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\title {Joint Action \\ Lecture 08}
 
\maketitle
 

Lecture 08

Joint Action

\def \ititle {Lecture 08}
\def \isubtitle {Joint Action}
\begin{center}
{\Large
\textbf{\ititle}: \isubtitle
}
 
\iemail %
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Question

What distinguishes genuine joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions?

Diagnosis

Too reflective!

Grounded merely on intuitive contrasts!

I think our problems have at least two sources.
In the last lecture, I suggested that we can deal with the problem that they are too reflective by invoking the notion of parallel planning, which allows us to revised the Simple View.
In this lecture I want to consider the other source of our problems: the fact that our approach is grounded on merely intuitive constrats ...

Thing to Be Explained

Candidate Explanation

Dimming of a star.

Conjecture about a planet.

Object-tracking abilities in infants.

Conjecture about innate knowledge.

Abilities to act together.

Conjecture about shared intention.

Key issue: how to characterise the abilities to be explained by the theory?
Bratman’s book is state of the art. How does he introduce the thing to be explained? By giving examples ...

walking together

singing a duet together

painting a house together

having a conversation together

making dinner together

building a hut together

planting a garden together

Why is merely giving examples problematic? Isn’t this a perfectly good way to identify the thing to be explained?
One problem is that the examples do not give us a sense of how to go on. There are three key cases in which people here are likely to disagree. Are these further cases genuine joint actions?

? Walking together in the Tarantino sense ? [non-coercion]

In walking together in the Tarantino sense, the guns sustain your intention that we, you and I, walk together. (So this is not a case in which the guns replace the intentions.) [Btw, I'm not sure it’s right that parallel planning would be irrational in this case. After all, the guns provide near-certainty about our intentions.]

? Blocking the aisle ? [awareness]

? Beatrice & Baldric ? [cooperation]

? Noncommittal walking together ? [commitment]

And these cases are not merely irrelevant edge-cases. They are related to three key questions we might ask about joint action.
The first question is: Is coercion compatible with joint action?
Second, Does participating in joint action entail being aware that you are doing so?
Third, Are all joint actions cooperative actions?
Let me mention one further example which arises from the conflict between Gilbert and Bratman.
Fourth, Do participants in joint actions necessarily have contralateral commitments to each other to participate in this joint action?
BratmanSimple View Revised
Is coercion compatible with joint action?yesyes
Does participating in joint action entail being aware that you are doing so?yes[ish]

Are all joint actions cooperative actions?

noyes
Are contralateral commitments necessary for joint action?nono
So here are four questions about joint action that it seems we cannot answer if what anchors discussion is merely examples and intuitions.
(Of course someone might reply that careful use of intuitions would be enable us to answer some or all of these questions. There is a hint that this is Bratman’s own view in remarks on tricky cases involving coercion such as, ‘Though what we are doing seems ill-described as a cooperative activity, it may be plausible to describe it as a shared intentional activity’ \citep[p.~38]{bratman:2014_book}.)
Why does this matter? Suppose we are trying to construct a theory of joint action.
[1] Any such theory will, if it is adequate, provide answers to these questions. For example, Bratman’s theory implies that non-coercion, cooperation and commitment are not required for joint action [or what he calls ‘shared intentional activity’] whereas awareness is.
[2] How can we tell whether these answers are correct? We might try appealing to features of the theory itself, such as its internal coherence or the absence of a competing theory.
But there are competing, internally coherent, theories which provide different answers.
For example, as we will see, the Simple View Revised implies that cooperation but not non-coercion is required for joint action, and it imposes a complex condition on awareness.
[2b] Alternatively we might try appealing to metatheoretical considerations like Bratman’s ‘Continuity Thesis’. Again, the obstacle to doing this is that we can construct accounts which have similar metatheoretical properties but give different answer to the four questions.
[We will consider this point more deeply when we return to Bratman vs Gilbert.]
[3] So it seems that to determine whether a theory is correct we need to know whether it correctly answers the four questions about non-coercion, awareness, cooperation and commitment. And to know this, it seems that we cannot rely on internal features of the theory, nor on metatheoretical considerations
[4] Apparently, then, our pre-theoretical fix on the things to be explained should enable us to be able to answer these questions.
Unless we can answer these three questions, it seems to me that we do not have a sufficient grip on joint action--that is, on the thing to be explained.
tldr;

Examples and contrast cases
are just not enough
to ground a theory of joint action.

