following claims in the case of we-intentions, remembering thatwe-intentions are personal “slices” of joint intentions:

(1J) Our action condition (WA): A person Ai, can we-intendto perform something X (if and) only if he is one amongsome persons A1, . . . , Am who jointly intend to performX together such that his action intention is to participate inthese agents’ joint performance of X. (If we were dealingwith the “irrational” case with false beliefs (i) and (ii) in(WI), the analysans here would have to be relativized toAi’s belief.)

(2J) Joint control condition (JC): Some persons A1, . . . , Amcannot jointly intend to perform an action X jointly andcannot we-intend to perform X in this case unless theymutually believe that they can control X to a substan-tial degree (at least these agents should mutually believethat their performing X together is not impossible in thecircumstances in question).

(3J) Joint settle condition (JS): If some persons A1, . . . , Amwe-intend to perform X under conditions of mutual belief,they must also mutually believe that their so intending(psychologically, not perhaps in an overt action sense)settles that they will perform X together.

(4J) Joint responsibility condition (JR): For a person Ai to we-intend to do something X is in part to commit himselfto X (in a context where some agents A1, . . . , Am, ofwhich Ai is one, jointly intend to perform X), so as tothereby commit himself to take partial responsibility fortheir having performed X together and to take responsi-bility for his having participated in the performance of X(if and when he actually does participate). (Cf. (1J) for

354


the qualification concerning the case of false beliefs (i)and (ii).)

A joint intention to perform X together requires that the partici-pants believe that they will perform X intentionally, indeed as jointlyintended (as seen above, in contrast to what Bratman, 1999, says onp. 147). This may seem viciously circular, but I will below in SectionVI argue that the conceptual situation is not that bad. As to thefunctionality of joint intentions and their component we-intentions,they lead to the right kind of reasoning (recall the schemas (W1)and (W2)) and to the right kind of action intentions and consequentactions (recall my above discussion and emphasis on the conceptualand factual dependence on X of a we-intention).

VI. ON THE ALLEGED CIRCULARITY OF THE CONCEPT OFWE-INTENTION

In this section I will consider the charge, made against my accountby Searle (1990) and S. Miller (2001), that the notion of we-inten-tion is circular in an unacceptable sense.8 Let me start by quotingSearle:

We are tempted to construe ‘doing his part’ to mean doing his part toward achiev-ing the collective goal. But if we adopt that move, then we have included thenotion of a collective intention in the notion of ‘doing his part.’ We are thus facedwith a dilemma: if we include the notion of collective intention in the notionof ‘doing his part,’ the analysis fails because of circularity; we would now bedefining we-intentions in terms of we-intentions. If we don’t so construe ‘doinghis part’, then the analysis fails because of inadequacy. (Cf. also S. Miller, 2001,pp. 71–73)

I will argue below that there is in fact no vicious circularity ofany kind in the account presented in Section III above. To beginmy response, consider an agent A and assume that he we-intendsto perform X (or, alternatively, to bring about or see to it thatX) together with some other agents. It seems that this must betaken to presuppose that A believes that these participants jointlyintend to perform X; and as A’s we-intention at bottom is in aconstitutive sense just a slice of the joint intention (recall SectionIII), we have circularity. (In normal cases the belief is a true one,of course.) But things are not so simple. As will be seen, in the

355

RAIMO TUOMELA

“preanalytic”, common-sense case a rather meager notion of we-intention is shown to be psychologically and functionally sufficient,and my response will rely on this. In particular, it is not requiredthat joint intentions in this preanalytic account be taken to consist ofshared we-intentions.

According to my analysis of “strong” we-intention (WI) (inTuomela, 1984; Tuomela and Miller, 1988, etc., and section IIIabove) A we-intends to perform a joint action X (or to perform Xtogether with the others) if and only if (i) he intends to performhis part of X as his part of X in part because he (ii) believes(presupposes) that the “joint action opportunities” for X obtain(e.g. that there are sufficiently many participants for an intentionalperformance of X to come about, if there is that kind of numer-ical requirement, and they actually perform their parts of X) andalso (iii) believes (presupposes) that there is mutual belief about theobtaining of the joint action opportunities. The central requirement(i) involves that he intends to perform his part of X (an action inten-tion) and intends to perform X together with the others (or put moretechnically, intends that X will be performed by them).

To recapitulate in somewhat more explicit terms, we have:

(1) A we-intends to perform X if and only if(a) A intends to perform his part of X as his part of X, and(b) the aforementioned presupposed beliefs (ii) and (iii) arein place and function as partial reasons for (i).

Next, I suggest that we can give a preanalytic, common-senseaccount of (1)(a) by:

(2) A intends to perform his part of X as his part of X if andonly if(a) A intends to perform his part of X, and(b) A intends to perform X with the others in part because(of his belief that) the others intend to perform their partsof X and intend to perform X with the others.

