Coordinating Joint Action

Abstract

This chapter describes a minimal theoretical framework, identifying along the way issues likely to be of interest to researchers studying collective intentionality. Where philosophers tend to focus on notions such as intentional shared agency, scientific research on coordination mechanisms is usually interpreted in terms of a broader and simpler notion of joint action. Entrainment is clearly necessary for coordination in many joint actions requiring precise synchronization such as those involving rhythmic music or dance. Many one-off joint actions—those which do not depend on repetition or rhythm—require precise coordination. The task co-representation hypothesis—agents involved in a joint action can have a task co-representation concerning a task that only one of them is supposed to perform—generates a variety of predictions. A joint affordance is an affordance for the agents of a joint action collectively—that is, it is an affordance for these agents and this is not, or not only, a matter of its being an affordance for any of the individual agents.