Some people will be yawning. Surely they aren’t enough to ground a theory of anything! This is just the wrong way to do philosophy!
But look around at what’s published. Have you seen anyone who acknowledges this and explicitly provides an alternative basis for the theory?
So let me take a moment to ask you, Do you agree?
 

Searle vs Bratman on Cooperation

 
\section{Searle vs Bratman on Cooperation}
 
\section{Searle vs Bratman on Cooperation}
According to Searle, ‘The notion of a we-intention [shared intention] ... implies the notion of cooperation’ (1990, p. 95). Could this be the basis for an objection to Bratman’s theory of shared agency?

‘One can have a goal in the knowledge that others also have the same goal,
and one can have beliefs and even mutual beliefs about the goal that is shared by the members of a group,
without there being necessarily any cooperation among the members or any intention to cooperate’

\citep[p.~95]{Searle:1990em}

Searle, 1990 p. 95

What is shared intention?

Functional characterisation:

shared intention serves to (a) coordinate activities,
(b) coordinate planning, and
(c) structure bargaining

Constraint:

Inferential integration... and normative integration (e.g. agglomeration)

Substantial account:

We have a shared intention that we J if

‘1. (a) I intend that we J and (b) you intend that we J

‘2. I intend that we J in accordance with and because of la, lb, and meshing subplans of la and lb; you intend [likewise] …

‘3. 1 and 2 are common knowledge between us’

(Bratman 1993: View 4)

1. ‘The notion of a we-intention [shared intention]
... implies the notion of cooperation’

\citep[p.~95]{Searle:1990em}

Searle (1990, p. 95)

[explain ‘we-intention’]
Why is this relevant. Because ...

2. Meeting Bratman’s proposed sufficient conditions for shared intention does not imply that youractions will be cooperative.

Bratman says this explicitly.

Therefore:

3. Bratman’s conditions are not in fact sufficient.

There are just two problems with this argument
First problem: how do we know this is true?
Second problem: what is it for our actions to be cooperative? (Bratman asserts the second premise, but does not provide justification ‘This involves a bit of linguistic leg­islation’.)

‘This involves a bit of linguistic leg­islation’

\citep[p.~38]{bratman:2014_book}

Bratman, 2015 p. 38

So Bratman thinks that the issue about cooperation is merely one on which we can do ‘linguistic leg­islation’.
Perhaps closer attention to the notion of cooperation would be rewarding ...
BratmanSimple View Revised
Is coercion compatible with joint action?yesyes
Does participating in joint action entail being aware that you are doing so?yes[ish]

Are all joint actions cooperative actions?

noyes
Are contralateral commitments necessary for joint action?nono

Examples and contrast cases
are just not enough
to ground a theory of joint action.

Examples and contrast cases
are just not enough
to ground a theory of joint action.

How can we ground
a theory of joint action?

How to ground a theory of joint action?

Step 1: identify features ...

- collective goals

- coordination

- cooperation

- contralateral commitments

- experience

Step 2: ... which generate how questions.

The aim of the theory is then to answer the how questions
E.g., wrt collective goals the question is, In virtue of what could two or more agents’ actions have a collective goal. Importantly, the collective goal does not involve any psychological mechanism.
 

