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Shared Intention and Bratman’s Maffia Cases
Suppose that you and I each intend that we go to New York together. Is this sufficient for us to have a shared intention? If we act on our intentions and succeed, will our going to New York constitute a shared intentional action, an action which is a consequence of our shared agency?
The general idea under consideration here is that two or more agents have a shared intention that they F just if each agent intends that they F.
Michael Bratman offers a counterexample. Suppose we elaborate the story so that your plan is to point a gun at me and bundle me into the boot (or trunk) of your car. Then you still intend that we go to New York together, but in a way that doesn’t depend on my intentions. As you see things, I’m going to New York with you whether I like it or not. This doesn’t seem like a case of shared intentional action. After all, it involves me being abducted. But it is still a case in which we each intend that we go to New York together and we do.
From this and other cases Bratman concludes that shared intention requires not only that we each intend that we go to New York together, but also that we do this by way of each other’s intentions and meshing subplans of those intentions.[1] Is this the right conclusion to draw? I agree that our each having an intention that we go to New York togther cannot be sufficient for us to have a shared intention that we go to New York together. But does the counterexample really show that shared intention requires intentions about others’ intentions? I think not.
Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that only individuals can have intentions. So you and I cannot have an intention. At least not in anything like the sense in which we can have a bottle of wine or a parent, where one bottle (or parent) is both my parent and your parent. Intentions aren’t like this. None of your intentions are also mine, and none of my intentions are also yours. But the fact (if it is a fact) that intentions aren’t like this needn’t stop us from treating them as if they were.
What does it mean to treat an intention as if it could be an intention of two or more agents? Answering this question calls for a little background on intention. Intentions are characterised in part by norms which distinguish them from other attitudes like desire. For example, there is nothing wrong with having lots of different desires not all of which could be realised—to desire to be in two places at once, say. But when it comes to intention, it is not perfectly rational to have lots of intentions not all of which can be realised. Someone who intends to be in Chicago tomorrow probably shouldn’t also be intending to spend the whole day in New York.
Now in identifying norms characteristic of intention it is normal to consider only cases involving a single agent. But imagine for a moment that two or more agents could have one and the same intention. If that were possible, the norms characteristic of intention would have to be generalised from the single agent case to allow for multiple agents. For example, it would not be perfectly rational for *us* to have lots of intentions not all of which can be realised by *us*. Suppose that we intend to go to New York together but you intend to fly whereas I intend to drive. Then not all of our intentions can be realised. If we treat the first intention as our intention, then we are in a position to recognize that our having these intentions is not perfectly rational.
So what is wrong with the Maffia case where we each intend that we go to New York but your plan is to bundle me into the boot of your car at gunpoint? You implementing your plan is incompatible with me acting on my intention that we go to New York together. So our intentions are such that they cannot all be realised. If we took the intention that we go to New York together to be our intention, then we would be in a position to believe with justification that we are not being perfectly rational. So perhaps this is what is needed for us to have a shared intention: not intentions concerning each other’s intentions, but simply a disposition to treat an intention that we go to New York as if it were *our* intention.
In summary: (1) Maffia cases don’t show that shared intention requires intentions about others’ intentions; (2) to treat an intention that we F as *our* intention can be understood as treating it as subject to norms characteristic of intention where these have been generalised to cases involving multiple agents; (3) even if no intentions are had by more than one agent, it is still coherent to treat some as if they were; and (4) perhaps shared intention requires that each of us intends that we F and that each of us treats this intention as if it were our intention.
####notes
[1] The claim that intentions about others’ intentions are required for shared intention was weakened in later writing. But it remains true that Bratman’s only account of what realises shared intentions involves intentions about others’ intentions. My point here is that there may be other ways of realising shared intention.
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Hi Olle,
Thanks for the dilemma, this is very helpful. We’re assuming only individuals can have intentions. I’ll take the first horn of your dilemma: the intention I treat as our intention is my intention that we F. Your question is then why my acting on this intention is incompatible with me coercing you to F. I think you’re right that the sorts of norm governing intention I gestured at will not rule out me coercing you to F. So I didn’t explain what I was trying to explain. But there is a way to explain it given a natural extension of the approach I was sketching.
