Conclusion

Commitments, perhaps surprisingly, play a wide range of roles in debates about shared agency in general and collective responsibility in particular. Commitments are often taken to be norma­tively and volitionally fundamental for individual agents.

Notes

1 I thank Margaret Gilbert, Deborah Tollefsen, and Saba Bazargan-Forward for comments on early drafts of this chapter.

2 I use the term “group” ecumenically, given the wide variety of views considered in this chapter. Here, I treat it as a neutral catch-all descriptor for non-agential collectives or aggregates as well as for collective or group agents. Where philosophers have specific views about this debate, I flag how the term “group” should be understood in their respective views.

3 See, e.g., Bernstein 2017; Bjornsson 2014; Chant 2015; Copp 1979: 185; 2007; Feinberg 1968: 677-ff; May 1992; Mellema 1988: 48; Wringe 2010; 2014. Cf. Arruda 2017.

4 See Gilbert (2014:118—19) for a discussion of why the phrase “plural subject” has been overinterpreted. She suggests that the agents who compose it do not share a “set of subjective experiences that exist apart from any such streams or sequences associated with the individual human members of the plural subject”

(2018: fn 45).

5 I cast a wide net because philosophers disagree about what (if anything) is shared and whether groups as such or the individuals who constitute them genuinely share any attitudes. This diversity of views suggests a similarly wide variety of roles for commitments to play therein.

It might seem that this is a case of a jointly-held commitment given that it involves my explicit commitment to another person.

I use an example of an interpersonal commitment since the self-directed (or intrapersonal) type does not seem to be the relevant individual analogue for commitments’ role in shared agency.

One might contend that there is no primafacie reason to grant that commitments’ role in shared agency is analogous to their role in individual, interpersonal contexts. While this is correct, nothing about the account I provide above relies on this presumption; rather, it relies on the presumption that the charac­teristic features of commitments will largely hold between the two contexts. More important, the pur­pose of the account I provide above is to explain how commitments are used in the available accounts of shared agency, and this presumption is in the background of many of the accounts discussed in this chapter (notwithstanding the fact that I [Arruda ms] argue that commitments lack many of the features that these accounts take them to have).

See also Liberman and Schroeder (2016) and Ross (2012). Compare with Chang (2013).

So commitments are not reducible to intentions nor are they special, “extra strong” intentions.

I challenge the idea that commitments are future-directed in these more robust senses in Arruda (ms). This issue is related to the question of whether one takes rational requirements to be wide- or narrow-scope.

See Holton (2009) and Marusic (2015), among others, for ways around this problem.

There may be bootstrapping worries regarding the reasons we have to follow through on the commitment itself.

For a related discussion of how this relates to scope of rational requirements, see Gilbert (2018: 42—6). “Moral” is parenthetical here, given the question raised in the previous section regarding commitments’ normative status.

Whether this is moral responsibility will depend on whether one takes the content of Angela’s commitment to be moral in nature, as I argue in the previous section.

Compare with Rovane (2014).

To name one possibility, commitments might complement quality of will accounts of moral responsibility.

Cf. Michael and Pacherie (2015: 91-3).

Compare with List’s (2014) distinction between different types of collective attitudes. Since part of what is at issue is whether and in what sense commitments are collective attitudes, I take this more neutral set of questions as a starting point.

In §13.2.2, I address whether the commitments in question are better described as “joint” or “shared”. For overviews, see Shockley (2004) and Wilkins (2002).

See Michael and Pacherie (2015: 95-ff) for a discussion of the differences among treating commitments as necessary, as sufficient or as important (but neither necessary nor sufficient conditions) for shared agency.

Gilbert notes that it is possible for individuals to be what she describes (in written communication) as “reluctantly ready.” This suggests that using a Frankfurtian conception of wholeheartedness in this context should not be taken to entail that individuals’ readiness involves throwing their full weight behind the action. Instead, as I see it, the Frankfurtian picture helps to explain what is involved in their readiness to be party to the joint commitment itself.

Or “a plurality of persons” (Gilbert 2014: 9).

I thank Margaret Gilbert for noting that agents may have conflicting personal aims.

Gilbert (2014: 50) argues that agreements are constituted by, rather than necessary or sufficient conditions for, joint commitments.

I thank Margaret Gilbert for emphasizing this point.

Whether it is more accurate to describe the relationship as one of supervenience or constitution is outside the purview of this chapter.

As Gilbert has emphasized in written communication, she acknowledges the possibility that individual participants can have what she calls “subversive personal intentions.”

32 For the sake of clarity, I focus on the normative implications of Gilbert’s view for small groups even though she applies her view to large groups and, even, to organized society as such (see 2006b).

33 For challenges to Gilbert’s account of directed obligations, see Shockley (2004: esp. 557) and Brewer (2003). For Gilbert’s reply, see (2018, esp. ch. 8).

34 Individuals may be justified in failing to adhere to the commitment, as Margaret Gilbert has suggested to me.

35 But compare with the issue of bootstrapping in §13.1.

36 Compare with (1999b: 143).

37 See Smith (2015: 57) for a discussion of the advantages of making joint commitment a necessary con­dition for shared agency. See Bratman (2015: 75—6) for a reply.

38 See Cullity and Gerrans (2004) for a challenge to Bratman’s view. The quotation above is taken from Bratman’s response.

39 Bratman (2004) thinks there are three forms of what he calls “agential commitment.”

40 See Bratman (2006: 7).

41 See Bratman (2014: 55) for a comparison of his view with Gilbert’s.

42 See Bratman’s (2014: 3—9) “continuity thesis.”

43 Bratman (2014: 112—13) denies that there is a necessary connection between shared intention and “mutual obligation.” Normative principles about interpersonal obligation can explain when and how such obligations hold, Bratman claims.

44 Compare with Gilbert (2018: 162).

45 Notwithstanding this point, Bratman (2014: 115, 154—5) takes his “basic thesis” to be consistent with many of Gilbert’s conclusions.

46 For more on this issue, see Smith (2015) as well as Michael and Pacherie (2015: esp.

47 Cf. Heim (2015).

48 Whether this responsibility is distributive or non-distributive is naturally a more complicated matter, but I leave this matter aside due to space constraints.

49 Gilbert (2018: 163, 171, v-vi) echoes this idea when she argues that commitments’ peremptory char­acter partially explains their role in grounding demand-rights, or the standing and authority to demand a particular action from another agent.

50 A further question is whether these obligations are conditional or unconditional (Gilbert 2014; Shockley 2004: fn. 28; Westlund 2009: fn. 17 & 26).

51 See Gilbert (2014: 89) for an explanation of the relationship between collective intention and action.

52 For a related point, see Gilbert’s (2014: esp. 79) discussion of the warrant for statements such as “We are to blame.”

53 See Smiley (2014: 3).

54 Jansen (2014: 94) argues that the very idea of a “plural subject,” and, in particular, one that is founded upon commitments, has forward-looking responsibility built into it.

55 Compare with Heim’s (2015: 77) distinction between failures that attach to the group and failures that attach to individuals qua group members.

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