Collective Goals

 
\section{Collective Goals}
 
\section{Collective Goals}
An outcome is a collective goal of two or more actions involving multiple agents just if the actions are directed to this goal and this is not, or not just, a matter of each action being individually directed to that goal.

goal != intention

What is the relation between a purposive action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?

light
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smoke
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open
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pour
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tilt
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soak
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scare
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freak out
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fill
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intention or motor representation
or ???
coordinates
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specifies
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As this illustrates, some actions involving are purposive in the sense that
among all their actual and possible consequences,
there are outcomes to which they are directed
and the actions are collectively directed to this outcome
so it is not just a matter of each individual action being directed to this outcome.
In such cases we can say that the actions are clearly purposive.
Concerning any such actions, we can ask What is the relation between a purposive action and the outcome or outcomes to which it is directed?
The standard answer to this question involves intention.
An intention (1) specifies an outcome,
(2) coordinates the one or several activities which comprise the action;
and (3) coordinate these activities in a way that would normally facilitate the outcome’s occurrence.
What binds particular component actions together into larger purposive actions? It is the fact that these actions are all parts of plans involving a single intention. What singles out an actual or possible outcome as one to which the component actions are collectively directed? It is the fact that this outcome is represented by the intention.
So the intention is what binds component actions together into purposive actions and links the action taken as a whole to the outcomes to which they are directed.
But is intention the only thing that can link actions to outcomes? I will suggest that motor representations can likewise perform this role.

goal != intention

Let me first explain something about this notion of a collective goal ...
Ayesha takes a glass and holds it up while Beatrice pours prosecco; unfortunately the prosecco misses the glass and soak Zachs’s trousers.
Here are two sentences, both true:

The tiny drops fell from the bottle.

- distributive

The tiny drops soaked Zach’s trousers.

- collective

The first sentence is naturally read *distributively*; that is, as specifying something that each drop did individually. Perhaps first drop one fell, then another fell.
But the second sentence is naturally read *collectively*. No one drop soaked Zach’s trousers; rather the soaking was something that the drops accomplised together.
If the sentence is true on this reading, the tiny drops' soaking Zach’s trousers is not a matter of each drop soaking Zach’s trousers.
Now consider an example involving actions and their outcomes:

Their thoughtless actions soaked Zach’s trousers. [causal]

- ambiguous

This sentence can be read in two ways, distributively or collectively. We can imagine that we are talking about a sequence of actions done over a period of time, each of which soaked Zach’s trousers. In this case the outcome, soaking Zach’s trousers, is an outcome of each action.
Alternatively we can imagine several actions which have this outcome collectively---as in our illustration where Ayesha holds a glass while Beatrice pours. In this case the outcome, soaking Zach’s trousers, is not necessarily an outcome of any of the individual actions but it is an outcome of all of them taken together. That is, it is a collective outcome.
(Here I'm ignoring complications associated with the possibility that some of the actions collectively soaked Zach’s trousers while others did so distributively.)
Note that there is a genuine ambiguity here. To see this, ask yourself how many times Zach’s trousers were soaked. On the distributive reading they were soaked at least as many times as there are actions. On the collective reading they were not necessarily soaked more than once. (On the distributive reading there are several outcomes of the same type and each action has a different token outcome of this type; on the collective reading there is a single token outcome which is the outcome of two or more actions.)
Conclusion so far: two or more actions involving multiple agents can have outcomes distributively or collectively. This is not just a matter of words; there is a difference in the relation between the actions and the outcome.
Now consider one last sentence:

The goal of their actions was to fill Zach’s glass. [teleological]

Whereas the previous sentence was causal, and so concened an actual outcome of some actions, this sentence is teleological, and so concerns an outcome to which actions are directed.

- also ambiguous

Like the previous sentence, this sentence has both distributive and collective readings. On the distributive reading, each of their actions was directed to an outcome, namely soaking Zach’s trousers. So there were as many attempts on his trousers as there are actions. On the collective reading, by contrast, it is not necessary that any of the actions considered individually was directed to this outcome; rather the actions were collectively directed to this outcome.
Conclusion so far: two or more actions involving multiple agents can be collectively directed to an outcome.
Where two or more actions are collectively directed to an outcome, we will say that this outcome is a *collective goal* of the actions. Note two things. First, this definition involves no assumptions about the intentions or other mental states of the agents. Relatedly, it is the actions rather than the agents which have a collective goal. Second, a collective goal is just an actual or possible outcome of an action.
An outcome is a \emph{collective goal} of two or more actions involving multiple agents if it is an outcome to which those actions are collectively directed.
Can we simply define joint action in terms of collective goals? Not usefully ...

Joint action:

An event with two or more agents where the actions have a collective goal.