(2) and especially its clause (b) can be viewed as preanalytic inthe sense that ordinary people can well be assumed to actually thinkin these terms. (2) thus views the matter from the ordinary agent’srather than from the theoretician’s point of view. In conditions ofmutual belief (cf. (1)(b)), the present account gives a functionally

356


adequate solution to the problem of joint intention concerning whatthe agents need to have in their minds when jointly intending toperform X together. We can say more colloquially that in the presentsituation A intends to participate and takes the others to be in asimilar position as he is with respect to X. The analysans in (2) doesnot (directly) refer to a we-intention or joint intention and thus itdoes not make (1) nor (WI) viciously circular.

However, while the preanalytic account does not, to quote Searleagain, “construe ‘doing his part’ to mean doing his part towardachieving the collective goal”, it might still be argued, from atheoretician’s point of view, that underlying (2) there is implicitreference to joint intention. This is because in (2) A’s intention toperform his part of X as his part of X can be satisfied only if theparticipants intentionally jointly perform X and because such inten-tional joint performance may be argued upon analysis to dependon the joint aim or intention to perform X. I will grant that thepreanalytic account presupposes intentional joint performance of X,but this does not yet entail circularity. Even if it thus is granted thatthe preanalytic account presupposes intentional performance of X itdoes not take a stand on what precisely the latter notion involves,and still it works perfectly well in actual practice.

However, when a theory of joint intention adds an analysis ofintentional joint action referring to joint aim or intention, someamount of circularity comes about. While this need not be anunavoidable move, this view applies to the Tuomela and Miller 1988paper where (on p. 377) it is required that the agent A should intendto perform his part of X and perform it with the (general) purpose ofthe action X coming about. In Tuomela (1995, p. 140 ff.), a similarrequirement is made that the agent aim at, and be committed to,the realization of X. Analogously, Mathiesen (2002) defends theaccount by Tuomela and Miller (1988) against Searle’s criticism byimposing what can be regarded as an equivalent requirement thatA intend to perform his part of X in order for the participants tosuccessfully intentionally perform X.9

In accordance with what was just said, I can go along with mycritics to the extent that doing one’s part in a sense presupposescollective (or joint) intention but only in an implicit and unanalyzedsense of aiming at the joint action. I deny that this sense creates

357

RAIMO TUOMELA

vicious conceptual circularity which commits me to define we-intentions in terms of we-intentions. Recall that my analysis is notmeant to be reductive but is rather meant to elucidate the irreduciblenotion of we-intention in a functionally informative way, and this iswhat the analysantia of my (WI) and (2) help to do without strictlyrelying on the concept of we-intention – even if some amount ofcircularity will be there.

To recapitulate, by the preanalytic account of joint intentionor aim I mean (cf. (2)) our somewhat vague and fuzzy way ofaccounting for ordinary joint intention formation, cf. “We will goswimming this afternoon”, “We intend to carry this table upstairs”.This common-sense idea was above expressed by (2). To put thismore theoretically in terms of joint intention, the agents jointlyintend to do something X together in the sense of the preanalyticaccount (at least in first approximation) if and only if they intendto participate in doing X together with the others and believe thatthe others intend similarly. Here the agents do have to understandthe right hand side of the statement, but they need not at leastconsciously think that it amounts to the participants’ having a jointintention on which their we-intentions and participation intentionsare based. However, their having a joint intention in the sense ofthe preanalytic account will functionally have to amount to theirreasoning and acting in the right ways (cf. the end of this section).Account (2) makes this possible; and when the participation inten-tions are satisfied the joint action will come about, the worldpermitting, just as if the participants had functioned in terms of anexplicitly formulated joint intention. There is no direct conceptualcircularity here.

Furthermore, I claim that from the point of view of the partici-pants in joint intention there is no “psychological” and functionalcircularity, because they can understand the account (2) and operateon its basis, viz. properly satisfy their participation intentionswith the result that an intentional joint performance of X results.Considering this issue in more detail, (2)(b) can be taken implicitlyto entail the following, assuming that X must here be intention-ally performed (even if the participants of we-intention need notconsciously think of it): A intends to perform X with the others,believing (presupposing) that this happens in accordance with and

358


because of their (pre-analytically understood) joint intention oraim to perform X together (cf. schema (W1) of practical inferenceassumed to be satisfied by we-intenders). At least in this case, A’sintention content is something he believes. So there is “presupposi-tional” doxastic dependence on the joint intention to perform X. Butthis dependence is only to a preanalytically understood joint inten-tion. Furthermore, it need not be required that we-intenders think ofthis dependence or even use the notion of joint intention at all.

