Editorial: Joint Action: What Is Shared?

Abstract

What did you do today? It is likely that some of your answers to this question refer to things you did individually and others to things you did jointly with others. In commonsense thinking about action and intention, the notion that some actions have two or more agents seems unproblematic. An activity like Ayesha and Beatrice’s carrying a two-handled picnic basket together does not, on the face of it, seem harder to understand in everyday life than Ayesha’s carrying the basket alone. From this point of view, to restrict attention to actions with just one agent seems arbitrary. But in developmental, cognitive and philosophical research there is a long tradition of focusing exclusively on actions with just one agent, and a range of questions arise when one attempts to generalise from individual to joint action. In inquiries concerning agency and action, philosophers have developed theories which link intention, reasons, motivation and (occasionally) emotion. These theories generally apply to individual action only and not all of them can be straightforwardly generalised to joint action. For instance, consider how intentional action is related to intending. It is quite widely agreed that an action can be both intentional and a shooting without being an intentional shooting, and also that one way for an action to be an intentional shooting is for it to be appropriately related to an intention to shoot. How does this idea apply to joint actions? Consider Ayesha and Beatrice, who carry a two-handled basket together. If their joint carrying is to be an intentional joint carrying, then it is not enough that Ayesha and Beatrice each individually intend to carry the basket. After all, their having these intentions is consistent with each planning to act alone. But there is much disagreement concerning what is sufficient for joint actions to be intentional as joint actions. Some hold that this involves a special attitude (Kutz 2000; Searle 1990[2002]) while others have explored the idea Rev.Phil.Psych. (2011) 2:137–146 DOI 10.1007/s13164-011-0062-3