Is this good enough? I think it isn’t ...
For example, when two agents between them lift a heavy block by means of each agent pulling on either end of a rope connected to the block via a system of pulleys, their pullings count as coordinated just because the rope relates the force each exerts on the block to the force exerted by the other.
In this case, the agents' activities are coordinated by a mechanism in their environment, the rope, and not necessarily by any psychological mechanism.
To make a conjecture based on work with bees and ants, in some cases ...
the coordination needed for a collective goal may even be supplied by behavioural patterns \citep{seeley2010honeybee} and pheromonal signals \citep[pp.\ 178-83, 206-21]{hoelldobler2009superorganism}.
So the definition seems inadequate. Either it includes things that are not joint actions at all, or else it captures a notion of joint action that is broader than the core cases of shared agency that have been of primary interest to philosophers.
And, to return to the point about cooperation, the bare idea that our actions have a collective goal implies nothing about cooperation.
This is not to say that collective goals never involve psychological states.
In fact, one way for several actions to have a collective goal is for their agents to be acting on a shared intention;
a shared intention supplies the required coordination.
We’ve been considering the idea that we can extend our defintion of joint to include the notion of a collective goal ... On our current working definition, a joint action is an event with two or more agents where the actions have a collective goal.

[Too broad!]

The definition is still too broad. To make progress we need to think not just about collective goals but about the different kinds of thing in virtue of which some actions can have a collective goal ...

Better approach:

In virtue of what could two or more agents’ actions have a collective goal?

objection

Is there a collective interpretation
of ‘The goal of their actions was to fill Zach’s glass’?

Ludwig (personal communication) says not. A quick look at his account of plural prediction suggests that, as he says, there is no such interpretation. But could that be a defect of his account?

If

there is a single outcome, G, such that

(a) Our actions are coordinated; and

(b) coordination of this type would normally increase the probability that G occurs.

then

there is an outcome to which our actions are directed where this is not, or not only, a matter of each action being directed to that outcome,

i.e.

our actions have a collective goal.

A collective goal (df):

an outcome to which two or more agents’ actions are directed

where

this is not, or not only,

a matter of each action being directed to that outcome.

What distinguishes genuine joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions?

In virtue of what could two or more agents’ actions have a collective goal?

We replace the old question about distinguishing joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions with a set of questions about features associated with joint action, including this one.

Separate projects:

Characterise the thing to be explained!

Identify the thing(s) which explain(s) it!

How to ground a theory of joint action?

Step 1: identify features ...

- collective goals

- coordination

- cooperation

- contralateral commitments

- experience

Step 2: ... which generate how questions.

 

Cooperation

 
\section{Cooperation}
 
\section{Cooperation}
There are several notions of cooperation. One is trade-off cooperation. Although widely ignored, trade-off cooperation matters in the sense that achieving it is a condition on optimally distributing resources. An aim for an account of joint action is therefore to explain in virtue of what two or more agents’ actions can be trade-off cooperative.
My larger aim is to answer a simple question: What enables humans to cooperate?
What enables humans to cooperate?

What enables humans to cooperate?

But before we can answer this question, we first need to fix ideas about cooperative action.
\section{Two Standard Notions of Cooperation}

1

a ‘cooperator is someone who pays a cost, c, for another individual to receive a benefit, b’
(Nowak 2006, p. 1560).

\citep[p.~1560]{nowak:2006_five}

2

‘[b]y cooperation we mean engaging with others in a mutually beneficial activity’ (Bowles & Gintis 2011, p. 2)

\citep[p.~2]{bowles:2011_cooperative}

This second notion of cooperation has been elaborated by McMahon and others.
I’m tempted to think that the former is merely helping rather than cooperation, but this is not the consensus in the literature. For example, Michael Tomasello explicitly recognises both definitions. In his view they capture ‘two basic forms’ of cooperation

‘Cooperation appears in nature in two basic forms’ (Tomasello)

\citep{tomasello:2016_natural}

3

\section{Philosophers’ Notions of Cooperation}
Actions are cooperative when appropriately related to a shared intention (and no deception nor coercion)
(~Bratman, 1992; 2015).
\citep{Bratman:1992mi,bratman:2014_book}

