Abstract
Mind reading (i.e. the ability to infer the mental state of another agent) is taken to be the main cognitive ability required to share an intention and to collaborate. In this paper, I argue that another cognitive ability is also necessary to collaborate: representing others’ and ones’ own goals from a third-person perspective (other-centred or allocentric representation of goals). I argue that allocentric mind reading enables the cognitive ability of goal adoption, i.e. having the goal that another agent’s achieve p because and as long as another agent has that goal that p. Having clarified the relevance of mutual goal adoption for acting jointly, I argue that when an intention is shared between several agents, each individual has an intention in favour of the joint action and one in favour of a joint mode of reasoning. This mode of reasoning is allocentric reasoning. Finally, I elaborate on the consequences of this view for the scientific study of human collaboration.
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Notes
Exactly what we share and how we can share it is still, however, matter of debate. See for instance the various contributions in Butterfill and Sebanz (2011).
For the aim of this paper, the term ‘desire’ and ‘goal’ are used interchangeably to refer to the same kind of mental state with propositional content: a desire that p is synonymous with a goal that p. To have a ‘desire’ or ‘goal’ means to be in a state with which the world must fit (see Smith 1987 for the notion of ‘direction of fit’ and its application to desires). While the term ‘desire’ is conventionally adopted in philosophy of mind and action, the term ‘goal’ is mostly used in psychology of motivation and neuroscience of action. For an extended discussion of the concept of goal as the prototypical conative mental state that considers desire as a sub-case, see Castelfranchi (2012).
The importance of modes of reasoning to understand shared or collective intentions is also characteristic of team-reasoning approaches to joint action; see for instance Sugden and Gold 2007 and “Beyond Bratman’s semantic strategy” section below.
Thus, the only of kind of intention that will be relevant for the aim of this paper is the one that Pacherie (2008) has called distal intention (pp. 182–184). Pacherie usefully distinguishes between distal, proximate and motor intentions. Distal intentions are relevant for the rational guidance and control of action, proximate intention for situational guidance and control and motor intention for the motor ones (p. 188). I assume that a similar distinction is appropriate for shared intention as well. Hence, the present discussion will only concern shared distal intention.
I will use the expression ‘adopted goal’ to refer to the goals that an agent form when engaging in goal adoption.
Even if exchanging goods is not motivated by altruism, this does not mean that the underlying motivation should be necessarily selfish, in that it can be driven by a motivation of mutual advantage. On the fact the market exchange might also be construed as a form of collaboration, see Sugden (2009). For an early analysis of exchange and goal adoption, see Castelfranchi and Parisi (1984).
The key aspect of an other-regarding preference is that ‘one’s evaluation of a state depends on how it is experienced by others’ (Bowles 2004, p. 109). This aspect makes social or other-regarding preferences the standard model of altruistic motivations.
An allocentric representation in social cognition is the adoption of a third-person perspective when representing somebody else instead of a first-person egocentric and self-related one (Frith and de Vignemont 2005; Frischen et al. 2009). The egocentric representation of another’s goal is the representation of such goal and of the means to achieve it in a way that is relevant for oneself (i.e. that satisfies one’s own goals). The allocentric representation of another’s goal is the representation of such goal and of the means to achieve it in a way that is independent from oneself.
Interlocking intentions or interdependence between the intentions that we J is also a core feature of Bratman’s analysis (Bratman 2009a, pp. 159, 161). In my strategy, intentions are interlocking in virtue of the interdependence between the adopted goals that we J. Since each agent adopts the other’s goal, each goal is conditional on the belief that the other has that goal. If one were to revise this belief, one would not have the adopted goal. As a consequence, one could not rationally intend that we J. Bratman, on the other hand, postulates that each agent has an additional intention that the joint action go in part by way of the relevant intention of each of the participants. This semantic strategy is critically assessed below.
