Joint Intention Research Articles

Artificial learners adopting normative conventions from human teachers

AbstractThis survey provides an overview of implemented systems, theoretical work, as well as studies of biological systems relevant to the design of artificial learners trying to figure out what a human teacher would like them to do. Implementations of artificial learners are covered, with a focus on experiments trying to find better interpretations of human behavior, as well as algorithms that autonomously improve a model of the teacher. A distinction is made between learners trying to interpret teacher behavior in order to learn what the teacher would like the learner to do on the one hand, and learners whose explicit or implicit goal is to get something from the teacher on the other hand (for example rewards, or knowledge about how the world works). The survey covers the former type of systems. Human teachers are covered, focusing on studies that say something concrete about how one should interpret the behavior of a human teacher that is interacting with an artificial learner. Certain types of biological learners are interesting as inspiration for the types of artificial systems we are concerned with. The survey focus on studies of biological learners adopting normative conventions, as well as joint intentionality team efforts.

Interacting With Robots to Investigate the Bases of Social Interaction.

Humans show a great natural ability at interacting with each other. Such efficiency in joint actions depends on a synergy between planned collaboration and emergent coordination, a subconscious mechanism based on a tight link between action execution and perception. This link supports phenomena as mutual adaptation, synchronization, and anticipation, which cut drastically the delays in the interaction and the need of complex verbal instructions and result in the establishment of joint intentions, the backbone of social interaction. From a neurophysiological perspective, this is possible, because the same neural system supporting action execution is responsible of the understanding and the anticipation of the observed action of others. Defining which human motion features allow for such emergent coordination with another agent would be crucial to establish more natural and efficient interaction paradigms with artificial devices, ranging from assistive and rehabilitative technology to companion robots. However, investigating the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting natural interaction poses substantial problems. In particular, the unconscious processes at the basis of emergent coordination (e.g., unintentional movements or gazing) are very difficult-if not impossible-to restrain or control in a quantitative way for a human agent. Moreover, during an interaction, participants influence each other continuously in a complex way, resulting in behaviors that go beyond experimental control. In this paper, we propose robotics technology as a potential solution to this methodological problem. Robots indeed can establish an interaction with a human partner, contingently reacting to his actions without losing the controllability of the experiment or the naturalness of the interactive scenario. A robot could represent an "interactive probe" to assess the sensory and motor mechanisms underlying human-human interaction. We discuss this proposal with examples from our research with the humanoid robot iCub, showing how an interactive humanoid robot could be a key tool to serve the investigation of the psychological and neuroscientific bases of social interaction.

Inter-brain network underlying turn-based cooperation and competition: A hyperscanning study using near-infrared spectroscopy

The present study examined neural substrates underlying turn-based cooperation and competition in a real two-person situation. We simultaneously measured pairs of participants’ activations in their bilateral frontal, temporal, and parietal regions using a 96-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) system, when participants played a turn-taking disk-game on a computer. NIRS data demonstrated significant inter-brain neural synchronization (INS) across participant pairs’ right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in both the cooperation and competition conditions, and the competition condition also involved significant INS in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL). In addition, competitive dyads’ INS in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) may play as a role of mediation in relationship between their empathy score and disk-manipulation latency, but cooperative dyads’ INS did not. These results suggest that first the right pSTS may be commonly involved in both cooperation and competition due to task demands of joint attention and intention understanding, while the right IPL may be more important for competition due to additional requirements of mentalizing resources in competing contexts. Second, participants’ empathy may promote INS in the bilateral IFG across competitors, and in turn affect their competitive performance.