The idea, put loosely, is that although *my* acting on the intention is compatible with coercion, *our* acting on the intention would not be. This isn’t quite right. If the intention isn’t really our intention, then we cannot really act on it. (I’m assuming that only the subject or subjects of an intention can act on that intention.) But maybe I could take us to be acting on this intention. What would this amount to? Consider constraints that have to be met in order for an individual agent to be acting on a particular intention. For instance, the intention arguably has to cause the action, and there arguably has to be a causal path linking intention to action that does not involve coercion. I suppose that, as a purely formal exercise, such constraints can be generalised to the (perhaps impossible) case where two or more agents act on an intention. For instance, for two or more agents to act on an intention, the intention would have to cause each of their actions and there would have to be a causal path linking intention to each action that does not involve coercion. Generalising these constraints gives us an idea of what it would be for two or more agents to act on an intention. For me to take us to be acting on an intention that we F is for me to take these constraints to be met. So what rules out coercion is not just that I treat the intention as our intention, but that in acting I take the intention to be one that we are acting on, perhaps even while knowing that it isn’t really so.
That, anyway, is my best attempt so far to escape your dilemma via the first horn. I also want (and need) to reject the premise in the second horn of your dilemma, the premise that treating your intention that we F as if it were our intention would involve me having intentions about your intentions. If I accepted this I would probably also have to accept that treating *my* intention that we F involves me having intentions about my intentions. But I want to know whether, on the assumption that Michael Bratman is right about the functional roles of shared intention (which include coordinating planning as well as coordinating activities), there are sufficient conditions for shared intention which do not require any such intentions. So I shouldn’t accept your premise that treating an intention that we F as our intention involves having intentions about that intention. I guess you endorse this premise because you’re thinking that treating an intention as subject to certain normative requirements involves intending that the requirements be met. Clearly I need a different account of what is involved.
Best,
Steve -
Thanks for the substantial response Steve! To be honest, my worry wasn’t very well articulated. I was shooting from the hip, as it were.
My intuition though, was that the bare idea of treating my intention as *our* intention doesn’t rule out coercion, precisely because I had the intuition that implementing an intention in the individual action case doesn’t rule out coercive elements to play a role. But thinking this through a bit more, I think you are right about this (more on this below).
The alternative, that I treat your intention that we F, seemed to involve intentions about your intentions. Although I hadn’t articulated this for myself, your clarification of this seems right: “treating an intention as subject to certain normative requirements involves intending that the requirements be met.” So, thanks for unpacking this for me!
Anyway, back to coercion. You write, regarding what have to be the case for an individual to act on an intention that the intention “has to cause the action, and [that] there arguably has to be a causal path linking intention to action that does not involve coercion.” What would a case be like if it involved coercion in the causal path linking intention to action? I think I had something like the following in mind: I form the intention to go to New York because I have accepted to give an invited talk there at the NYU philosophy department (I wish!), but knowing myself, I suspect that I will get really worried about my cat (that I’ve left at home) and that it is a live possibility that I will abandon my plan half-way to New York, re-plan, and head back toward my flat and cat. Knowing that this might wreck my academic career and will involve acting against my long-term interests, I lock myself into the boot of a car that I happen to know is heading for New York. Is this a case where coercion is involved in the causal path between intention and action? This doesn’t seem to be a case , for two reasons. First of all, arguably, the action that my intention of going to New York causes is ‘getting into the boot of the car’, not ‘traveling to New York’, and there is no coercion involved in the causal path to stepping into the boot of the car. Aside from this, I am here taking a stance toward my future self which makes the example unfit as an example of individual action involving coercion. I am (arguably) treating my future self as another agent that I am in strategic interaction with, so even if the action my intention is causing is the ‘traveling to New York’, it is not clear that there is coercion involved in acting on *my* action. I very much doubt that it is possible to think of an example that involves coercion in the way relevant for my objection, that is, that lacks these features. So I back off on this.