Roughly Bratman’s strategy has been followed by a variety of philosophers. As Cedric Paternotte notes,

‘A definition of cooperation ... typically [has this] structure: a set of individual intentions [with] certain origins and ... certain relations, ... is common knowledge’
(Paternotte 2014, p. 47)

\citep[p.~47]{paternotte:2014_minimal}

There’s an important general difference between the left hand side (definitions 1-2) and the right hand side.
Left hand side: agnostic about mechanisms. May not even involve anything psychological at all. This allow us to separating the task of characterising the thing to be explained (cooperative action) from the task of identifying psychological structures which may explain it (such as a certain structure of intentions and knowledge, say).
Right hand side: cooperation is not explicitly characterised except in terms of psychological structures. Bratman does not separate the thing to be explained (cooperative action) from the task of identifying psychological structures which may explain it (such as a certain structure of intentions and knowledge, say). Instead he introduces shared cooperative activity with examples (see, for example, Bratman 1992, p. 327) and then characterises it by stating structures of intention and knowledge sufficient to realise it. Bratman’s approach is shared by some who offer competing characterisations of cooperation (for example, see Paternotte 2014; Pacherie 2013). In each case, no notion of cooperation is explicitly characterised except by reference to psychological structures involving intention and knowledge.

What is it for some actions to be cooperative?

It is for them to be appropriately related to shared intentions
(in the absence of deception, coercion ...).

What enables humans to cooperate?

Their capacities to form, and to act on, shared intentions.

The approach Bratman and other philosophers take involves appealing to the same psychological structure twice. If we ask, ‘What is it for actions to be cooperative?’, the answer is given in terms of shared intention, a particular kind of psychological structure. And if we ask, ‘What enables humans to cooperate?’, the answer is again given in terms of shared intention.
Appeal to the same psychological structure in explaining both what it is for actions to be cooperative and in virtue of what they could be cooperative seems unsatisfactory. If another philosopher identifies shared intention with a slightly different psychological structure (or family of these), is she providing a compatible characterisation of a different notion of cooperation or a competing characterisation of the same notion of cooperation? There appears to be no way to answer this question on the approach taken by Bratman and other philosophers. And this means that there is no way, in advance of accepting the proposed theory about shared intention, to understand which notion of cooperation the theory is supposed to capture.
So if I ask, What is the theory a theory of? it seems that I can only answer this question by accepting the theory.
Maybe there is nothing wrong with this approach, and maybe it is the best we can do. But I think we should at least attempt to separate the questions and characterise the thing to be explained in terms which do not already involve the thing which explains it.
What about the other definitions? I think there is an important notion of cooperation which neither definition captures. To explain why, let me introduce you to this couple who are both economists. They just got married ...
\section{Another Notion of Cooperation}
This couple are both economists. While married, they do various things together. They buy and sell a house, and they nurture and educate their children. When deciding whether and how to do something, each considers only the collective costs of their actions. Neither is at all concerned with how costly her own, or the other’s, actions would be. They are simply concerned to minimise the collective costs involved in achieving various goals.
Of course, this is not the same thing as paying a cost for the other to benefit. On the contrary, if one of them can reduce the overall costs involved in their actions but minimising the effort she herself puts in, thereby requiring the other to do all the hard work, she will readily do so.
Unfortunately, one day they get divorced. After their divorce, their attitudes change. Now each is concerned only to minimise her own costs in acting. When deciding whether and how to do something, neither is at all concerned with the collective costs or what it costs the other. They each attempt only to minimise their own costs in acting.
When one of them can save herself a trivial amount of effort, she will do so even if it means pushing the other right to her limits.
Even after divorce, the couple do do things together, and they pursue mutually beneficial activities when these maximise individual gains. After all, they remain bound together by various legal, moral and prudential obligations. And they recognise that engaging in mutually beneficial activities will often reduce the costs for them involved in acting. They are not at all bitter or vindictive. They simply do not care about each other’s costs, only their own. They’re true economists.
while marriedafter divorce
[df. 1] pay a cost for the other to benefit?
[df. 2] engage in mutually beneficial activity?
So (1) neither definition distinguishes between the actions of the economist couple before and after their divorce, but (2) their actions while married are, I think, clearly more cooperative than their actions after their divorce.
This indicates that we need a further notion of cooperation.

my costs

your costs

our costs

Performing actions involves costs. Typical costs include giving time, putting in effort, taking risks and paying money. There are three distinct things you might care about: my costs, your costs or our costs.
You can care about any one of these without caring about the other.
To a first approximation, I think our actions are cooperative to the extent that we each select with a view to minimising our collective costs.