Strategies for Synergy in a High Modernist Project: Two Community Responses to India’s NREGA Rural Work Program

Summary This article asks what led to the successful implementation of the National Rural Employment guarantee program (NREGA) in Andhra Pradesh. In particular, the article ethnographically examines the implementation of the program in two different village panchayats (Dalit and Tribal) in Andhra, with a focus on underprivileged communities and it finds dramatic differences in the outcomes of the program. Both outcomes can be considered successful for the workers of the NREGA, although perhaps in ways that could not have been anticipated by the planners of the program. Theoretically, the analysis is situated between two strands—pessimistic critiques of the high-modernist state and more optimistic visions of state-society synergy. The pessimistic analysis underestimates the possibility a community will take advantage of the opportunities that a high-modernist state can provide. On the other hand, the overly optimistic account of the state-society literature assumes what I am calling “joint intentionality” between state and community is necessary for success, and empirically rules out successes that do not have such joint intentionality. The article shows that high-modernist state actions can create a structural context that opens up avenues for local successes, while local factors—namely the caste, class and livelihood strategy of villagers—determine the distinct avenues through which success is achieved. Top-down centralized implementation characterized by a high-modernist state does not rule out the realization of local goals. State and society can interact to produce positive outcomes even if these outcomes are not jointly intended.

Sociomotor action control.

Our actions affect the behavior of other people in predictable ways. In the present article, we describe a theoretical framework for action control in social contexts that we call sociomotor action control. This framework addresses how human agents plan and initiate movements that trigger responses from other people, and we propose that humans represent and control such actions literally in terms of the body movements they consistently evoke from observers. We review evidence for this approach and discuss commonalities and differences to related fields such as joint action, intention understanding, imitation, and interpersonal power. The sociomotor framework highlights a range of open questions pertaining to how representations of other persons' actions are linked to one's own motor activity, how specifically they contribute to action initiation, and how they affect the way we perceive the actions of others.

Joint Intention and Accomplice Liability

An accomplice is held criminally liable for the acts of another. Yet, the circumstances under which this liability should apply remain unclear owing to an inconsistent and under-articulated set of doctrines, some departing dramatically from foundational commitments of criminal law. We propose a framework that grounds this area of law in a considered account of joint intention, which preserves the central roles of both mens rea and individual intention in the assignment of criminal liability. A key novel concept in our approach is standing in reserve, which extends the coverage of a joint intention beyond the immediate participants in the primary criminal act and anchors a systematic way of assessing complicity in complex environments.

Knowledge Sharing Behavior: The Role of Spatial Design in Buildings

Knowledge sharing during unplanned face-to-face meetings between employees is indispensable for innovation-based organizations. Spatial design of office buildings has been proven to influence the number of meetings dyads have at work, but research on the behavior during such meetings remains scarce. This article analyzes how several spatial variables relate to employee behavior during such meetings (joint activities, location, intentionality, and issues addressed). A 1-week diary of 138 employees from one research organization provided data on 918 knowledge-sharing meetings. Analysis of the building layout showed that behavior is particularly different at a very local level within the building. Chi-square tests showed that inter-visibility and proximity are most strongly associated with where knowledge was shared, while sharing a room and overhearing related significantly to how knowledge was shared.

Sham revisited: has Snook passed its sell-by date?

The policy considerations that underpin the concept of sham are protection of the rule of law, to prevent abuse of fundamental legal principles, to preserve the law's good reputation and prevent evasion of statute. The original test was wide and did not require proof of a joint intention to give a false impression. The test for sham was greatly narrowed by Snook v London and West Riding Investment Ltd which has been applied to trusts, though it is not obvious that Diplock LJ intended this. The recent decision of the Supreme Court in Autoclenz v Belcher suggests that equality of bargaining position between arm’s length parties to a commercial contact provides a sufficient safeguard against collusive abuse of the Snook kind. Where this is absent, the Supreme Court considered greater vigilance is required. Autoclenz concerned employment relations, but the inequality of bargaining position when a trust is created, coupled with the observed instances of abuse, might call for a more interventionist approach and, according to the Supreme Court, lead to a test based on whether the trust instrument reflected the true agreement between the parties which would be ‘gleaned from all the circumstances of the case, of which the written agreement is only a part’. These matters are considered in this article.