However, just to explore this issue: It seems that the exclusion of coercion is very different from, for example, saying that one is criticizably irrational if one has inconsistent intentions. After all, it is possible to have inconsistent intentions (one might not be aware of the fact that they are inconsistent), but the “no coercion”-constraint (which I accept) doesn’t seem to be a normative constraint in this sense? It just doesn’t seem right to say that I’m criticizably irrational if I’m acting on my intention in such a way that it the causal path between intention and action involves coercion (in the way required), it just seems inconceivable to do this. The *norms* that govern intentions just seem to be silent on the issue. So by treating my intention as *our* intention, it is not clear that the norms that carry over to the imaginary we-agent include norms that rule out coercion. Does this make sense?
I have to get off my train in a couple of minutes, so will stop here!
Best
Olle -
Steve, I now realise that your distinction between “norms governing intentions” and “constraints on acting on a particular intention” was actually articulating the difference I was grasping for in my last paragraph. (I suppose the alternative would be, in case you want to just talk about norms governing intentions, to argue that it is part of the content of my intention that we F that the intention itself causes the ‘we F’-activity in a certain way that excludes coercion. But that doesn’t seem like an attractive alternative.)
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Hi Olle,
Hope you made it off the train! Here’s how I was thinking coercion might feature in a causal path from intention to action in ordinary, individual action. Imagine that for some reason you are determined that I should do what I intend, whatever that is. I intend that I go to New York (to continue your example); this intention is among the causes of your knowing that I intend to go to New York; and this knowledge is in turn a cause of you pointing a gun at my head and telling me to go to New York; and that does cause me to go to New York. So the (ordinary, individual) intention that I go to New York is a cause of my (ordinary, individual) action, but there may be no causal path from intention to action that doesn’t involve your coercion.
I take this sort of example to show that the existence of a causal path between intention and action is not sufficient for the agent of the action to be acting on the intention. I also think it suggests, given some background, that where an agent is acting on an intention, there has to be a causal path linking intention to action that does not involve coercion. The example isn’t supposed to do anything other than this.
I agree with you that someone who is coerced is not necessarily irrational. The thought I’m offering doesn’t depend on this though. The idea was just this. If we are each taking an intention that we F to be one that we are acting on, it will be a mistake for either of us to coerce the other into F-ing (or doing her part in our F-ing) because this will conflict with our taking us to be acting on an intention that we F.
The point isn’t that we each cannot take us to be acting on an intention that we F if anything conflicts with our taking this to be so. My assumption is rather that we should avoid doing things that generate or enhance such conflicts. Of course this assumption isn’t strong enough to rule out coercion altogether because (as far as I can see) there could be situations in which no alternative to one of us coercing the other into going to New York generates less conflict with our taking ourselves to be acting on an intention that we go to New York. I’m not yet sure if this is a problem for the view.
best,
Steve -
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One final comment, to reconnect this to my original comment. The reason that coercion isn’t ruled out in your original proposal–treating the intention as *our* intention–actually doesn’t have anything to do with whether it is my or your intention that we F that I treat as *our* intention that we F. So there wasn’t any dilemma actually, but a problem (which your revised proposal avoids). And, as you pointed out in your first response, the challenge that remains–to explain how treating an intention as an intention that we are acting on doesn’t involve having intentions about intentions–doesn’t have anything to with whether it is my or your intention either.
Thanks for taking the time to straigthen out my misunderstanding of your revised proposal btw!
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Hi Steve!
Interesting proposal! Here is my worry though: If only individuals can have intentions, mustn’t it be my or your intention that we F (rather than simply *the* intention that we F) that I treat as *our* intention that we F? If it is my intention, then it is not clear why coercion is ruled out. If it is your intention, then coercion is ruled out, but then I have to treat your intention that we F as if it was *our* intention that we F. And this, it seems to me, will require that I have intentions about your intentions (no?).
Olle