Online research in philosophy

The radical forms of naturalistic epistemology look more like revolutionary manifestos than a reasonable alternatives. A modest form of naturalism is worth promoting. This modest form can cooperative with hermeneutics to solve epistemic problems, and therefore wins the title of cooperative naturalism, and benefits from the hermeneutic account of experience. Cooperative naturalism somewhat bridges the gap between analytic and continental philosophy. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������, ������������������������������������������. ������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������������������. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������, ������������������������������ ������������������������������������. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������, ������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������������.

Many philosophers have offered accounts of shared actions aimed at capturing what makes joint actions intentionally joint. I first discuss two leading accounts of shared intentions, proposed by Michael Bratman and Margaret Gilbert. I argue that Gilbert’s account imposes more normativity on shared intentions than is strictly needed and that Bratman’s account requires too much cognitive sophistication on the part of agents. I then turn to the team-agency theory developed by economists that I see as offering an alternative route to shared intention. I concentrate on Michael Bacharach’s version of team-agency theory, according to which shared agency is a matter of team-reasoning, team-reasoning depends on group identification and group identification is the result of processes of self-framing. I argue that it can yield an account of shared intention that is less normatively loaded and less cognitively demanding.

In this paper I develop a conception of joint practical deliberation as a special type of shared cooperative activity, through which co-deliberators jointly accept reasons as applying to them as a pair or group. I argue, moreover, that the aspiration to deliberative “pairhood” is distinguished by a special concern for mutuality that guides each deliberator’s readiness to accept a given consideration as a reason-for-us. It matters to each of us, as joint deliberators, that each party’s (individual) reasons for accepting something as a reason-for-us support a conception of our relationship as one characterized by mutual, non-instrumental concern for one another.

There is thinking, conducted by a single person, about how to live. And there is thinking together– a kind of “language infused”(5) shared activity – about how to live together. In the first of these fascinating and deeply probing Tanner Lectures Allan Gibbard is concerned with both of these phenomena and with how they interact.

In his work, Jules Coleman has held that the rule of recognition, if conceived of as a shared cooperative activity, should be the gateway through which to incorporate moral constraints on the content of law. This analysis, however, leaves unanswered two important questions. For one thing, we do not know when or even why morality becomes a criterion of legality. And, for another thing, we still do not know what conception of morality it is that we are dealing with. In this article, we will attempt to clarify in greater depth what relations there are between the social practice of law and morality. We will thus see how the cooperative nature of social practices imbues law with a moral force, and how this makes it possible to establish a "weak" connection between law and morality: To see this, we will need to single out some basic features of cooperative social practices, thus setting out a suitable framework for the view just mentioned.

Observations and experiments show that human adults preferentially share resources with close relations, with people who have shared with them (reciprocity), and with people who have shared with others (indirect reciprocity). These tendencies are consistent with evolutionary theory but could also reflect the shaping effects of experience or instruction in complex, cooperative, and competitive societies. Here, we report evidence for these three tendencies in 3.5-year-old children, despite their limited experience with complex cooperative networks. Three pillars of mature cooperative behavior therefore appear to have roots extending deep into human development. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Observations and experiments show that human adults preferentially share resources with close relations, with people who have shared with them (reciprocity), and with people who have shared with others (indirect reciprocity). These tendencies are consistent with evolutionary theory but could also reflect the shaping effects of experience or instruction in complex, cooperative, and competitive societies. Here, we report evidence for these three tendencies in 3.5-year-old children, despite their limited experience with complex cooperative networks. Three pillars of mature cooperative behavior therefore appear to have roots extending deep into human development. Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This collection of essays by one of the most prominent and internationally respected philosophers of action theory is concerned with deepening our understanding of the notion of intention. In Bratman's view, when we settle on a plan for action we are committing ourselves to future conduct in ways that help support important forms of coordination and organization both within the life of the agent and interpersonally. These essays enrich that account of commitment involved in intending, and explore its implications for our understanding of temptation and self-control, shared intention and shared cooperative activity, and moral responsibility. The essays offer extensive discussions of related views by, among others, Donald Davidson, Hector-Neri Castañeda, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, and P. F. Strawson. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students.

Communication is an essentially cooperative activity. However, cooperation only makes sense in a particular kind of environment – one in which cooperation leads to shared benefits. This can be seen once we take Grice’s Cooperative Principle and consider its implications in the general context of game theory. The effect is that something like metaphysical realism underpins normal human discourse, such discourse becoming impossible without that presumption.

Human beings act together in characteristic ways. Forms of shared activity matter to us a great deal, both intrinsically – think of friendship and love, singing duets, and the joys of conversation -- and instrumentally – think of how we frequently manage to work together to achieve complex goals. My focus will be on activities of small, adult groups in the absence of asymmetric authority relations within those groups. My approach begins with an underlying model of individual planning agency, and then seeks a conceptual and metaphysical bridge from such individual planning agency to modest forms of sociality.