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We, Together
We, Together
The Social Ontology of Us

HA N S B E R N HA R D S C H M I D
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schmid, Hans Bernhard, author.
Title: We, together : the social ontology of us / Hans Bernhard Schmid.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022044673 (print) | LCCN 2022044674 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197563724 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780197563748 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Social institutions. | Social systems. | Ontology.
Classification: LCC HM826.S365 2023 (print) | LCC HM826 (ebook) |
DDC 306—dc23/eng/20221227
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044673
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022044674

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197563724.001.0001

Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

 Contents

Preface: We Who?  vii

Introduction: Fundamental Social Ontology  1

C HA P T E R 1 AC T I N G T O G E T H E R
1.1. Plural Intentional Action  11
1.2. What’s Shared in Shared Intention?  16
1.3. The Content of Shared Intention  27
1.4. The Subject of Shared Intention  41
1.5. The Mode of Shared Intention  48
1.6. So Who’s “the We”?  56

C HA P T E R 2 W E A S P LU R A L SU B J E C T S
2.1. What Is an Intentional Subject?  65
2.2. The Case for Singularism  85
2.3. Why Pluralism?  105
2.4. Plural Self-​Identification  123
2.5. We Who? Kita!  138
2.6. Plural Self-​Validation  145
2.7. Plural Self-​Commitment  160
2.8. Plural Self-​Authorization  171
2.9. Plural Intentional Subjects  188
vi Contents

C HA P T E R 3 C O N C E I V I N G O F O U R SE LV E S
3.1. Socialization: Joining In  201
3.2. Community: Being Together  212
3.3. Social Norms: Doing It Our Way  219
3.4. Society: Playing Our Roles  228
3.5. Politics: Achieving Autonomy  243
3.6. Ethics: Owning Up to Ourselves  261

Postscript: Philosophizing Together  271

References  279
Index  287
 Preface
We Who?

This book is about our being together. But who is “we”? A Tagalog transla-
tion of this book would have to be at least somewhat clearer, because Tagalog
has three words for different uses of “we”: tayo, kami, and kita. Tayo is the
inclusive plural “we,” meaning you, I, and others, as distinguished from the
exclusive plural kami (me and others, but not you), and the inclusive dual
kita (just you and I). In Tagalog, the title word would be tayo. So you and I are
included (kita, just you and I, will be the topic of Section 2.5)—​but about who
else will it be?
Saying “we” seems like drawing a circle, and the first question you might
expect me to answer is how exactly it is drawn and why. Since this is a book in
philosophy, you probably expect “we” to be rather inclusively conceived: “we,
in general,” a wide category, a big class, a large kind, perhaps a whole spe-
cies. What category, what class, what species, what kind is “we in general”?
Is this going to be about humankind? If so, under what cultural, historical,
biological, theological, or perhaps metaphysical conception thereof? And
how is this book going to deal with those of us who—​as history shows—​are
excluded or marginalized by those conceptions?
There are good reasons to worry. We are not particularly good at
conceiving of who we are. Conceptions of us, however cosmopolitan they
aim (and claim) to be, tend to be both parochial and imperialistic. They are
parochial in that they fail to recognize some of us as who they are by ex-
cluding them from the circle of “we.” And they are imperialistic in that they
conceive of “everybody” on the model of just some of us, thus marginalizing
“the rest” of us.
Our failing to know who we are has practical consequences for the ways in
which we live together. For who we think we are determines how we organize
ourselves. Misconceiving of ourselves in parochial, imperialistic, or other
ways leads to exclusive and oppressive organizations and organizational
failures. Knowing who we are matters for living well together.
viii Preface

So who are we really? If I knew the species, class, category, or kind that
is us, I would certainly have named it in the title. But I don’t. And I doubt
that anyone else knows either, or even if it is the task of philosophy to “en-
gineer” a conception of who we are. For determining who we are is unlike
establishing what anything else is. It is not about registering relevant matters
of fact or about tailoring useful concepts according to some pre-​set norma-
tive standards. Rather, determining who we are is about establishing our
identity and about setting our values. And this is up to ourselves to achieve.
Who we are is up to us.
This thought is familiar enough in its singular or distributive form from
some traditions in the histories of philosophies. Who you are is crucially up
to you, and who I am is up to me. In this form, determining who we are is
up to each of us, for and by ourselves, as the individuals we are. The central
thought to be developed in this book is that determining who we are is not
limited to singular self-​determination. For we are not just who we are each of
us for and by ourselves. We are who we are together with others, too, in the
many ways in which we live together. Determining who we are thus involves
us plurally. It is up to us—​alone as well as together, individually as well as
collectively, severally as well as jointly. And insofar as our living together
extends beyond any one of our parochial conceptions thereof, determining
who we are ultimately involves all of us together.
Conceiving of ourselves as a species, a class, a category, or a kind thus
misses a crucial point about us. Put in traditional terms, we are not objects: we
are subjects. We are who we are in virtue of ourselves. Not that we could be
whomever we like, if we so wished, or that we actually are whomever we
happen to believe ourselves to be. Rather, the claim is that there is no way
of accounting for who we are without holding ourselves accountable in the
process. And the central point in this book is that this involves us plurally.
Our being who we are in virtue of ourselves crucially involves us as plural
subjects and is thus up to us, together.
The pieces of the line of argument developed in this book were originally
developed in a series of academic papers. They are referenced in the relevant
passages of the text and listed in the references section. The text has been
thoroughly rewritten, paying attention to their connecting points.
This book owes much to the people with whom I’ve been discussing re-
lated issues over the extended period of time of drafting this book. Special
thanks go to my current and former colleagues at the University of Vienna,
especially to Michael Schmitz, Leo Townsend, Judith Martens, and Niels de
 Preface ix

