Question 10: What is team reasoning? Why, if at all, must an account of joint action invoke team reasoning?
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Glossary
aggregate subject : A subject whose proper parts are themselves subjects. A paradigm example would be a Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), which is an animal that can swim and eat and whose swimming and eating is not simply a matter of the swimming or eating of its constituent animals. Distinct from, but sometimes confused with, a plural subject.
game theory : This term is used for any version of the theory based on the ideas of Neumann et al. (1953) and presented in any of the standard textbooks including. Hargreaves-Heap & Varoufakis (2004); Osborne & Rubinstein (1994); Tadelis (2013); Rasmusen (2007).
joint action : Many of the things we do are, or could be, done with others.
Mundane examples favoured by philosophers include painting a house together (Bratman, 1992),
lifting a heavy sofa together (Velleman, 1997),
preparing a hollandaise sauce together (Searle, 1990),
going to Chicago together (Kutz, 2000),
and walking together (Gilbert, 1990).
These examples are supposed to be paradigm cases of a class of phenomena we shall call ‘joint actions’.
Researchers have used a variety of labels including ‘joint action’ (Brooks, 1981; Sebanz, Bekkering, & Knoblich, 2006; Knoblich, Butterfill, & Sebanz, 2011; Tollefsen, 2005; Pettit & Schweikard, 2006; Carpenter, 2009; Pacherie, 2010; Brownell, 2011; Sacheli, Arcangeli, & Paulesu, 2018; Meyer, Wel, & Hunnius, 2013), ‘social action’ (Tuomela & Miller, 1985), ‘collective action’ (Searle, 1990; Gilbert, 2010), ‘joint activity’ (Baier, 1997), ‘acting together’ (Tuomela, 2000), ‘shared intentional activity’ (Bratman, 1997), ‘plural action’ (Schmid, 2008), ‘joint agency’ (Pacherie, 2013), ‘small scale shared agency’ (Bratman, 2014), ‘intentional joint action’ (Blomberg, 2016), ‘collective intentional behavior’ (Ludwig, 2016), and ‘collective activity’ (Longworth, 2019).
We leave open whether these are all labels for a single phenomenon or whether different researchers are targeting different things. As we use ‘joint action’, the term applies to everything any of these labels applies to.
Researchers have used a variety of labels including ‘joint action’ (Brooks, 1981; Sebanz, Bekkering, & Knoblich, 2006; Knoblich, Butterfill, & Sebanz, 2011; Tollefsen, 2005; Pettit & Schweikard, 2006; Carpenter, 2009; Pacherie, 2010; Brownell, 2011; Sacheli, Arcangeli, & Paulesu, 2018; Meyer, Wel, & Hunnius, 2013), ‘social action’ (Tuomela & Miller, 1985), ‘collective action’ (Searle, 1990; Gilbert, 2010), ‘joint activity’ (Baier, 1997), ‘acting together’ (Tuomela, 2000), ‘shared intentional activity’ (Bratman, 1997), ‘plural action’ (Schmid, 2008), ‘joint agency’ (Pacherie, 2013), ‘small scale shared agency’ (Bratman, 2014), ‘intentional joint action’ (Blomberg, 2016), ‘collective intentional behavior’ (Ludwig, 2016), and ‘collective activity’ (Longworth, 2019).
We leave open whether these are all labels for a single phenomenon or whether different researchers are targeting different things. As we use ‘joint action’, the term applies to everything any of these labels applies to.
nash equilibrium : ‘a list of strategies, one for each player, such that no player can get a better payoff by switching to some other strategy that is available to her while all the other players adhere to the strategies specified for them in the list’ (Dixit, Skeath, & Reiley, 2014, p. 95).
shared intention : An attitude that stands to joint action as ordinary, individual intention stands to
ordinary, individual action.
It is hard to find consensus on what shared intention is, but most agree
that it is neither shared nor intention.
