Michael E. Bratman (2014), Oxford University Press, New York (ISBN 9780199897933) — DOI-10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199897933.001.0001
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 developed form of Bratman’s
account. The account’s first statement is “Shared Cooperative Activity”
(LIT-471).
Unavailable because no lawful full text of the book was reachable, so it
is not read and no NOTE is filed.
Contents (chapter titles and pages from Crossref):
- 1 Sociality and Planning Agency (3–39)
- 2 Building Blocks, Part 1 (40–59)
- 3 Building Blocks, Part 2 (60–84)
- 4 A Construction of Modest Sociality (85–106)
- 5 Modest Sociality and Mutual Obligation (107–120)
- 6 Group Agents without Group Subjects (121–131)
- 7 Shared Deliberation, Common Ground (132–150)
- 8 Conclusion (151–158)
Chapter 5 is why ethics is tagged: it concerns mutual obligation.
What the author’s précis says (JSO 1(1): 1–5, read in full):
- The aim. The planning structures central to an individual’s cross-temporal agency “are also at the core of these important forms of sociality”. The book seeks sufficient conditions for shared intentional activity and leaves open whether they are necessary.
- The construction. You and I share an intention to J when:
- each intends that we J;
- each intends that we J by way of the intentions of each, mutual responsiveness, and meshing subplans;
- each believes the intentions in 1 are persistence-interdependent and will, if they persist, lead to our J-ing;
- the intentions in 1 are persistence-interdependent;
- all this is common knowledge. This requires rejecting the “own-action condition”, so that I can intend that we act.
- The norms. Individual planning norms (consistency, agglomeration, means–end coherence, stability) induce social counterparts. That is why each participant is under rational pressure to coordinate, help and mesh.
- Against Gilbert and Searle. The précis names them as appealing to “basic new elements over and above those involved in individual intentional agency”. Bratman’s approach “is reductive in spirit”. Persistence interdependence “may, but need not, be based on relevant mutual moral obligations”. A shared intention “need not involve a group subject who intends to J”.
- Shared deliberation. Shared policies about the weights given to reasons form a “common ground” that goes beyond common knowledge. They can hold where the participants’ evaluative judgments and reasons differ.
Neighbours.
- The rivals filed the same day: Gilbert (LIT-477), Searle (LIT-490) and Tuomela & Miller (LIT-476). The précis does not mention Tuomela.
- Group agency. Chapter 6’s title, “Group Agents without Group Subjects”, stakes out a position between List & Pettit’s corporate agents “over and above” their members (LIT-391) and denying group agency altogether. Whether a group can be an agent without being a subject is close to the question THEORY-043 asks about group minds. What the chapter argues is unknown from what was seen.
- Bratman’s planning theory of individual agency appears in the record only second-hand, in the autonomy entries (LIT-296, NOTE-267; LIT-297, NOTE-266). This book is where it is extended to groups.
- Tomasello (LIT-125, NOTE-185). Bratman’s commentary there, as NOTE-185 reads it, argues that obligation may come from the “web of assurances”. That matches the précis: mutual obligation may support a shared intention but is not built into it.
No instruction for machine-learning practice is visible in what was seen, so nothing here points to the Anthology of the SOTA.
What a reading should check.
- Chapter 5: whether mutual obligation is shown to be optional for shared intention, or only for the construction’s sufficiency.
- Chapter 6: what “group agents without group subjects” are, and whether the account makes room for a corporate agent of List & Pettit’s kind.
- Whether the “out in the open” condition, which the précis flags as a possible exception, really goes beyond the planning theory’s resources.