Margaret Gilbert (1990), Midwest Studies in Philosophy 15(1): 1–14 — DOI-10.1111/j.1475-4975.1990.tb00202.x
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-02 at the owner’s request, under the topic
social-ontology that ADR-017 added, as the short statement of Gilbert’s
plural-subject account. Whether this paper already states it in terms of
joint commitment, the term in which NOTE-185 reports Gilbert’s
commentary on Tomasello, is unverified. The book-length version is On Social Facts
(LIT-492).
Unfetched because no lawful full text could be fetched, so it is not
read and no NOTE is filed. The summary above follows the paper’s
standard abstract as it appears in search indexes. It is unverified
against the text.
What the record already holds about Gilbert’s view is second-hand, from the reading of Tomasello’s target article and its commentaries (LIT-125, NOTE-185):
- Tomasello uses “joint commitment” without defining it, and Gilbert’s commentary supplies the definition.
- Pettit’s commentary poses a dilemma between a “normatively austere” Bratman-style model of collaboration and a “normatively loaded” Gilbert-style one. Tomasello’s reply offers a graded path between the two, which NOTE-185 rates weak (C8).
That is the disagreement this paper is the classic source for. On Gilbert’s side, obligations and entitlements are part of what acting together is. On Bratman’s side (LIT-471, LIT-488), they may accompany it but are not constitutive. Bratman’s 2014 précis says so directly: the interdependence of the participants’ intentions “may, but need not, be based on relevant mutual moral obligations”, and it names Gilbert, with Searle (LIT-490), as appealing to “basic new elements over and above those involved in individual intentional agency”.
The paper also bears on the group-agent strand. A plural subject is a joint “we” of the kind Tomasello’s account needs. List’s paper (LIT-401, NOTE-340) separates that kind of joint “we” from the corporate group agent he asks about. So whatever Gilbert shows about plural subjects does not by itself settle whether groups are agents or minds (THEORY-043).
No instruction for machine-learning practice is known, so nothing here points to the Anthology of the SOTA.
What a reading should check.
- The two rejected analyses from shared personal goals, and exactly why each fails to deliver the walkers’ rights and obligations.
- Whether joint commitment is defined here or only introduced, and whether it can be rescinded unilaterally.
- How the paper moves from walking together to the concept of a social group.