Haan—​they may not agree with all that I’m saying or with the way I’m saying
it, but without my conversations with them, I would not be saying it in quite
this way either. Asya Passinsky, Michael Schmitz, Beatrice Kobow, and Franz
Altner have provided feedback to sections of a draft of this book on a work-
shop organized for this purpose—​thanks to them and to the other workshop
participants for their suggestions. Nicolai Knudsen has read a draft and pro-
vided useful comments.
My outlook on issues concerning social ontology owes much to the current
and former co-​editors of the Journal of Social Ontology, David P. Schweikard,
Frank Hindriks, Arto Laitinen, Heikki Ikäheimo, Alessandro Salice, Gerhard
Thonhauser, and Mari Mikkola, as well as, more recently, Katherine Jenkins,
Kate Richie, and Glenda Satne. Thanks to Sarah Fisher, whose engagement
for the newly funded Vienna Doctoral School of Philosophy has made it pos-
sible for me to continue working on this project in spite of increasing de-
partmental duties. Michaela Bartsch has been providing administrative and
organizational support for exactly a decade. Martin Niederl, Leonie Holzner,
and Anna-​Maria Edlinger have supported me in teaching and administra-
tion over the time of completing this manuscript.
An anonymous referee for Oxford University Press has provided ex-
tremely helpful feedback to two previous drafts. Their careful and thoughtful
comments had a deep influence on the way in which the material is presented
in this book and led to a large number of improvements. I am grateful to
them and to the editor Peter Ohlin for his support of this project.
Special thanks go to Agnieszka Kochanowicz.

—​Hans Bernhard Schmid

Vienna, June 27, 2022
 Introduction
Fundamental Social Ontology

Social ontology, conventionally defined, is not primarily about us. Rather, it is

about the social world (or worlds), about social reality (or realities), or about
the domain(s) of social facts. Social ontology aims at providing an inventory
of the basic kinds of entities that make up the social world(s)—​items such as
norms, institutions, social practices, status positions, power structures, and
artifacts. It is the study of the basic kinds of properties of these entities and of
how the social world exists, how it is constituted, or constructed.1
How do we figure in social ontology? We certainly belong to the social
world, too, but we’re just a small part of it. We are the denizens of the social
world, and it may seem that, in order to understand who we are, we then
need to start from an analysis of the social world. As the social world’s pop-
ulation, who we are depends on where in the social world we find ourselves
to be. We are people and peoples (though some of us may have to struggle
to be recognized and treated as such), we are individuals and groups, we are
who we are in virtue of the social status, social identity, and social roles that
we have (or on which we have a claim)—​the status of being a person, a group,
a community, an association, a people, etc. In all sorts of organized or disor-
ganized formations we are those playing by the rules or occasionally violating
them; we are those empowered by their social positions or being oppressed
or marginalized by them; we are those who find themselves recognized as
who they are and those who find themselves misunderstood (or perhaps
misconstrued); we are those who self-​identify with their status or find them-
selves marginalized (or oppressed in other ways) by identity ascriptions;
we are those who are divided by opposites of structural distinctions of in-
clusion and exclusion, power and exploitation, wealth and poverty; we are

1 Social ontology is a relatively new label, especially in English (though there are uses of the term

in other European languages that date back to the 19th century; see section 3.5, fn. 1), but there is, of
course, social ontology avant la lettre. For an introduction to the history and the most important cur-
rent research agendas in social ontology see Epstein 2018.

We, Together. Hans Bernhard Schmid, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197563724.003.0001
2 Introduction

