Bratman's Account of Shared Intention and Children's Joint Action

Nicolas Lindner

Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf

Overview

1. Bratman’s Account of Shared Intentiona. The Role of Shared Intention

b. Sufficient Conditions for Shared Intention

c. The Common Knowledge Condition

2. Shared Intention, Young Children and Joint Actiona. The Common Knowledge Problem - Tollefsen (2005)

b. Meta-Representational Abilities - Pacherie (2011)

c. SI Presupposes What it Should Explain - Butterfill (2012)

3. Summary and Perspective

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Bratman‘s Account of Shared Intention

• Bratman (Bratman, 1993) proposes a constructivist accountof shared intention

• Shared intention is construed in terms of individual intentionsand attitudes of the participants and their interrelations

• Bratman suggests that shared intention should be understood as “a state of affairs consisting primarily of appropriate attitudes of each individual participant and their interrelations” (Bratman, 1993, p.99).

• Account is functionalist in highlighting the role that sharedintentions play in cooperative activities

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Bratman‘s Account of Shared Intention

• In arguing for his approach to shared intention Bratmanfocuses on non-asymmetric small-scale activities with only a pair of participants

• His examples include:– Painting a house together

– Singing a duet together

– Taking a trip to New York together

• Bratman‘s conception of shared intention follows a two-foldstrategy1. Characterising the role of shared intention

2. Giving a substantial account of / sufficient conditions for sharedintention

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The Role of Shared Intention

• Three interrelated jobs:

1. Help coordinate our intentional actions• E.g. Scrape paint off before, not after, new paint is applied

2. Help coordinate our planning• E.g. Check whether you get the brushes when I plan on getting the paint

3. Structure relevant bargaining• E.g. Bargaining when conflicts about who scrapes and who paints occur

• Doing these jobs is a necessary condition for anyconstruction of SI

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Sufficient Conditions for Shared Intention

We intend to J if and only 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 becauseof 1a, 1b, and meshing subplans of 1a and 1b; you intend that we J in accordance with and because of 1a, 1b, and meshing subplans of 1aand 1b.

3. 1 and 2 are common knowledge between us.

(Bratman, 1993, p. 106)

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Sufficient Conditions for Shared Intention

We intend to J if and only 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 becauseof 1a, 1b, and meshing subplans of 1a and 1b; you intend that we J in accordance with and because of 1a, 1b, and meshing subplans of 1aand 1b.

3. 1 and 2 are common knowledge between us.

(Bratman, 1993, p. 106)

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The Common Knowledge Condition

“Indeed, it seems reasonable to suppose that in shared intention the fact that each has the relevant attitudes is itself out in the open, is public”(Bratman 1993, p. 103)

“It is common knowledge amongst us that p if we each know that p, and both p and the fact that we each know it is out in the open amongst us.”(Bratman 2009a, p. 160)

“In SCA the fact that there is this mutually uncoerced system of intentions will be in the public domain. It will be a matter of common knowledge among the participants. I will know that we have these intentions, you will know that we have these intentions, I will at least be in a position to know that you know this, and so on”(Bratman 1992, p. 335)

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The Common Knowledge Condition

• Fact that each of us has the relevant attitudes is in public, „out in the open“

• System of intentions is in the public domain

• Mutual knowledge of the others‘ intentions plusknowledge of the others‘ knowledge– „I know that you know and you know that I know that you

know..“

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The Cognitive Basis for Common Knowledge

• Ability to form beliefs

• Ability to form beliefs about beliefs

• Mental state attribution

• Recursive mindreading

Robust theory of mind!

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Common Knowledge Problem

• Tollefsen (2005) discusses the „commonknowledge problem“

– Children under the age of 4 lack a robust theory of mind (ToM)

– In particular, they lack an understanding of others‘ beliefs

– Evidence comes from different false-belief tasks (FBT) (change-in-location, unexpected-content & appearance-reality tasks –Wellman et al., 2001 for an overview)

– Young children engage in different forms of joint action withadults from around 18 months of age & from the end of 2nd yearof life also with peers (Brownell, 2011)

Bratman‘s account of shared intention too complex to accommodate for joint action of young children

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Problems of this Critique I

• Onset of possession of robust ToM widely discussed with respect to a large amount of empirical data