A Collaborative Energy-Aware Sensor Management System Using Team Theory

With limited battery supply, power is a scarce commodity in wireless sensor networks. Thus, to prolong the lifetime of the network, it is imperative that the sensor resources are managed effectively. This task is particularly challenging in heterogeneous sensor networks for which decisions and compromises regarding sensing strategies are to be made under time and resource constraints. In such networks, a sensor has to reason about its current state to take actions that are deemed appropriate with respect to its mission, its energy reserve, and the survivability of the overall network. Sensor Management controls and coordinates the use of the sensory suites in a manner that maximizes the success rate of the system in achieving its missions. This article focuses on formulating and developing an autonomous energy-aware sensor management system that strives to achieve network objectives while maximizing its lifetime. A team-theoretic formulation based on the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model and the Joint Intention theory is proposed as a mechanism for effective and energy-aware collaborative decision-making. The proposed system models the collective behavior of the sensor nodes using the Joint Intention theory to enhance sensors’ collaboration and success rate. Moreover, the BDI modeling of the sensor operation and reasoning allows a sensor node to adapt to the environment dynamics, situation-criticality level, and availability of its own resources. The simulation scenario selected in this work is the surveillance of the Waterloo International Airport. Various experiments are conducted to investigate the effect of varying the network size, number of threats, threat agility, environment dynamism, as well as tracking quality and energy consumption, on the performance of the proposed system. The experimental results demonstrate the merits of the proposed approach compared to the state-of-the-art centralized approach adapted from Atia et al. [2011] and the localized approach in Hilal and Basir [2015] in terms of energy consumption, adaptability, and network lifetime. The results show that the proposed approach has 12 × less energy consumption than that of the popular centralized approach.

Joint Intentionality

AbstractAccording to the shared intentionality hypothesis proposed by Michael Tomasello, two cognitive upgrades – joint and collective intentionality, respectively – make human thinking unique. Joint intentionality, in particular, is a mindset supposed to account for our early, species-specific capacity to participate in collaborative activities involving two (or a few) agents. In order to elucidate such activities and their proximate cognitive-motivational mechanism, Tomasello draws on philosophical accounts of shared intentionality. I argue that his deference to such cognitively demanding accounts of shared intentional activities is problematic if his theoretical ambition is in part to show that and how early (prelinguistic and precultural) capacities for joint action contribute to the development of higher cognitive capacities.

Collective Emotions and Joint Action

AbstractIn contemporary philosophy of collective intentionality, emotions, feelings, moods, and sentiments do not figure prominently in debates on the explanation and justification of joint action. Received philosophical theories analyze joint action in terms of common knowledge of cognitively complex, interconnected structures of intentions and action plans of the participants. These theories admit that collective emotions sometimes give rise to joint action or more typically, unplanned and uncoordinated collective behavior that falls short of full-fledged jointly intentional action. In contrast, minimalist theorists pay some attention to affective elements in joint action without much concern about their collective intentionality. They refer to an association between low-level synchrony in perceptual, motor, and behavioral processes, and increased interpersonal liking, feelings of solidarity, and cooperativeness. In this paper, we outline an account of collective emotions that can bridge this theoretical divide, linking the intentional structure of joint actions and the underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms. Collective emotions can function as both motivating and justifying reasons for jointly intentional actions, in some cases even without prior joint intentions of the participants. Moreover, they facilitate coordination in joint action.

Indirect Perpetration Theory: A Defence

AbstractThe aim of this article is to show that the concept of perpetration by means as it appears in Article 25 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) accurately reflects liability for crimes committed by high-level perpetrators who exercise control over the actions of the lower-level (fully responsible) perpetrators. Finding the proper mode of liability in these cases is crucial to the International Criminal Court's (ICC) mission of ending impunity for serious international crimes. While international criminal law may be unlikely to deter criminals, especially heads of state and other powerful leaders, itcanprovide some sense of justice for the victims by convicting and punishing those responsible for their suffering. As such, the functions of international criminal law are to a large extent expressive and retributive. At the same time, it is important to keep the focus of international criminal law on individual responsibility of the perpetrators. It is, therefore, crucial to find proper labels that reflect culpability well. I hope to make a contribution to this search in what follows.This article is divided into five sections. First, I provide a background to the move, recently articulated by the ICC, from the concept of joint criminal enterprise (JCE) to that of indirect perpetration (and indirect co-perpetration) (section 2). Second, I analyse the original presentation of this idea by the German jurist Claus Roxin (section 3). Third, I examine the application of this concept by the German courts, particularly in the 1994 trial of three high level GDR officials held liable as indirect perpetrators for the killings (carried out by the border guards) of refugees at the East/West German border (section 4). Then I present a recent (Winter 2011) proposal by Jens Ohlin to abandon both JCE and indirect perpetration in favour of another mode of collective liability based on joint intentions (section 5). Finally, I defend the concept of indirect perpetration against Ohlin's criticisms, arguing that it offers a more accurate way to label the conduct of high-level perpetrators who carry out crimes by means of direct perpetrators who are themselves liable (section 6).