Recall that according to my analytic account of Section III theparticipants have the joint intention to perform X if and only ifthey share the we-intention to perform X (and mutually believeso). While a we-intention is seen to doxastically depend on a jointintention (as argued earlier) and while, as just said, a joint inten-tion amounts to a shared we-intention (about which there is mutualbelief), there might seem to be circularity relative to a belief context.For an agent’s we-intention might thus seem to depend on his beliefabout the participants’ sharing a we-intention. Furthermore, therewould be the consequence that the belief content here would againdepend on a belief that the participants share the we-intention, andso forth; and regress would be on.

However, this kind of circularity fails to exist. The circularityclaim is based on a failure to distinguish between (i) joint intentionor aim in the sense of the preanalytic, “surface” account and (ii)joint intention in the theoretician’s analytic account defining jointintentions in terms of we-intentions. The common-sense account issomewhat vague but not at least explicitly circular, as it only requiresof the participants that they satisfy the above clauses (1) and (2) andthus intend to perform X together with the others, involving thatthey perform their parts of X appropriately with the purpose of Xgetting performed, and believe that the others intend (and believe)similarly. In the analytic account, in turn, joint intention simplyis taken to amount to shared we-intention (in my technical sense)about which there is mutual belief, and the concept of we-intentionin my theoretical analysis may be argued to depend conceptually onintentional joint performance of X and this in turn on a general aim-intention (minimally a commitment) or purpose towards X. If thesedependencies are granted, it must also be granted that there is someimplicit conceptual circularity. However, this is not vicious circu-

359

RAIMO TUOMELA

larity, for in the preanalytic, common-sense account of we-intention– which can be regarded as functionally equivalent to the analyticaccount – there is no direct reference to we-intention (under theterm “we-intention” or any conceptually equivalent phrase). Fromthe participants’ psychological point of view a we-intention dependsdoxastically, viz., within a belief context only, on preanalyticallyunderstood joint intention, but not on joint intention as shared we-intention, viz. (ii). Thus there is no vicious psychological circularityeither. Let me emphasize that the analytic account of joint inten-tion is deeper and more precise than the preanalytic one. It laysbare some presuppositions (e.g. that intentional performance of X ispresupposed for satisfaction and that that relies on some kind of jointaim), but both result in the right kind of intention-satisfying action.(This completes my basic defense against Searle’s and Miller’sclaim of vicious circularity.)

In general terms, jointly intending participants have collectivelycommitted (bound) themselves to jointly seeing to it that X is –directly or indirectly – brought about by them.10 We may understandA’s part of X or slice of the participants’ performance (or jstiting)of X to be whatever the agent is required (by the very concept ofa joint action and his collective commitment to it) to do, includinghis helping, pressuring, and so on, in the course of the participantsperformance of X (cf. schema (W2) and social commitment moregenerally). Put differently, even when there is an antecedently under-stood part for A, the success of the collective enterprise in questionmay require A to do more. Furthermore, because of the participants’collective commitment to perform X it can be also in A’s interestto do more, on social and not only instrumental grounds, thanoriginally required, when the need arises. There is (potential) socialpressure: A is socially committed to the other participants and mustbe responsive to their legitimate demands concerning his activitiesrelated to X. If A we-intends to perform X, but does not partici-pate in the collective commitment to X and thus does not intendto do what it takes for the participants to jointly do X, he does notproperly we-intend to perform X and is in general criticizable forthat (except in the case of joint intention which has not been publiclyexpressed). The antecedently specified part is his default actionhere. Performing it will suffice, if things work out as antecedently

360


expected. The conditionally required extra activities are concernedwith new problems that arise in the case that other participants facegreat difficulties in their part performances – jeopardizing the wholejoint enterprise – or simply ask for help on lesser grounds, or if thereis some overall new problem threatening the joint action opportuni-ties in question. (Note, however, that if the participants have madea detailed antecedent agreement concerning their parts, this agree-ment needs to be respected, and in such a case extra actions cannotbe required.)

As emphasized, a proper we-intender A must accept to infer,on the proper occasions, in accordance with the inference schemas(W1) and, especially, (W2) (recall Section III) and thus to participatein suitable ways, possibly only potentially, up to the point when Xhas been performed (or taken mutually by the participants not to beperformable, after all, e.g. due to the hostility of the environment).So given his aim-intention (2)(b), what he may need to have oracquire in addition is special action intentions relevant to the comingabout of X or relevant to his participation in the participants’ jointlyseeing to it that X. Still, an aim-intention is not reducible to thementioned kind of action intentions, for it – its content – is whatunites them in the present kind of situation. The aim-intention isthus an irreducible “guiding” umbrella intention that cashes out asrelevant action intentions of the kind discussed.