(Variously called ‘collective’, ‘we-’ and ‘joint’ intention.)
team reasoning : ‘somebody team reasons if she works out the best possible feasible combination of actions for all the members of her team, then does her part in it’ (Bacharach, 2006, p. 121).
References
Bacharach, M. (2006). Beyond individual choice. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3272720~S1
Baier, A. C. (1997). Doing Things With Others: The Mental Commons. In L. Alanen, S. Heinamaa, & T. Wallgren (Eds.), Commonality and particularity in ethics (pp. 15–44). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25602-0_2
Blomberg, O. (2016). Common Knowledge and Reductionism about Shared Agency. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 94(2), 315–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2015.1055581
Bratman, M. E. (1997). I intend that we J. In R. Tuomela & G. Holmstrom-Hintikka (Eds.), Contemporary action theory, volume 2: Social action. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Bratman, M. E. (2014). Shared agency: A planning theory of acting together. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://0-dx.doi.org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199897933.001.0001
Brooks, D. H. M. (1981). Joint action. Mind, 90(357), 113–119. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253670
Brownell, C. A. (2011). Early Developments in Joint Action. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2, 193–211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-011-0056-1
Carpenter, M. (2009). Just how joint is joint action in infancy? Topics in Cognitive Science, 1(2), 380–392.
Gilbert, M. P. (1990). Walking together: A paradigmatic social phenomenon. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 15, 1–14.
Gilbert, M. P. (2010). Collective action. In T. O’Connor & C. Sandis (Eds.), A companion to the philosophy of action (pp. 67–73). Oxford: Blackwell.
Gold, N., & Sugden, R. (2007). Collective intentions and team agency. Journal of Philosophy, 104(3), 109–137.
Hargreaves-Heap, S., & Varoufakis, Y. (2004). Game theory: A critical text. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2587142~S1
Hindriks, F. (2012). Team reasoning and group identification. Rationality and Society, 24(2), 198–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043463111429274
Knoblich, G., Butterfill, S. A., & Sebanz, N. (2011). Psychological research on joint action: Theory and data. In B. Ross (Ed.), Psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 51, pp. 59–101). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-385527-5.00003-6
Longworth, G. (2019). Sharing non-observational knowledge. Inquiry, 0(0), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2019.1680430
Meyer, M., Wel, R. P. R. D. van der, & Hunnius, S. (2013). Higher-order action planning for individual and joint object manipulations. Experimental Brain Research, 225(4), 579–588. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3398-8
Neumann, J. von, Morgenstern, O., Rubinstein, A., & Kuhn, H. W. (1953). Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock: Princeton University Press.
Pacherie, E. (2010). The phenomenology of joint action: Self-agency vs. Joint-agency. In A. Seemann (Ed.), Joint action. MIT Press.
Pacherie, E. (2013). Intentional joint agency: Shared intention lite. Synthese, 190(10), 1817–1839. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0263-7
Pettit, P., & Schweikard, D. (2006). Joint Actions and Group Agents. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 36(1), 18–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393105284169
Rasmusen, E. (2007). Games and information: An introduction to game theory (4th ed). Malden, MA ; Oxford: Blackwell Pub.
Sacheli, L. M., Arcangeli, E., & Paulesu, E. (2018). Evidence for a dyadic motor plan in joint action. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 5027. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23275-9
Schmid, H. B. (2008). Plural action. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 38(1), 25–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393107310877
Searle, J. R. (1990). Collective intentions and actions. In P. Cohen, J. Morgan, & M. E. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in communication (pp. 90–105). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sebanz, N., Bekkering, H., & Knoblich, G. (2006). Joint action: Bodies and mind moving together. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(2), 70–76.
Tadelis, S. (2013). Game theory: An introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3473236~S1
Tollefsen, D. (2005). Let’s pretend: Children and joint action. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 35(75), 74–97.
Tuomela, R., & Miller, K. (1985). We-Intentions and Social Action. Analyse & Kritik, 7(1), 26–43. https://doi.org/10.1515/auk-1985-0102