those involved in the invention, production, use, abuse, consumption, and

destruction of artifacts.
However, this may seem to be a superficial way of thinking about
ourselves—​a way of thinking that does not really cut to the heart of who we
really are, in a deeper sense of conceiving of ourselves. It is a rather petty thing
to think of people in terms of their social status, their place and position in
the social world. As much as our place in the social world, our social status
and identity, our privileges or social deprivations might be a determining
factor of the sort of lives we live, who we really are is a whole different matter
(or so one might think). Who we really are is up to ourselves, not to society
or the social world. One traditional way of putting this is to say that society
may perhaps determine what we are, but who we are is self-​determined. And
it is argued that taking who we are to be determined by how others see us and
how they treat us is literally alienation—​thinking of oneself as just someone
else, thinking of oneself as someone whom one is not.
There is some power of truth in thinking about who we are in terms of
self-​determination, but there is just as much ideology in it, too—​the ideology
of liberal individualism, the ideology of the freedom and responsibility of
individuals, and the ideology that takes the position of the adult, able, white
male property owner as the paradigm for all of us. It is just another con-
ceptually imperialistic conception of who we are. For, quite obviously, the
opportunities for living actual self-​determined lives are unequally distrib-
uted among us. Some of us may have the means and opportunities to live ac-
tual self-​determined lives, but many of us don’t, and thinking of who they are
in terms of powers of self-​determination that they do not have tends to blame
their condition on them rather than acknowledging that our powers for ac-
tual self-​determination do not simply accrue to us from ourselves.
Tradition has not been blind to the role of social structure and has
preempted this objection. It is argued that the sort of self-​determination that
makes us who we really are is purely internal. We are who we are not in virtue
of what we can (or fail to) achieve in the world but in virtue of our aims and
thoughts, our ability to make up our own minds, which is of our own doing,
not anybody or anything else’s—​no matter how confined our existences
may be. It is this internalist view that has shaped our understanding as self-​
determined creatures. Our freedom (and responsibility) is internal, and it is
in the “inner sphere” that we are who we are in virtue of ourselves rather
than in virtue of our social role, or some such. It is in terms of our attitudes
rather than in terms of (external) actions or our social positions that we have
 Introduction 3

to be taken. In ancient Western philosophy, a Roman emperor has argued

that, in terms of self-​determination, he is really no more powerful than his
former slave teacher, having only the “inner citadel” of his own attitudes at
his disposal—​the only domain where he really is who he is. It is inwardly that
anybody is who they are, whether they are socially privileged and free, or
enslaved and in fetters. Inwardly, it is claimed, none of us can be determined
by anything else unless they let themselves be thus determined, which is of
their own doing.2
From the perspective developed in this powerful tradition, believing that
who we are is determined by our place in the social world appears not only
as superficial, but as an entirely ignorant self-​deception. Our places in the
social fabric are largely a matter of fate, but, as subjects, we are not our fate
but rather those having a mind of their own. Our social roles might be some-
thing that we decide to play, where we determine ourselves to be doing so (or
perhaps more adequately for most of us in most situations, a way in which
we might find ourselves being played with), but not who we really are. For as
who we are—​where our dignity lies, as it were—​we are self-​determined; in
the roles we play (or in which we find ourselves being played with), however,
we are largely determined by scripts that we have not written for ourselves.
How could we possibly take our social positions to be a matter of who we are
without simply deceiving ourselves, mistaking ourselves for something that
we’re not? How is thinking about who we are in terms of those determined by
their positions in the social world not just an undignified and alienated way
of misconceiving who we are?
But the objection of ideology stands even if self-​determination is un-
derstood in internal terms. The ideology in the theory of internal self-​
determination is that however much we might wish it were the case, it is
simply not true that our capabilities for psychological self-​control, our
abilities to be wholehearted and at one with ourselves in our convictions,
feelings, and desires have nothing to do with our particular social statuses
and places in the social world. Our capabilities for self-​ scrutiny and
achieving internal autonomy involve culture and education, and applying
them involves leisure and self-​trust that is not easy to secure in precarious
positions. Those with the relevant resources at their disposal cannot simply
blame those who do not exercise internal self-​determination for their own

2 For Marcus Aurelius’ conception of the “inner citadel,” see Hadot 1992. For Epictetus’ philos-

ophy, see Mason and Scaltsas 2007.

4 Introduction

condition. The element of truth in the idea of self-​determination cannot sur-

vive in the traditional “inner citadel” view (of which so many subsequent
conceptions of subjectivity in the history of Western philosophy are varia-
tions). Self-​determination cannot only be an internal matter that accrues to
us solely from ourselves. Psychological research indicates that willpower is a
scarce resource and is easily depleted.3 Not only our ability to live actual self-​
determined lives, but our ability to effectively exert internal psychological
control, too, largely depend on the lives we live, which obviously involve our
places and positions in the social world.
What, then, is the power of truth in the idea of our being who we are in
virtue of ourselves? It is, first and foremost, in a negative normative claim.
Although our capacity for effective self-​control depends on the sort of lives
we live and on our places in the social world, we can’t blame the social world
(or “society”) for whatever it is that we find wrong about who we are. For
society is not something that just happens to us. Society is something we
do. As it is sometimes put in the literature, the social world is of our own
making.4 Nature (and perhaps the gods, too) may set some limitations on our
norms, institutions, structures, and ways of production and consumption,
but these norms, institutions, structures, etc. are what they are in virtue of us
ourselves—​they are our way of living and living together.
If this is true, our own place in social ontology must be reconsidered. In this
view, we are not just the denizens of the social world—​we are the demiurges
thereof, too. We are not just those who are determined as who they are by the
place to which they are assigned or managed to acquire for themselves in the
social world; we are also those who set up the whole structure. We are not just
the players in the game, but its authors, too. Whatever norms, institutions, or
power structures we identify as the determining factors of who we are, as the
denizens of the social world, are of our own making, as its demiurges. We are
not just social creatures but creators of society.
As the denizens or creatures of the social world, we might just be a spe-
cial topic in social ontology. As the demiurges or creators thereof, however,
we are clearly much more than just that. If it is indeed true that the social
world is “of our own making”—​simply as our way of living together, as I shall

3 For a psychological account of the capacity of self-​control (or willpower) as a scarce resource, see

Baumeister and Tierney 2011.