Structuring an Action Net of Public Library Membership

AbstractThis article introduces a theoretical framework for conceptualizing public library membership and belonging as an ongoing action net of joint intention and collective action between individual members of the public and the library. It provides an analysis of how membership is constituted, observed, and documented by public libraries from a social-constructivist perspective. Drawing on social theory and philosophy, organizational studies, and secondary public library data sources, a high-level typology of public library member categories from the political and organizational modes of public library action is proposed. Member types are characterized using institutionalized structures of public library use, access, data, discourse, behavior, and social media applications. Implications of this framework for future research and public library innovation are suggested in conclusion.

The development of inhibited cooperative behavior based on joint intention

The development of inhibited cooperative behavior based on joint intention

Mixed motives in the equilibrium view of joint intention

We develop a theory of joint intention in contexts in which participants have mixed motives that can manifest in all-things-considered reasons to deviate from contributing to the desired project, e.g., contexts with collective action problems. Our theory is based on strategic equilibrium-based reasoning, which links the characterization of joint intention in terms of individual intentions with conditions on strategy profiles of the underlying strategic games. We use elements of equilibrium reasoning to construct a counterfactual account of joint intention in the mixed-motive contexts, which extends the reach of the notion of joint intention considerably beyond that of previous formulations.

Joint action and recursive consciousness of consciousness

In a series of essays, Bratman defines a concept, which we may call the concept of Bratmanian action by many. Our discussion of this concept, in section 1, reveals that it is not the one called to mind by the usual examples of joint action. Section 2 lays alongside it a different concept of doing something together. According to it, many are doing A together if and only if the principle of the actions in which they are doing A is a joint intention to do A, an act of intending that is theirs. It seems fitting to call this joint intentional action. In distinction to Bratmanian action by many, joint intentional action is ubiquitous in human life. This raises the question what may be the interest of Bratman's concept. Its interest can reside only in a relation it bears to the concept of joint intentional action. Section 3 discusses the suggestion that Bratmanian action by many is a precursor of joint action in human phylogenesis. This is wrong because subjects are capable of Bratmanian action only in virtue of being subjects of joint action.

NATURE PROTECTION AGAINST POLLUTION: RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Extensive use of science and technology for industrial development has been made continuously ignoring the need to keep permanently a balance between meeting the needs for own materials, constantly growing and protection of all environmental components. Our approach, placed in the area of interest and concern for the protection and conservation of the environment comes in hand with the complex and highly sensitive issue of human relationships with nature and the community to which he belongs. We start from the idea that man appeared and evolved in a natural environment to which established certain reports, because its existence as biological and social being is inextricably linked to other forms of life and the planet itself. An essential premise for the development should be the establishment of rights and responsibilities in environmental protection. To achieve these objectives is necessary the social and economic development to be carried out on the basis of a careful knowledge regarding the ecological implications and the consequences of this field and on the careful contradictions that may cause them, establishing in each case the practical arrangements for an efficient solution of these contradictions. Certainly, the interaction between man and nature has found its expression in some human behavior norms which in the ancient times did not have any legal character, reflecting a rudimentary consciousness of religious, moral and political nature. Being repeated and transmitted from generation to generation, the rules of behavior in the natural environment become habits (ancient customs of whose failure were causing a collective disapproval of the acts and facts of violation or disregard). Much later, when the mankind passed to state organization, the collective disapproval started to be accompanied by a collective constraint. The state appeared and as an expression of the will, the law in the content of which we find rules addressing to human relations with nature and which concerned its primary occupations regarded strictly to cover its needs for life. The source of these rules is represented then and as today, by the internal will of each state or the joint intention of the subjects of international law concerned for the health and balance of the planet. There are rules which enshrine rights and also responsibilities in case of imbalances or environmental damage caused by human to the environment by its irrational interventions. Therefore we insist upon the harmful effects on human intervention in which he lives, upon the ecological crisis generating environmental damage which have as source of pollutants: harmful activities, environmental disasters or accidents. We follow the phenomenon of pollution (in its multiple and varied forms), but also the fight against it analyzing the newest regulations (internal- Romanian and international or of Community law), doctrinaire debates or solutions of jurisprudence. Iftime, E., Holban, N. (2014). NATURE PROTECTION AGAINST POLLUTION: RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES“ Nature has enough for our need but not for our greed. European Journal of Law and Public Administration, Year 2014, Issue 2, December, pp. 63-71. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18662/eljpa.2014.0102.06