My reply to Velleman’s objection is close in spirit to the one offered by Bratman (1999) himself (p. 154). Highlighting the role of instrumental goal adoption, however, has several advantages. In order to rebut Velleman’s objection, Bratman assumes a ‘kind soul’ condition. According to Bratman, you can individually form an intention to do a joint action, on the assumption that the other is ‘kind soul’. That is, when the other fellow recognizes your intention that we J, he will come to have a corresponding intention that we J. This implies that knowledge of your intention that we J is a reason for the other to form a similar intention when he has altruistic motives (the ‘kindness’ of the soul). This assumption, however, is both not necessary and not sufficient. It is not necessary because it is evident that we can share intentions also for instrumental reasons (the joint option is in the self-interest of both and we know it). It is not sufficient because it does not discriminate cases in which an agent is completely self-centred and ignores the other in pursuing the joint action, provided that the other is altruistic. Egocentricity in the pursuit of a joint action is not acceptable when one is collaborating. See below section for a defence of this claim.
A strategy profile is a Nash equilibrium if given what the other can do, the best response of one agent is the same response the other would choose adopting identical reasoning towards him or her. For the limited aims of this paper, it is enough to consider only Nash equilibria in pure strategies. For the distinction between Nash equilibrium in pure and mixed strategies, see Osborne and Rubinstein (1994).
The fact that one equilibrium is Pareto superior means that at least one agent is better off in that outcome, while the other agent scores at least as good as in the other equilibrium.
This intuitive result has also been experimentally verified; see Bardsley et al. (2010).
In the revealed preference interpretation, preferences and utilities are considered as descriptive concepts of what an agent would do when facing certain decision problems. In this view, these constructs are not used to explain a choice or to refer to what causes an agent to act in a certain way. For a different interpretation of preferences and utility, see the discussion in Sugden (1991).
Binmore names this weight the ‘social index’ of the agent.
Frith and de Vignemont (2005) indeed distinguish between two attitudes towards the self: egocentric representations of the self that derive from direct knowledge attached to the self in the first-person perspective and allocentric representations of the self that derive from detached knowledge of the person one happens to be as if one was looking at oneself from a third-person perspective (p. 725). Here I am considering only the special case of personal goals that can be either egocentrically or allocentrically represented.
Thus, instead of the expression ‘empathetic’ preferences and ‘empathetic’ utility function from now on I will use the expression ‘allocentric’ preferences and ‘allocentric’ utility function. Despite the terminological difference, I am referring to the same phenomenon discussed in the previous section.
See Chapter 7 of Osborne and Rubinstein (1994) for an introduction to bargaining games.
This process works only if we assume that the agents use the same standard for interpersonal comparison of utility. In the context of an egalitarian joint action and assuming that both agents bring the same talent and effort to the joint project, I have suggested before that this implies that both agents weight their reciprocal utilities equally (the weight is 1:1) in their allocentric utility functions.
However, in more complex situations in which a level of conflict between the personal preferences is introduced, the same mechanism can ease coordination on some form of compromise; see Binmore (2005) for an extended discussion of these more interesting situations.
In a recent contribution on these issues, Sugden has sketched a different account of team reasoning that appeals to intuitions coming from cooperative game theory. The agents that engage in team reasoning are taken to choose the profile of actions that correspond to the one they would agree on if their agreement were enforceable. This new approach is very similar in spirit to the one defended here; see Sugden (2011).
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the International Conference on Reciprocity: Theories and Facts (February 2007) and at the Workshop on Michael Bratman and the Structure of Agency (University of Berne, September 2007). This paper has enormously benefited from numerous discussions in particular with: Giacomo Bonanno, Michael Bratman, Luigino Bruni, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Herbert Gintis, Reto Givel, Natalie Gold, Davide Grossi, Emiliano Lorini, Maria Miceli, Elisabeth Pacherie, Fabio Paglieri, Robert Sugden and two anonymous reviewers.
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Tummolini, L. Making our ends meet: shared intention, goal adoption and the third-person perspective. Phenom Cogn Sci 13, 75–98 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-013-9318-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-013-9318-y