4 Most prominently, this view features in the (sub-​ )titles of Searle 2010 and Gilbert 2013.
Francesco Guala calls the view that the social world is of our own making “the Standard Model of
Social Ontology” (Guala 2007, 956, 960–​963, with further references; see also Epstein 2015, chap. 4).
 Introduction 5

suggest, or perhaps in some other way—​we really need to know who we are
in order to understand how the social world is constituted and constructed.
The question of who we are is thus both a special issue and the fundamental
question of social ontology. Conventional social ontology includes us as the
denizens or creatures of the social world. Fundamental social ontology traces
the social world back to us as its demiurges or creators.
The idea of the social world being of our own making has intuitive appeal.
Part of what makes it so attractive is that it inspires us with a sense of freedom
and possibility. If the social world is of our own making, perhaps we can make
it better. The flipside of this sense of freedom, however, is responsibility. If we
can’t blame how we live and how we’re organized (or disorganized) on na-
ture, on history, on some system of power, or on the gods—​if we recognize
ourselves behind “society,” the systems and power structures that mark our
social world—​we have nothing but ourselves to blame for who we have come
to be and for how it is that we live together. Or, to put it in more epistemic
terms: there is no way of accounting for the social world without holding our-
selves accountable in the process. While the social world, conventionally un-
derstood, explains who we are, as its denizens or creatures, the fundamental
ontology of the social world boomerangs straight back to us: as the creators
of the social world, we find ourselves again in the explaining role —​with a lot
of explaining to do, indeed, given all that is wrong with the social world.
Thus, a fundamental question arises in social ontology: Who are we, these
mysterious plural creator subjects of the social world? The very idea of us
ourselves being behind all of it has an almost conspiratorial ring to it. And,
then, the worry concerning demarcation reappears: Who is in this “we,” who
is not, and why? Does this creator-​we include those of us who find themselves
marginalized and oppressed in the social world? Are they implicated in the
responsibility for co-​constituting their own prison? Or is this creator-​we just
limited to those of us who find themselves empowered with the means and
entitlements to have at least a somewhat credible claim to be living actual
self-​determined lives?
Neither of these alternatives seems acceptable. The first is conceptu-
ally imperialistic at best and outright mean at worst. It is conceptually im-
perialistic in that it conceives of all of us on the model of just some of us,
marginalizing those of us who find themselves oppressed, and it is outright
mean by implicating those who are marginalized and oppressed in their own
condition because they seem to be partially responsible, with some of the
blame diverted from those in power. The second is plain parochial. It claims
6 Introduction

for some of us what’s not just their own. For the powerful among us are
creatures of the social world, too. None of us has built the cottage or house in
which they were born themselves (despite of how some politicians like to de-
pict themselves), and what’s true of individuals is true of groups and organ-
izations, too. No individual or group has created their powers or privileges
over others all by and for themselves.
How can this dilemma be tackled? A point of departure is in the following
idea. The two obvious questions about our apparent double role in the social
world—​the question of how it is and how it is not that we are the creatures of
the social world, and the question of who is this creator-​we of the social world
(and how inclusive or exclusive it is), are versions of one and the same ques-
tion. The basic question (and thus the topic of fundamental social ontology)
is how exactly it is that we make, constitute, or construct the social world.
The answer to the basic question to be developed in this book is that the
making, constitution, or construction of the social world is not a matter of
some special (however hypothetical or implicit) act of creation, let alone
just a matter of how we “see” or “think about” the social world; rather, our
creating the social world is a modal feature of our living together. Living to-
gether is what we do, and we do it intentionally. We are the plural intentional
subjects of our living together, and it is as such that we are the creators or
demiurges of our social worlds. The social worlds of norms and institutions,
statuses and structures, practices and artifacts are what they are as the ways
in which we live together. They are up to us in the sense in which it is up to us
to determine how it is that we do the things we do.
Things can’t usually be done in just any way. There are limits to the ways of
doing things. But cases in which there is just one way are rare (and those few
often involve tight institutional constraints—​there is only one way exactly
because this is how we live together, and not the other way around). This is
not to say, of course, that there aren’t better or worse ways of doing things.
But what’s better or worse in terms of ways of living together depends on
what we, together, want, as the plural intentional subjects of what we do. Our
standards for better and worse, right and wrong are ours to determine, too.
This book thus starts with a discussion of what it means to be acting to-
gether (Chapter 1). Shared intention is identified as the feature in virtue of
which we can act intentionally together, and a systematic account of alter-
native possibilities of analyzing shared intention is provided. The central
second chapter of this book argues that the right analysis of shared intention
involves plural intentional subjects and argues for a specific view of plural
 Introduction 7