Symbolizing Iconic Indexes: An Intentionality-based Hypothesis on the Emer-gence of Music

The most recognized feature of music is the capacity to arouse emotions in listeners: are such emo¬tions inherent to music (indexes) or are they evoked by resemblance to an analogous emotional expression (icons)? The claim is that music is a conventionalized imitation of an expression of an emotional state (i.e., a symbolized iconic index), but to reach this form three evolutionary steps in human thinking are required: individual, joint, and collective intentionality, which parallel the emergence — and overlap — of indexes, icons, and symbols. Providing a comparative view of the genetic and neuroanatomical infrastructures required for the emergence of music, it will be hypothesized that: (i) music is rooted in ape vocalizations as an index of emotions performed by individual-intentionality agents; (ii) with the capacity for recursive mindreading of joint-intentionality agents, music evolved as an iconized index of emotions; (iii) as a consequence of demographic changes, collective-intentionality agents created musical instruments in order to reduce the structural complexity of the sign aiming at coordinating in joint musical activities and culturally transmitting symbolized iconic indexes of emotions. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.25.8535

Group knowledge: a real-world approach

In spite of the booming interest in social epistemology, explicit analyses of group knowledge remain rare. Most existing accounts are based on theories of joint intentionality. I argue that this approach, though not without merit or useful applications, is inadequate both when it comes to accounting for actual group knowledge attributions and for purposes of meliorative social epistemology. As an alternative, I outline a liberal, de-intellectualized account, which allows for the complex distribution of epistemic states typical of most real-world collectives, and makes minimal requirements as to the psychological underpinnings of collective states of knowing and the formal features of groups. The account is inspired by theories of distributed and extended cognition. It is guided by the principle that we should use the same standard when dealing with social and individual epistemology. Careful attention to what is normally required—and, in particular, not required—for attributing knowledge to individuals lends support the more liberal view.

Searching for the Hinterman: In Praise of Subjective Theories of Imputation

How should international courts distinguish between principals and accessories? The ICC answered this question with Roxin’s Control Theory of Perpetration; defendants should be convicted as principals if they control the crime individually, jointly with a co-perpetrator, indirectly via an organized apparatus of power, or as indirect co-perpetrators (via a combination of the previous doctrines). As the ICC adopted the control requirement, however, some of its decisions have allowed lower mental states such as recklessness or dolus eventualis to meet the standard for principal perpetration under the Control Theory. Other decisions have asserted that intent or knowledge is required though their definitions of knowledge include a risk of future events — a definition uncomfortably similar to recklessness. The following essay argues that the ICC should reverse its approach: instead of combining the ‘essential contribution' element with a weak mental requirement (its current doctrine), the ICC should deemphasize control by lowering the essential contribution requirement and reinvigorating the required mental state. In short, the ICC should take a second look at subjective theories of perpetration that define principals as those with the intention to carry out the crime (or joint intention in the case of co-perpetrators) and who contribute to the effort. The ICC’s Control Theory represents an over-correction to the perceived excesses of the subjective approach — excesses that could be fixed without resorting to the ICC’s current ersatz-Control Theory.