VII. CONCLUSION

My original (1984) analysis of we-intention (presented in SectionIII) is not and was not meant to be reductive but it was meantto elucidate we-intentions in an informative way. My analysisin this paper has shown that conceptually there is (at most)partial circularity relative to a presupposed underlying common-sense idea of joint aim or purpose. This is not vicious circularity.Furthermore, there is no serious “psychological” circularity, asagents can perfectly well we-intend and function in terms of avernacular, preanalytic notion of joint intention (and we-intention).To summarize the latter, functionality part, we know sufficientlywell (i) what an action intention to perform one’s part amounts toand we know (ii) what one’s being we-committed to X amounts

361

RAIMO TUOMELA

to. The role of schema (W2) and similar reasoning schemas thatthe participants are supposed to use at least in some implicit wayserve to clarify (ii) and the social commitment involved in collectivecommitment. More generally, the participant is committed to partic-ipating in the participants’ jointly seeing to it that X and thus, unlessotherwise agreed by the participants, he must be prepared to domore than his preaction default part involves.11 When all the partici-pants carry out their participation intentions (in the sense of (2)),intentionally performed joint action results.

My overall conclusion concerning the criticisms by Miller (andothers) that we-intentions cannot be regarded as intentions and thecriticism (made by e.g. Searle) that the concept of we-intentionis viciously circular is that these criticisms are not warranted andthat my non-reductive notion of we-intention also is functionallyadequate.12

NOTES

1 This is how the analysis looks like in what I have called the general case:(WI) A member Ai of a collective g we-intends to see to it that X jointly withthe other participants if and only if

(i) Ai intends to do his part of the participants’ seeing to it jointly that(“jstiting”) X (as his part of X);

(ii) Ai has a belief to the effect that the joint action opportunities forintentional jstiting X will obtain (or at least probably will obtain), espe-cially that a right number of the full-fledged and adequately informedmembers of g, as required for the jstiting X, will (or at least probablywill) do their parts of the participants’ jstiting X, which will undernormal conditions result in successful jstiting X by the participants;

(iii) Ai believes that there is (or will be) a mutual belief among the partici-pating members of g to the effect that the joint action opportunities forjstiting X will obtain (or at least probably will obtain);

(iv) (i) in part because of (ii) and (iii).

2 It should be noted that the analysandum in (WI) is a future- or present-directedwe-intention. Such a we-intention is assumed to “purposively cause” relevantpart action in accordance with schemas such as (W1) and (W2) (see Tuomela(1977, Chapter 9, 1984, Chapter 4, 1995, Chapter 2), for my purposive – causalaccount of action). In our present kind of case, every part action will involve a“we-willing” by the agent. It will cause the relevant bodily behaviors required bythe part action to come about.

362


Let me give a quick account of the central content of a we-willing, which isan act-relational notion (cf. Tuomela, 1995, Chapter 2). Consider an agent Ai’swe-willing to do X: Ai wills to do (in the jointly intended way), by his behavior,anything which he believes is required of him for them (viz., A1, . . . , Am) todo X jointly. Disregarding the reflexive reference to the joint intention, we hereget basically this: (Y) Ai wills that (if he believes it is required of him for us todo X jointly that (Ey) (he will now perform y & y is a Y), then (Ez) (he willnow perform z & z is a Y)) . Here Y ranges over bodily actions (here: voluntarybehaviors) and occurs in a de re position. It follows that, although Ai need nothave the concept of any action Y* that Y ranges over, he wills of Y that it isrequired in the specified sense. The requiredness above is at least partly causal,and thus we-willing typically involves causal production. Here we can say afterthe action that Ai’s we-willing was about a particular piece of behavior, say b: hewilled, by b, to perform his part of X.3 While the present paper concentrates only on we-mode collective or jointintention, let me summarize here the most central features distinguishing prop-erly collective intentions (to X) from collective intentions as aggregated privateintentions (see Tuomela, 2000b, for discussion):

(i) there is a difference concerning the commitments and control concern-ing the intention-content (private versus collective, respectively); and

(ii) a difference in mode (I-mode versus we-mode) and accordingly the“indexicality” (I-indexicality versus we-indexicality) related to theachievement process, and there is also

(iii) a difference related to the satisfaction conditions of the intentioncontent itself.

The satisfaction matter (iii) is clear enough – a private intention content doesnot satisfy the Collectivity Condition while a collective intention content satis-fies it. This condition entails collective acceptance, and we

WE-INTENTIONS REVISITED · 2014. 4. 30. · WE-INTENTIONS REVISITED is based on their various...

Documents

Transcript of WE-INTENTIONS REVISITED · 2014. 4. 30. · WE-INTENTIONS REVISITED is based on their various...