Shared Intention

If the MULTIPLE AGENTS ACCOUNT of collective action is right, then for a group to do something is just for its members (or some of its members) to all make contributions to something’s coming about.

[4] We intend to lift the bench.

[4] has a distributive and a collective reading. On the distributive reading, it just means that each of us herself intended to lift the bench. On the collective reading, it means we intend to lift the bench together. Since we have no need for a group to be the agent of a group action, we have no need for the group per se to intend anything. Instead, when we say that a group intends to do something, we mean each of them has an intention directed toward their doing something together. In the case of [4], we mean that each of us intends for us to lift the bench together. Thus, it is just a matter of each of us having an appropriate intention directed toward our acting together. We can call the individual intentions directed toward joint action that make up a shared intention we-intentions (Tuomela and Miller 1988). A group shares an intention when they all have we-intentions directed toward doing something together. They do something together intentionally when their we-intentions are carried out successfully.

However, it is not enough for us to share an intention that we each intend that we do some­thing together. If we each intend to trick each other into our lifting the bench together, we do not share an intention. What’s special about we-intentions can be located in a special mode of intending (Gilbert 2009; Searle 1990) or in the content (Bratman 1992; 2014; Miller 2001; Tuomela 2005; 2013). I favor an account in terms of the content (Ludwig 2016: chs. 12—14), which I call the SHARED PLAN ACCOUNT.

SHARED PLAN ACCOUNT: x we-intends that we J if x intends that x contribute (in accordance with a plan x has at the time of acting) to there being a plan in accordance with which each of us makes our contribution to our J-ing (at the time of acting).

If this intention is carried out, then when we act together in J-ing, we each have the same joint action plan in mind (in the sense that we can locate the plan that is the same for all and know our part). To put it informally: we all intend to be on the same page about what we are doing together when we act. Since we each intend this, we each intend something that will result in our

J-ing if successful. This feature is shared by most individualistic accounts of shared intention and will be what we rely on in analyzing collective responsibility in the next section.

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