Abstract
When people act jointly, their mind is usually on their shared goal rather than on each other. It seems clear, however, that any intention to participate in a shared intentional activity involves some “background sense” of the other participants as participating, or intending to participate. This chapter addresses the question of the nature and kind of the attitude in question. It is argued against a number of received accounts that it is a special kind of interpersonal trust that combines cognitive and normative elements in a particular way.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
An important exception is Kirk Ludwig (1992).
- 2.
I am grateful to Andrew Ortony for pointing this out to me.
- 3.
A can try diffidently only in the absence of certainty that he will not try to j (it is possible to try confidently to try diffidently, but it is not possible to try diffidently to try diffidently, yet it is possible to try diffidently to try confidently to try diffidently, and so on for higher-order tryings).
- 4.
“It is a rational requirement that if I rely on you to do X, I lack the belief that you will fail to do it. In other words, what I rely on, if I am rational, has to be consistent with my beliefs” (Alonso 2008, 215).
- 5.
One might be tempted to object that Charlie’s obligation to do his part is contingent on Lucy’s willingness to do hers, so that given the fact that there is no reason to assume that Lucy will do her part, there is no reason for Charlie to (intend to) do his. But this ignores that the agreement creates a joint intention, which is the plural subject’s, not the participating individuals’ (Gilbert 1989).
- 6.
It is obvious that in many cases, the immediate object of normative expectations is an object, or state of affairs, that is not a person. For example, a hotel guest will normatively expect his room to be tidied up when he or she returns home from a day of sightseeing. The ultimate object of his or her expectation, however, is not the room but the hotel personnel, which is revealed by the fact that when his or her expectation is not met, his or her reactive attitude (anger) will be directed at the hotel manager rather than at the room.
- 7.
This may be criticized as bootstrap**. I am not sure that this charge should be avoided at all costs, because I am not convinced that reasons cannot be created, but only discovered (perhaps it is even true that ultimately, any reason has to be created). If this should turn out to be mistaken, however, an alternative would be to appeal to the value of constancy, which may be argued for pragmatically (as it increases the range of our possible goals significantly).
- 8.
In the last round of the Football Game, published in the year before Charles Schulz’ death, Lucy is called home by her mother, and she instructs Linus to take over for her.
- 9.
I am very grateful indeed to Herlinde Pauer-Studer for bringing this issue up in discussion.
References
Adams, Frederick. 1995. Trying: You’ve got to believe. Journal of Philosophical Research XX: 549–561.
Alonso, Facundo M. 2008. Reliance and intending the joint activity. In Concepts of sharedness, ed. Schmid Hans Bernhard, Psarros Nikos, and Schulte-Ostermann Katinka, 211–223. Ontos: Frankfurt a. M.
Baier, Annette C. 1970. Act and intent. Journal of Philosophy 67: 648–658.
Bandura, Alfred. 1997. Self-efficacy. The exercise of control. New York: WH Freeman.
Bratman, Michael E. 1999. Faces of intention. Selected essays on intention and agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davidson, David. [1978] 2001. Intending. In essays on actions and events, 83–103. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gilbert, Margaret. 1989. On social facts. London: Routledge.
Harman, Gilbert. 1986. Change in view. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hume, David. [1739/40] 2000. In A treatise of human nature, ed. D.F. Norton and M.J. Norton. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, Karen. 1996. Trust as an affective attitude. Ethics 107(1): 4–25.
Kavka, Gregory. 1983. The toxin puzzle. Analysis 43(1): 33–36.
List, Christian, and Philip Pettit. 2011. Group agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ludwig, Kirk. 1992. Impossible doings. Philosophical Studies 65: 257–281.
Pettit, Philip. 2004. Trust, reliance, and the internet. Analyse & Kritik 26: 108–121.
Searle, John R. 1990. Collective intentions and actions. In Intentions in communication, ed. P. Cohen, J. Morgan, and M. Pollack, 401–415. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Searle, John R. 1998. Mind, language, and society. Philosophy in the real world. New York: Basic Books.
Searle, John R. 2010. Making the social world: The structure of human civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tuomela, Raimo. 2007. The philosophy of sociality. The shared point of view. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Additional information
I am grateful to the audiences to which I presented previous versions of this chapter, in particular to Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Martin Kusch, Andrew Ortony, Raimo Tuomela, Carol Rovane, Michael Schmitz, Beatrice Kobow, Philip Pettit, David Schweikard, and to Alessandro Salice.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schmid, H.B. (2013). Trying to Act Together. In: Schmitz, M., Kobow, B., Schmid, H. (eds) The Background of Social Reality. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5600-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5600-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5599-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-5600-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)