intentional subjectivity. In this view, we are plural subjects of an intention

in virtue of plural pre-​reflective self-​awareness or self-​consciousness of that
intention. The third chapter argues that living well together and organizing
ourselves accordingly crucially involves becoming reflectively clear about
who we pre-​reflectively are. This final chapter develops the problem of ac-
counting conceptually for ourselves and develops this thought through a
series of basic social notions—​community, social norms, society, politics,
and the idea of radical collective responsibility for who we, together, are.
The answer to the specific question of how we, the creators of the so-
cial world, relate to us, the creatures thereof, is this: we, as the plural inten-
tional subjects of our living together, determine the positions in which we,
the creatures of the social world, find ourselves by living together in the
way we do. It is together (collectively, or jointly) that we are the creators or
demiurges of our social worlds that we, distributively or severally, inhabit
as its creatures or denizens. Our accountability or responsibility for the so-
cial world is collective rather than distributive. It does not, as such, distribute
over the creatures or denizens of the social world or particular subgroups
thereof. Rather, it is responsibility of the sort that is ours to assume together
in determining the ways in which we live together.
The way in which, as plural subjects, all of us are involved in the creation
of the social world, neither excuses the powerful and privileged among us,
nor does it implicate the oppressed or marginalized in the responsibility
for their own condition. Recognizing the collective responsibility for who
we, together, are, is not committing to a particular view on the duties and
obligations that we have as individuals or as particular groups—​for the
standards of right and wrong are ours to determine together. But it does cap-
ture an important aspect (though certainly not the only relevant one) of what
is wrong about oppression and exploitation, which is that they prevent us
from doing well what we do: living together.
 CHAPTER 1
AC T ING TO GET H E R

We are agents, and what we do first and foremost is live together. Living to-
gether crucially involves acting together. Acting together thus plays a central
role for who we are. But what is the feature in virtue of which it is together that
we’re acting when we’re acting together? This first part of the book argues
that the decisive element is in shared intention. What is intention, in what
sense is it shared in acting together, and what about shared intention is it that
is being shared in this sense? Three alternative possible approaches to the
analysis of shared intention are identified, and the strengths and weaknesses
of each approach are analyzed.
 1.1
Plural Intentional Action

Our living together crucially involves acting together. Indeed, our living to-
gether is acting together, for living together is what we do, and insofar as we
do it—​in parts at least—​together, we do it jointly or collectively. But even if
we grant that living together involves a great deal of acting together, there
might be some unease with the claim that living together is itself acting to-
gether. After all, living together is unlike such obvious cases of acting together
as sailing a boat together or going for a walk together.1 If living together it is
indeed acting together (as I shall argue), it might be too big (and too com-
plex) a joint activity to see it easily and clearly for what it is due to the sheer
dimensions of the activity in question in spatial and temporal terms and due
to the enormous number of participants.
Also, ours has come to be a strange way of living together. It is part and
parcel of how we do it that we think of it in quite different terms—​as some-
thing we do alongside each other rather than together (“we, those living lives
of their own”) or even as something that we do to each other (“we, the op-
pressed and their oppressors”). It is in turn perhaps indeed easier to see what
acting together entails—​and to recognize it as such—​by focusing on smaller
cases such as going for a walk together. Once we see the difference between
walking alongside each other and walking together, we might be in a better
position to see whether and how far what we do is indeed living together as
a joint activity or really just a case of living alongside each other or doing
something to each other.
Acting together may perhaps not be the first thing we do and not the last,
and certainly our living together, even if it exists, involves a great number of
things that are not acting together. But a lot of what happens before, during,
and after acting together is what it is in virtue of its relation to acting together.

1 Different authors use different paradigm cases in the literature. Most authors focus on small-​

scale cooperations with two participants. The examples mentioned here—​sailing a boat together and
going for a walk together—​are taken from Robin George Collingwood’s New Leviathan (1942, 20.9,
p. 145f.). I mention them partly to honor this largely forgotten direct ancestor of the current debate
on shared intention (Collingwood’s work is the source of Wilfrid Sellars’s account of we-​intention).

We, Together. Hans Bernhard Schmid, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197563724.003.0002
12 We, Together