Three ways of engaging in the
mutually beneficial activity
of
passing a book between us:

I simply grasp it as comfortably as I can.

I grip it so as to reduce the overall awkwardness of our actions.

I grip it so as to make your grip least awkward.

Instances of the type of contrast we have been considering can be found at every scale, from actions comprising most of a life to a momentary interaction. For a small-scale contrast, imagine two people moving a sequence of bulky objects from a shelf to a table.
There are three ways in which we might do this.
For each object, the first person takes it from the shelf and passes it to the second person, who places it on the table \citep[here we borrow from a discussion by][]{meyer:2013_higher-order}. [Be careful: Meyer et al don’t consider overall awkwardness; it’s about reducing the awkwardness of a future event (end-state comfort effect).] There are two ways the first person could grip each object, one more awkward than the other. The more awkward grip results in less awkward actions overall. Sometimes the first agent selects this more awkward grip in part because it results in less awkward actions overall. On other occasions, the first person selects a grip merely because it results in less awkward actions for herself. It seems her actions are more cooperative when she minimises the overall awkwardness of both of their actions than when she minimises the awkwardness of her own actions only. But this contrast in cooperativeness cannot straightforwardly be captured by either standard notion of cooperation. Selecting a more awkward grip does benefit the other, but (we stipulate) the grip is selected to reduce the overall awkwardness of the actions rather than to benefit any individual agent. And of course in moving an object together, the agents are always performing actions which bring about a mutual benefit since (by stipulation) both partners want the object to be on the table.

1

a ‘cooperator is someone who pays a cost, c, for another individual to receive a benefit, b’
(Nowak 2006, p. 1560).

2

‘[b]y cooperation we mean engaging with others in a mutually beneficial activity’ (Bowles & Gintis 2011, p. 2)

‘Cooperation appears in nature in two basic forms’ (Tomasello)

3

Actions are cooperative when they are appropriately related to a shared intention and some other conditions are met
(~Bratman, 1992; 2015).

‘A definition of cooperation ... typically [has this] structure: a set of individual intentions [with] certain origins and ... certain relations, ... is common knowledge’
(Paternotte 2014, p. 47)

These three contrast cases each point to the possibility that we need a further notion of cooperation. We do not take the contrasts to provide a decisive argument for this conclusion, of course. After all, if an opponent were to insist that the contrasts do not concern cooperation at all, we know of no argument to convince her otherwise. Despite this limit, reflection on the contrast cases does at least motivate considering a further notion of cooperation. Ultimately, the interest of this further notion of cooperation will not rest entirely on the contrasts but also on its wider usefulness.
Demandingness and well-suitedness \\ require trade-offs \\ across multiple actions, \\ not all of which need be yours.

What is it for some actions to be cooperative?

Demandingness and well-suitedness

The contrasts considered in the previous section motivate introducing a third notion of cooperation. To this end, let us distinguish two dimensions on which purposive actions can be evaluated. One dimension concerns how well suited the actions are to bringing about the goal or goals to which they are directed. In simple cases we can think of this as the probability that the goal will obtain given that the actions occur. A second dimension on which purposive actions can be evaluated concerns how demanding the actions are: the effort they require, the risks of harm to you they involve, the collateral damage they incur, and how unpleasant or wrong they are.

require trade-offs

across multiple actions,

not all of which need be yours.

