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An Account of Boeschian Cooperative Behaviour

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Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 122))

Abstract

Philosophical accounts of joint action are often prefaced by the observation that there are two different senses in which several agents can intentionally perform an action Φ, such as go for a walk or capture the prey. The agents might intentionally Φ together, as a collective, or they might intentionally Φ in parallel, where Φ is distributively assigned to the agents, considered as a set of individuals. The accounts are supposed to characterise what is distinctive about activities in which several agents intentionally Φ collectively rather than distributively. This dualism between joint and parallel action also crops up outside philosophy. For instance, it has been imported into a debate about whether or not group hunting among chimpanzees is a form of joint cooperative hunting. I offer an account of a form of joint action that falls short of what most philosophers take to be required for genuine joint action, but which is not merely parallel activity. This shows that the dualism between the genuinely joint and the merely parallel is false. I offer my account as an explication of an influential definition of “cooperative behaviour” given by the primatologists Christophe and Hedwig Boesch.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a discussion of this circularity problem and why it needs to be avoided, see (Petersson 2007).

  2. 2.

    To be fair, Boesch now seems to be more agnostic regarding what is required for group hunting to be cooperative. See (Boesch 2012, 92–93), where he refers to several accounts of joint action, including Steve Butterfill’s (2012) account of ‘shared goals’.

  3. 3.

    This definition has also been adopted by other researchers in both comparative and developmental psychology (see Chalmeau and Gallo 1995; Naderi et al. 2001; Brinck and Gärdenfors 2003; Brownell et al. 2006).

  4. 4.

    Searle (1990, 402–403) uses the term “common goal” to talk about the relationship between the runners’ goals in this case. Cohen et al. (1997, 96) and Miller (1986, 133) also use the term in this way.

  5. 5.

    On the distinction between goal and target object, see Jacob (2012, 209).

  6. 6.

    In Blomberg (2015), I show that this is at least the case when it comes to Butterfill’s (2012) account of shared goals.

  7. 7.

    This would be akin to what Perner and Roessler (2010, 205) call the “the hybrid account of children’s conception of intentional action”.

  8. 8.

    My account of joint action is not the only one that does not require that the actions that constitute a joint action is directed to a collective activity. Other such accounts include Pacherie and Dokic (2006, 110), Butterfill (2012) and Miller (2001).

  9. 9.

    Nor does the question arise if Ann’s and Bob’s goal was “that we take 10,000 steps”. After all, each of them takes herself or himself to be a member of the “we” that the goal concerns.

  10. 10.

    On Searle’s view, my condition (1) will never be satisfied by goals that agents have in virtue of what they intend. His view implies that there is never a single outcome that satisfies the intention of each. The conditions of satisfaction for our ordinary intentions will never be the same.

  11. 11.

    Björn Petersson (2015) makes a similar point in the context of a discussion of Bratman’s account of shared cooperative activity. Petersson draws on the work of François Recanati (2007).

  12. 12.

    Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this worry.

  13. 13.

    See Sober and Wilson (1998, 213–217) for a related discussion about the possibility of “general and impersonal desires” and the evolutionary benefits of self-directed desires.

  14. 14.

    Note that I have not considered the issue of how agents share the spoils of their joint action. The account I have given concerning coordination of action toward a common goal, it does not say anything about how agents act once the goal has been achieved.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Catrin Misselhorn and to an anonymous reviewer. This chapter is partly based on research I did during my PhD studies at the University of Edinburgh, made possible by a European PhD Scholarship from Microsoft Research, for which I am grateful. For fruitful discussions during my PhD, I thank Steve Butterfill, Natalie Gold, Suilin Lavelle, Matt Nudds and Till Vierkant. Further work has been made possible by a postdoctoral research grant (DFF—4089-00091) from Danish Council for Independent Research and FP7 Marie Curie Actions COFUND under the 7th EU Framework Programme.

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  1. Center for Subjectivity Research, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Olle Blomberg

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Correspondence to Olle Blomberg .

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  1. Institute of Philosophy, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Catrin Misselhorn

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Blomberg, O. (2015). An Account of Boeschian Cooperative Behaviour. In: Misselhorn, C. (eds) Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 122. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15515-9_9

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