When agents act together, they perform plural, joint, or collective actions.2
“Plural actions” is my preferred term, though nothing hinges on the label
here. Plural actions involve a plurality of contributions and contributors,
but they are not just distributions, aggregates, or summations of partici-
pant singular actions. Just that you happen to be doing something and that
I happen to be doing something does not make it the case that there is any-
thing we’re doing together. Just that you’re on your walk and I am on mine
does not mean that we’re walking together, even if we walk down the same
street at the same time. Rather than distributions of singular actions, plural
actions are collections thereof (although the term “collection” has unfortu-
nate connotations, as it etymologically suggests an image in which the whole,
the collection, is always some gathering of preexistent parts, which may not
be the case here—​there are similar worries with the adjectives “joint” and
“shared”).3
What is the difference between collections and distributions, especially
when it comes to distinguishing collections and distributions of action? May
it suffice for our present purposes to say the following: the relevant difference
is between each of us φ-​ing by themselves and all of us φ-​ing together. The
sort of φ-​ing that is of interest here is “φ-​ing together” rather than “φ-​ing sep-
arately.” It is φC rather than φD, with “C” standing for “collectively,” “together,”
“jointly” and “D” standing for “distributively,” “severally,” “separately,” “apart
from each other,” “each by themselves.”
The most obvious difference between the two is that φD is a plurality of
token actions the type of which is φ. In φD, the φ-​ing is many token actions
of a type. ΦC is a distribution of token actions performed by the participants,
too, but, in contrast to φD, the token actions need not necessarily be of one
type (though they usually are of the same type in the walking case), and φC is
itself one token action that is performed together. Whether you and I happen
to be walking separately or walking together, it involves you walking and
me walking in either case. The question of whether it is us walkingD or us
walkingC is the question of whether or not it is just you on your walk and me
on mine, or whether there is one walk on which we’re together. (As said, the
plurality of contributions may or may not be of the same type, and it is usu-
ally the same in our walking together, but it may also involve contributive

2 For more on plural action with some discussion of the relevant literature, see Schmid 2009, espe-

cially Chapter 1.
3 Using “joint” rather than “collective” does not help since the word evokes the image of joining

preexisting parts. For a more detailed analysis of the relevant concept of sharing, see Section 1.2.
 Acting Together 13

actions of quite different types, such as you slowing down for me and me
speeding up to catch up with you, respectively.)
What is it that makes the activities of many agents one token action?
Actions can be individuated in all sorts of ways, and the standard is usually
set by what is relevant about the event(s) in question (if actions are indeed
events, as I simply assume here). What is relevant about events, in the context
of individuation of action, often involves responsibility, at least if responsi-
bility is not merely causal. We’re certainly not just responsible for what we
intend to do or not to do. There is a lot we do that we don’t intend to, and,
tragically, we even sometimes do things by trying to avoid them. But inten-
tion almost always matters for the individuation of action (and assignment
of responsibility) in some way. Intention is constitutive for action. Action
is intentional “under a description” (a somewhat misleading term since we
don’t usually need to describe anything in order to intend, let alone have it
be described by others).4 Although what is being done, in terms of action,
might be relevant under entirely different descriptions thereof (and thus be
“described” accordingly), it matters if the relevant “description” is the “de-
scription” under which it was intended or if it was intended under a different
“description.” And what is being done, however it is being described, must be
intentional under some “description” or at least an attributable consequence
of something that was intentional under some “description,” if it is an action.
There is action that is somehow “joint,” and thus a token action of sorts,
under other “descriptions” than the one under which it is intentional—​as in
the case of your introducing me to your favorite 1980s glam rock music band
on the car radio and my opening the car’s side window for some fresh air
combining to us waking up the neighbors. In the way in which the events
in our car matter for the neighbors from their perspective, there is a token
act that happened for which they are very well justified in holding both of
us responsible. It is true that you did not intend for me to open the window,
and I did not intend for you to play the music, but this is not relevant from
the neighbor’s perspective. They will not accept your pointing at me as the
culprit, and me pointing back at you. But such cases are failures to get our act
together rather than proper joint actions. They are “deficient” cases of joint
actions (we should have jointly decided on what we wanted: either listen to

4 The expression “under a description” was introduced into action theory by G. E. M. Anscombe

in Intention (1957, p. 11). For Anscombe’s own clarification of possible misunderstandings and for
Anscombe’s reaction to Donald Davidson’s influential use of the term, see Anscombe 1979.
14 We, Together

your music, or have some fresh air—​we, together, failed) and thus derivative
of joint actions because they would be seen and treated differently were it not
for the participants’ capacity for “proper” joint actions—​actions that do not
just happen to be joint but that are joint under the description under which
they are intended. Proper joint actions are actions where the participants
contribute willingly and knowingly to the token joint action under a “de-
scription” as that token joint action. They are thus intentional token joint
actions, and, as such, intentionally joint. The intentionality involved in them
is of the form “we intend to φC,” or “we’re intentionally φC-​ing.”
The expressions “we intend to φC” or “we’re intentionally φC–​ing” (I’ll just
mention the first phrase in the following, but it tends to focus on intention of
the prior sort; however, the basic form of intention is in action, as it is acting
intentionally that we intend in prior intention, while we don’t have to have
a prior intention in order to act intentionally) are, of course, linguistic, but
as such, they are verbalizations, renderings in words of what might not it-
self be linguistic in nature or even just a worked-​out thought. “We intend to
φC” does not presuppose language just because it appears in linguistic form
here—​rather, it is a presupposition of language, at least if we accept that lan-
guage is what it is in its use, that the use of language crucially (or essentially)
involves communication, that communication is a type of joint action (so
that there is something—​a token action—​that we do together even if you just
tell me something), and that it cannot be the first joint action that we perform
together but presupposes a context of joint action. Outside of the context of
joint action, you can perhaps do such things as reciting a poem on a lonely
stroll through the woods. You would thus perhaps say something, but your
telling something normally involves me listening—​and not listening in the
way I might be listening in on (or just overhearing) the neighbor’s conver-
sation through the hedge but listening as my part in what it is we’re doing
together when you tell me something (the case of you telling me something
without me listening usually makes me blameworthy for not doing my part).5

