Abstract
If we are going to understand morality, it is important to understand the nature of societies. What is fundamental to them? What is the glue that holds them together? What is the role of shared norm acceptance in constituting a society? Michael Bratman’s account of modest sociality in his book, Shared Agency, casts significant light on these issues. Bratman’s account focuses on small-scale interactions, but it is instructive of the kinds of factors that can enter into explaining sociality more generally. Norms of “social rationality” play an important role in Bratman’s account. I agree with his idea that these norms have normative force. I contend that these norms actually are morally significant. On the resulting view, social glue consists of actual and intended meshing of intentions and shared knowledge combined with a kind of normative pressure that has normative authority—along with other more familiar factors such as familial connections, cooperative arrangements, and affective states such as loyalties.
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Notes
Bratman (2014). Parenthetical references are to this book unless indicated otherwise.
We-intentions violate the “own action” condition. Bratman rejects this condition (60–64).
A further problem may arise because agents working together need to share assumptions about what is possible and effective (30). As Bratman points out, in some cases, agents working together might plan in light of certain assumptions about what is possible and effective even though they do not all believe these propositions (147–149).
Bratman says “violation of such social norms will normally consist of a violation of associated norms of individual planning agency” (87, my emphasis). He may here be conceding the point I am making in the text.
Take it that something is needed by humans just in case, given the circumstances of human life and the nature of human beings, humans must have this thing in order to achieve what they value, no matter what they value, within a wide range of possible things to value.
The term, “self-interested rationality,” can be misleading. A person who devotes her life to helping other people may be doing well as judged by her own standards even if she is not self-interested.
Here I simply assume this is correct. Attempting to argue for it would take me far afield.
This means that, if she is self-groundedly rational, the jazz lover who believes listening to jazz is not worthwhile will believe she is making a mistake in virtue of the lack of coherence between her listening policy and her belief. To the extent that she is rational she will tend to revise either her belief or her listening policy.
To subscribe to a norm is to have a general intention to conform to it and to be disposed to experience a negative emotional response if one fails to conform.
Bratman raised this question in discussion.
References
Bratman, M. E. (2014). Shared agency: A planning theory of acting together. New York: Oxford University Press.
Copp, D. (1995). Morality, normativity, and society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Copp, D. (2007a). Morality in a natural world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Copp, D. (2007b). Social unity and the identity of persons. The Journal of Political Philosophy, 10, 365–391.
Copp, D. (2009). Toward a pluralist and teleological theory of normativity. Philosophical Issues, 19, 21–37.
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Copp, D. Social glue and norms of sociality. Philos Stud 172, 3387–3397 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0562-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0562-6