– Majority accepts elicited-response FBT as evidence for the development of robust ToM from 4 years on

– In recent literature growing controversy concerning the exact time period for development of false-belief understanding

– Evidence from spontaneous-response FBT suggests a muchearlier onset of this development (De Bruin/Newen, 2012)

– Rather late false-belief understanding in elicited-response FBT may be driven by language acquisition (Van Cleave/Gauker, 2010)

– Some researchers even vote for abandoning FBT as a test of ToMaltogether (Bloom/German 2000)

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Problems of this Critique II

• Young children may already have a basic understanding of common knowledge (Carpenter, 2009)

– 12-month olds point out the location of a fallen object more often when adult has not previously seen it fall than when she has (Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2008)

– Further evidence comes from studies on the use of commonground by young children in ambiguous communication

• 12- and 18-months olds know what toy an adult hasn‘t experiencedbefore (Tomasello & Haberl, 2003)

• 14-month olds interpret an adults excitement as excitement about a certain aspect of this object if both have played with it before (Moll, Koring, Carpenter & Tomasello, 2006)

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Problems of this Critique III

•Bratman’s substantial account aims at sufficient, not necessary conditions

“Constructivism aims at sufficient conditions for shared intention. It allows for the possibility that there are multiple constructions, each of which provides some such basis for the social roles and norms characteristic of shared intention. … though the best thing to say, in the end, may be that shared intention is multiply realizable”

(Bratman, 2009b, p. 46)

“On this latter approach the cited web of interlocking intentions really is one important kind of shared intention – though there might be other kinds.”

(Bratman, 1999, p. 144)

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Is Shared Intention Cognitively Too Demanding in Another Way?

• Pacherie (2011)

– In Bratman’s construction “the materials come cheap … but their assemblage comes costly and demands cognitively sophisticated agents.” (Pacherie, 2011, p. 180)

– Bratman’s account of SI requires cognitively sophisticated agents• Participants must have concepts of mental states

(intentions/attitudes)

• SI requires full-fledged meta-representational abilities – contents of intentions refer to own intentions and intentions of others

– Small children lack fully developed mentalizing and meta-representational abilities

– They engage in joint activities before they do so

SI cannot account for joint action of young children

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Sufficient Conditions for Shared Intention

We intend to J if and only 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 1a, 1b, and meshing subplans of 1a and 1b; you intend that we J in accordance with and because of 1a, 1b, and meshing subplans of 1a and 1b.

3. 1 and 2 are common knowledge between us.

(Bratman, 1993, p. 106)

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Problems of this Critique

• Pacherie’s criticism fails for nearly the same as the aforementioned reasons– The question whether or when young children develop

mentalizing and meta-representational abilities is a controversial empirical question

– Bratman’s construction of SI is only one possibility – it only presents one set of sufficient conditions

• Intuition that Bratman’s account sets the cognitive standards for all kinds of joint action too high seems maintain attractiveness..

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Does SI Presuppose What It Should Help Explain?

• Butterfill (2012)

– Joint action is regularly used to explain the early development of an understanding of minds:

“…the unique aspects of human cognition … were driven by, or even constituted by, social cooperation.” (Moll & Tomasello, 2007, p. 1)

“The motivations and skills for participating in this kind of “we”intentionality are woven into the earliest stages of human ontogeny and underlie young children’s developing ability to participate in the collectivity that is human cognition” (Tomasello et al., 2005, p. 676)

– In both papers the authors’ ideas on cooperation rest upon Bratman’s“Shared Cooperative Activity” (1992) which already involved the discussed construction of SI

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Functional Roles of SI and Understanding of Other Minds

• Butterfill’s objection focuses on the functional roles that shared intention is supposed to play -these are necessary conditions1. Help coordinate our intentional actions

2. Help coordinate our planning

3. Structure relevant bargaining

• Coordinating & bargaining does not require intentions which refer to other intentions in all cases– In everyday life plans are often coordinated on the basis of a

shared background (preferences, habits & conventions)

– E.g.: An internal colloq where research is discussed on a regular basis

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Functional Roles of SI and Understanding of Other Minds

• In some cases coordinating & bargaining will require monitoring or manipulating others’ intentions– Novel aims

– Unusual circumstances

– Unfamiliar partners

Lack of sufficient background

• Joint action of young children involves novel aims & unfamiliar partners

Joint action would presuppose psychological concepts whose development it should explain

Early joint action of children cannot involve SI in Bratman’ssense

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Summary

• Objections that focus on substantial account of SI as being too cognitively demanding for young children faila. Controversial empirical assumptions

b. Substantial account = sufficient conditions

• Butterfill’s argument succeeds in showing that concerning joint action of young children SI cannot be involveda. No empirical assumptions needed – circularity involved

b. Directed at functional roles of SI = necessary conditions

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Is Bratman’s Account Incorrect?