5 It is certainly possible that you told me and that I wasn’t listening—​nevertheless you still told me,

which seems to contradict the claim that you telling me involves me listening. To sort this out, it is
important to see how the case in which you told me without me having listened is usually different
from your just having tried to tell me. It is usually different because if you actually told me (rather
than just having tried to tell me), I clearly failed to do my part in what we still did together. We were
communicating, but we failed because of me, because I wasn’t listening. And this still involves me as
listening, though in a normative rather than a descriptive sense. An adequate theory of joint action
must be able to accommodate such cases if it is to extend to linguistic communication—​but per-
haps linguistic communication is not an ideal paradigm of an analysis of joint action as it might be
a particularly complex form thereof (though still much less complex than our living together in its
entirety).
 Acting Together 15

But there are reasons not to focus too much on communication where joint
action is concerned. Besides the point that communication is itself a kind
of joint action, and a particularly complex form thereof, a strong develop-
mental point can be made that it is only in the context of joint action that de-
veloping the capacity for linguistic communication makes any sense.6

6 Strong arguments for this view are presented from the perspectives of developmental psychology,

evolutionary anthropology, and primatology by Michael Tomasello, especially in his 2009 book The
Origins of Human Communication. For some critical comments on his use of shared intention, see
Schmid 2013a. For some critical comments on his use of shared intention as the defining feature of
humankind, see Section 3.5.
 1.2
What’s Shared in Shared Intention?

That there are things that we do together means, in the sense that is relevant
here, that there are token joint actions that are joint in that they are intended
as such—​or jointly intended by the participants. Not that the difference be-
tween these two ways of putting the intention involved in plural actions does
not matter (this will be discussed in some detail shortly), but, in any case, the
crucial element is attitude of the form “we intend to φC,” where φ is a token
joint action rather than just an aggregate of individual actions of one type.
The attitude in question is not of the kind of “we intend to brush our teeth,”
where what is meant is that each of us intends to brush their teeth (that is,
where the content of the intention is a distribution of singular or individual
actions). Rather, it is of the kind of “we intend to play a game of chess,” where
it is one and the same token game that we intend to play together.
Intentionality of the form “we intend to φC” has come to be called “we-​
intention,” “collective intention,” “joint intention,” or “shared intention” in
the literature (different authors use different labels, some authors use sev-
eral of these labels either interchangeably or for slightly different forms of
“we intend to φC”; in the following, I’ll either list some of the alternative
labels where the different nuances of these terms seem to matter or just use
“shared”). The controversy in the received debate can be put in either term
and is exactly the same in any way of putting it. It is this: what exactly is “we-​
ish” about we-​intention, what is collective about collective intention, what is
joint about joint intention, what is shared about shared intention?
A useful way to structure this question and discuss the different approaches
to answering it is according to the three features of intentionality often
identified in the literature (the word “intentionality” is very close to “inten-
tion,” but it is important to recognize that intention is just a particular mode
of intentionality, with other modes including belief or hope). Intentionality is
usually defined as our capacity to have some content in mind, in some way, or
our capacity to have a mental attitude toward something. As such, intention-
ality is characterized by (i) intentional content or object (something the atti-
tude is about), (ii) intentional subject (somebody whose intentional attitude

We, Together. Hans Bernhard Schmid, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197563724.003.0003
 Acting Together 17

it is), and (iii) intentional mode (the kind of attitude that is taken by the in-
tentional subject toward the intentional content). In the case of “we intend
to φC,” “φC” is the content, “we” is the subject, and “intend” is the mode. In
order to find out where to place sharedness in shared intention (etc.), it is im-
portant to know a bit more about each of these features, and about their re-
lations, before turning to the question of how one or several of these features
may be “shared,” “joint,” or “collective.”
i. Intentional content (or intentional object) is what intentional attitudes
are about. It is whatever we perceive or imagine, believe or desire, intend
or fear. Content is a thing or “entity,” a property, an event, a state of affair,
a matter of fact, or a value. It is the perceived in perception, the believed in
belief, the feared in fear, the desired in desire, and the intended in intention.
In some cases, it seems that the content is “illusionary” rather than “real”
(after all, mistaken beliefs are still beliefs, and the attitudes that we have in
our dreams have content, too); in other cases, it seems that “the world” is part
of intentionality (this seems particularly obvious in such cases as perception,
where, for us to perceive something, it actually has to be there). Whether it
is real or not, content is an element or feature of intentionality and thus not
separated from it. Content is often captured in terms of “representation” of
“the world”; perhaps a way to avoid this loaded term (more on this in Section
2.1) is to say that intentionality involves some sort of knowledge of what has
to be the case for one’s belief to be true, one’s desire to be fulfilled, and one’s
intention to be carried out.
ii. The intentional subject is the believer(s) in belief, the fearer(s) in fear,
the desirer(s) in desire, and the intender(s) in intention. One should perhaps
avoid characterizing the role of the intentional subject as the believer(s) of
the belief etc. because this may make it tempting to think that the intentional
subject involves a meta-​attitude (or state) that has the first-​order attitude (or
state) in its content. Some intentional subjects do sometimes believe that
they have beliefs, but they are not intentional subjects in virtue of such meta-​
attitudes, and meta-​attitudes are not the intentional subject. The confusion
does not arise in such cases as fear, as it is not usually fear that is feared in typ-
ical forms of fear (though such attitudes are certainly possible). The subject
is the one(s) whose intentional attitude the attitude in question is, whether
or not they have reflective or meta-​attitudes as well and however exactly it is
that these meta-​attitudes relate to first-​order attitudes.
It is sometimes said that the subject is the “owner,” or “source,” or “bearer”
of the attitude. All of these are metaphors. They are illuminating in many
18 We, Together

