Shared agency : a planning theory of acting together / Michael E. Bratman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Sociality and Planning Agency -- 2. Building Blocks, Part One -- 3. Building Blocks, Part Two -- 4. A Construction of Modest Sociality -- 5. Modest Sociality and Mutual Obligation -- 6. Group Agents Without Group Subjects -- 7. Shared Deliberation, Common Ground -- --

1. Sociality and Planning Agency -- 1. Modest sociality and the continuity thesis -- 2. Shared intention, individual intention -- 3. I intend that we J: a first pass -- 4. Individual planning agency: roles and norms -- 5. Individual planning agency: further ideas -- 6. Creature construction -- 7. Social functioning and social rationality -- 8. Constructivism about shared intention and modest sociality -- 9. Continuity, sufficiency, and Ockham's Razor -- 10. Deception, coercion, shared intentional, shared cooperative -- -- 2. Building Blocks, Part One -- 1. I intend that we J, and circularity -- 2. Interlocking and reflexive intentions -- 3. Intended mesh -- 4. Intending, expecting, and a disposition to help -- 5. Out in the open -- -- 3. Building Blocks, Part Two -- 1. I intend that we J, and the own-action condition -- 2. The settle condition, and persistence interdependence -- 3. Persistence interdependence and over-determination -- 4. Three forms of persistence interdependence -- 5. Persistence interdependence, etiology and temporal asymmetry -- 6. Further building blocks -- 7. The connection condition and mutual responsiveness -- 8. Taking stock -- -- 4. A Construction of Modest Sociality -- 1. The basic thesis -- 2. The emergence of modest sociality -- 3. Modest sociality and strategic interaction -- 4. Quasi-Lockean social ties -- 5. Social networks -- 6. Treating as a means? -- 7. Deception and coercion re-visited -- 8. The compressed basic thesis -- 9. Too demanding? -- -- 5. Modest Sociality and Mutual Obligation -- 1. Shared intention, social explanation -- 2. Shared intention, persistence interdependence, and mutual obligation -- 3. Gilbert on joint commitment -- 4. Normativity, sociality, and Ockham's Razor -- -- 6. Group Agents Without Group Subjects -- 1. Group agents and the basic thesis -- 2. Group subjects? -- -- 7. Shared Deliberation, Common Ground -- 1. Shared deliberation and shared intention -- 2. Shared commitments to weights -- 3. Shared policies about weights -- 4. Where the group stands -- 5. Interdependence in policies about weights -- 6. Partiality and depth of shared policies about weights -- 7. Shared policy-structured acceptance -- 8. Shared policies of social rationality -- Conclusion: Interconnected Planning Agents.

"Human beings act together in characteristic ways, and these forms of shared activity matter to us a great deal. Think of friendship and love, singing duets, dancing together, and the joys of conversation. And think about the usefulness of conversation and how we frequently manage to work together to achieve complex goals, from building buildings to putting on plays to establishing important results in the sciences. With Shared Agency, Michael E. Bratman seeks to answer questions about the conceptual, metaphysical and normative foundations of our sociality and to establish a framework for understanding basic forms of sociality. Bratman proposes that a rich account of individual planning agency facilitates the step to these forms of sociality. There is an independent reason - grounded in the diachronic organization of our temporally extended agency - to see planning structures as basic to our individual agency. Once these planning structures are on board, we can expect them to play central roles in our sociality. This planning theory of individual agency highlights distinctive roles and norms of intentions, understood as plan states. In Shared Agency Bratman argues that appeals to these planning structures enable us to provide adequate resources for an account of sufficient conditions for these basic forms of sociality. Shared agency emerges, both functionally and rationally, from structures of interconnected planning agency."--Publisher's website.