• Bratman’s account cannot account for children’s joint action – if supposed to explain development of their understanding of minds– Other construction won’t do – necessary conditions cannot be

met

– Problematic for some approaches from developmental psychology (e.g. Tomasello and colleagues)

• Bratman’s approach might account for one kind of joint action – Planning

– Future-directed intentions

– Stability and rationality of plans (norms)

– Deliberation

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Perspective – Future Research

I. A different kind of joint action to account for cooperative behavior of young children in addition to SI

– Early socio-cognitive abilities• Common ground

• Joint attention

• Shared goals

• Intention-in-action

• Joint action without joint intentions

• …

– How do those two kinds connect/intertwine?

– Why doesn’t one kind of joint action (possibly in various degrees of complexity) suffice for both young children and adults?

II. One kind of joint action which accounts for children and mature agents

- Law of parsimony

- Development of different stages of joint action

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References

• Bloom, Paul, und Tim P. German. 2000. „Two Reasons To Abandon the False Belief Task as a Test of Theory of Mind.“ Cognition 77 (1): B25 – B31.

• Bratman, Michael. 1992. „Shared Cooperative Activity“. Philosophical Review 101 (2): 327–341.• ———. 1993. „Shared Intention“. Ethics 104 (1): 97–113.• ———. 1999. “I intend that we J” In Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency. Cambridge

University Press.• ———. 2009a. „Modest Sociality and the Distinctiveness of Intention“. Philosophical Studies 144 (1): 149–165.• ———. 2009b. „Shared Agency“. In Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice.

Cambridge University Press.• Brownell, Celia A. 2011. „Early Developments in Joint Action“. Review of philosophy and psychology 2 (2) (Juni): 193–

211. • Butterfill, Stephen. 2012. „Joint Action and Development“. The Philosophical Quarterly 62 (246): 23–47. • Carpenter, Malinda. 2009. „Just How Joint Is Joint Action in Infancy?“ Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (2): 380–392. • De Bruin, L.C., und A. Newen. 2012. „An association account of false belief understanding“. Cognition 123 (2) (Mai):

240–259. • Liszkowski, Ulf, Malinda Carpenter, und Michael Tomasello. 2008. „Twelve-month-olds communicate helpfully and

appropriately for knowledgeable and ignorant partners“. Cognition 108 (3) (September): 732–739. • Moll, Henrike, Cornelia Koring, Malinda Carpenter, und Michael Tomasello. 2006. „Infants Determine Others’ Focus of

Attention by Pragmatics and Exclusion“. Journal of Cognition and Development 7 (3): 411–430. • Moll, Henrike, und Michael Tomasello. 2007. „Cooperation and Human Cognition: The Vygotskian Intelligence

Hypothesis“. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 362 (1480) (April 29): 639–648. Pacherie, Elisabeth. 2011. „Framing Joint Action“. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2 (2): 173–192.

• Tollefsen, Deborah. 2005. „Let’s Pretend! Children and Joint Action“. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (1) (Januar3): 75–97.

• Tomasello, Michael, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Tanya Behne, und Henrike Moll. 2005. „Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition“. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (5): 675–691.

• Tomasello, Michael, und Katharina Haberl. 2003. „Understanding attention: 12- and 18-month-olds know what is new for other persons“. Developmental Psychology 39 (5): 906–912.

• Van Cleave, Matthew, und Christopher Gauker. 2010. „Linguistic Practice and False-belief Tasks“. Mind & Language25 (3): 298–328.

• Wellman, Henry M., David Cross, und Julanne Watson. 2001. „Meta-Analysis of Theory-of-Mind Development: The Truth About False Belief“. Child Development 72 (3): 655–684.