Shared Agency Without Shared Intention

Bibliographic Data

ID5151784
AuthorsSamuel Asarnow (0000-0002-6977-2960, Macalester College, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume70
Issue281
Pages665-688
Publication date2020-09-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Philosophical Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-8094 • E-ISSN: 1467-9213
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pq/pqaa012
OpenAlexW3022400788
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited48

The leading reductive approaches to shared agency model that phenomenon in terms of complexes of individual intentions, understood as plan-laden commitments. Yet not all agents have such intentions, and non-planning agents such as small children and some non-human animals are clearly capable of sophisticated social interactions. But just how robust are their social capacities? Are non-planning agents capable of shared agency? Existing theories of shared agency have little to say about these important questions. I address this lacuna by developing a reductive account of the social capacities of non-planning agents, which I argue supports the conclusion that they can enjoy shared agency. The resulting discussion offers a fine-grained account of the psychological capacities that can underlie shared agency, and produces a recipe for generating novel hypotheses concerning why some agents (including, arguably, the great apes) do not engage in shared agency

Agency (philosophy) · Biology · Epistemology · Phenomenon · Plan (archaeology) · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology