What Joint Action Could Not Be
Lecturer: Stephen A. Butterfill
On Bratman’s account, performing a joint action requires shared intention and shared intention requires mindreading at close to the limits of what human adults are capable of. For this reason we cannot both accept that joint action plays a role in explaining how sophisticated human activities including mindreading emerge in development and that Bratman’s account specifies the relevant notion of joint action.
Slides
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Notes
Objection: Meeting the sufficient conditions for joint action given by Bratman’s account could not significantly explain the development of an understanding of minds because it already presupposes too much sophistication in the use of psychological concepts.
The objection arises because not all of the following claims are true (this is the first of two inconsistent triads in this lecture):
(1) joint action fosters an understanding of minds;
(2) all joint action involves shared intention; and
(3) a function of shared intention is to coordinate two or more agents’ plans.
These claims are inconsistent because if the second and third were both true, abilities to engage in joint action would presuppose, and so could not significantly foster, an understanding of minds.
What are our options?