Acting purposively involves making trade-offs between demandingness and well-suitedness. When selecting among possible means to a goal, you often have to balance how well suited the means is against how demanding it is. This balancing is what you are doing in deciding how far to walk towards the can before attempting to throw the trash into it.
Determining a trade-off for one action may constrain which trade-offs are available for other actions. For this reason, balancing well suitedness against demandingness often requires taking into account more than one action. When entirely occupied with getting trash into the can, you might go right up to it. But when simultaneously responsible for controlling some inquisitive toddlers, a different trade-off may be appropriate. Often what matters is selecting a pattern of trade-offs with a good overall balance of demandingness and well-suitedness rather than achieving the best trade-off for any individual action.
In considering patterns of trade-offs between demandingness and well-suitedness, individuals sometimes include not just their own actions but also those others will perform. For example, in passing a book between us, you might grasp it somewhat awkwardly in order that I can take it in just the way needed to place it. Or, to return to the example I started with, when we pass each other in a narrow corridor, we may each turn our bodies just enough to minimise the overall awkwardness. We are each aiming to achieve a good pattern of trade-offs between demandingness and well-suitedness for all of our actions, yours and mine.

Purposive actions are cooperative to the extent that, for each agent, her performing these actions rather than any other actions depends in part on how good an overall pattern of trade-offs between demandingness and well-suitedness can be achieved for all of the actions.

We can characterise a third notion cooperation by appeal to patterns of trade-offs between demandingness and well-suitedness.
Purposive actions are cooperative to the extent that, for each agent, her performing these actions rather than any other actions depends in part on how good an overall pattern of trade-offs between demandingness and well-suitedness can be achieved for all of the actions.
The more weight agents give to this overall pattern of trade-offs, the more cooperative their actions.
Purposive actions are cooperative to the extent that, for each agent, her performing these actions rather than any alternative actions depends in part on how good an overall pattern of trade-offs between demandingness and well-suitedness can be achieved for all of the actions. The more weight agents give to this overall pattern of trade-offs, the more cooperative their actions.
This notion of cooperation is clearly important insofar as optimally distributing resources in a society requires its members to perform actions which are cooperative in this sense.
Core idea is very simple: minimise overall costs, so neither my costs nor your costs but our costs.
What’s the relation between this notion and the second notion (engaging in mutually beneficial activities)? This notion concerns selection of means; the second notion concerns goals (whether they are collective, or whether their pursuit bring mutual benefits).
What’s the relation between this notion and the third notion of cooperation (the philosophers’)? I think these notions are orthogonal. I also don’t see why the philosophers aren’t talking about coordination only, rather than cooperation.
\section{Motor Representation}
A \emph{goal} is an outcome to which an action is directed.
Motor representations represent goals such as the grasping of an egg or the pressing of a switch. These are outcomes which might, on different occasions, involve very different bodily configurations and joint displacements (see \citealp{rizzolatti_functional_2010} for a selective review).
Motor representations trigger processes which are planning-like insofar as they involve (a) computing means from representations of ends; and (b) satisfying relational constraints on actions.
Why motor representation?
Aside: social ontology needs psychology like ontology needs physics.
So far I’ve argued that we can, and probably should, characterise what it is for actions to be more or less cooperative in a way that doesn’t presuppose anything about the mechanisms which enable agents to cooperate.
We can, and should, separate the thing to be explained from the thing which explains it.
This is just by way of trying to fix ideas about what cooperative action is.
But as I said at the start, The question I really want to answer is, What enables humans to cooperate?

What enables humans to cooperate?

So what does enable humans to cooperate?
Separating the thing to be explained from the thing which explains it allows us to entertain the idea that there may be multiple mechanisms.
And in species such as humans, where cooperation is critical for reproductive success, it seems plausible that multiple, independent mechanisms could underpin cooperation.

In part: a certain interagential structure of motor representation

In what follows I want develop the claim that, in some cases, it is a certain interagential structure of motor representation that enables humans to cooperate.

conclusion

Examples and contrast cases
are just not enough
to ground a theory of joint action.

Question

What distinguishes genuine joint actions from parallel but merely individual actions?

How to ground a theory of joint action?

Step 1: identify features ...

- collective goals

- coordination

- cooperation

- contralateral commitments

- experience

Step 2: ... which generate how questions.

Separate
the thing to be explained
from
the thing that explains it.