Philosophy of Mind Seminar (Friday - Week 1, TT25)

Abstract: This paper presses an objection to a prominent account of shared activity, or doing something together with someone, from Margaret Gilbert (1990) and David Velleman (1997). According to the Gilbert-Velleman Analysis, we act together when we ‘pool wills’, and form a plural subject, entering into a special kind of commitment. This occurs when we each individually express a conditional intention: ‘I will if you will.’ Taken together, these jointly bind us into an unconditional commitment to acting together. I argue the Gilbert-Velleman Analysis cannot explain the difference between threats and pacts. These cases all involve expression of individual conditional intentions, but while pacts result in shared activity, threats do not. In light of this, I propose an alternative view, which I call the Joint-Deliberation Analysis. My discussion brings out that accounts of shared agency face a dilemma between threats and pacts, and a form of regress, which is familiar from the debate on individual rational activity. In the final section, I canvas how the regress might be resisted, and draw some conclusions about how this strategy prompts us to think about rational deliberation.