ways, but especially the first and the last one are at least as misleading as they
are illuminating. As elements or features of intentional attitudes, intentional
subjects are not related to their intentional attitudes in the way in which an
owner is related to their property. For the latter (owner and their property)
are independent of each other in a way the former (intentional subject and
their intentional attitudes) are not. The bluntest argument for this difference
is that pieces of property can change hands, or perhaps be relinquished, while
our attitudes cease to exist when we don’t have them anymore. When I give
up a certain belief and meanwhile you come to adopt it, it is not the case that
my belief has changed hands (or heads) or that we have traded it. The met-
aphor of ownership is rather fit and illuminating, however, in other regards.
Ownership is sometimes explained with notions of stewardship of property
and the freedom and responsibility to dispose of property in the way the
owner sees fit, which in many ways reflects the way in which we tend to think
of how intentional subjects are involved in their intentional attitudes, espe-
cially in terms of psychological or evaluative control. The intentional subjects
are those who are free to have the attitude that they see fit (though we cannot
usually form beliefs at will, and it seems that we can intend only what we
have reason to do) and to change their minds accordingly. They are respon-
sible for having the attitudes they have. The metaphor “source” captures the
related idea that our attitudes “come from ourselves”—​they are what they
are in virtue of our making up our minds; however, this is in some ways an
understanding of the intentional subject that seems overly activist and con-
ceptually too demanding for basic forms of intentional subjectivity (more on
this in Sections 2.1 and 2.9).
Approaching subjectivity through an analysis of the features of intention-
ality already suggests that the subject is not separated from intentionality (as
is perhaps mistakenly suggested in the metaphor of the subjects being the
“bearers” of their intentional attitudes) but rather a component thereof. Also,
it is probably good advice not to think of the intentional subject as an object
even if one has reservations against some or all of the traditional subject/​
object dualisms in received Western philosophy. Metaphysically speaking,
intentional subjects might not be substances, but rather the ways in which
intentional attitudes are subjective (more on this in Section 1.6). Put in a
pun, they may basically be more like properties of intentionality than the
proprietors thereof.
There is a similar problem with the widespread description of intentional
attitudes as “states,” in the sense of “intentional states” or “mental states.” This
 Acting Together 19

terminology easily suggests that the way in which intentional attitudes are
subjective is in terms of a substance being in a certain state, so that whether
I believe, desire, or intend is somehow similar to whether water is liquid,
solid, or a gas. It is true that “attitude” is not entirely innocent in this regard ei-
ther, but it is certainly less misleading in terms of mistaken substantialization
of the intentional subject.
iii. The intentional mode mediates between subject and content as the way
in which the subject’s attitude is “of ” or “about” the content. Intentional mode
is thus the central feature of intentionality—​and rather underanalyzed in the
literature.
In received accounts, the intentional mode is often introduced in the con-
ceptually most unambitious way possible: just as a list of examples of dif-
ferent intentional modes, such as “perception, belief, desire, fear, intention,
etc.” It is true that conceptual ambitions (especially the determination of
necessary and jointly sufficient features) often fail and that lists of examples
(especially of paradigmatic examples) achieve more than attempts at uni-
versal definitions, but the question remains: What are the features in virtue
of which these examples are examples of intentional modes rather than any-
thing else? It is important to know a bit more about intentional modes than
a rough extensional characterization can offer, especially since the typical
extensional characterizations in the literature do not aspire in any way to
completeness and since the prospects of aspirations to completeness seem
rather dim (it is not clear why the number of actual and potential intentional
modes should be finite; especially when it comes to affective intentionality—​
the emotions—​it seems obvious that modes are historically and culturally
variable).
As the modes are ways in which intentional attitudes are “of ” or “about”
the content, they are types or kinds of intentional directedness. Two suc-
cessful conceptual tools that are relevant to understanding intentional mode
are the (a) formal object and (b) the direction of fit.
a. Formal objects are features of the intentional object, ascribed to the
object in the attitudes that explain, rationalize, or constitute the particular
mode of the intentional attitude.1 Formal objects are often discussed in con-
nection with the intentionality of the emotions (or affective intentionality,

1 An important reference for the concept of the formal object is Kenny 1963, 131f. Kenny also

discusses Thomas Aquinas’s original distinction between formal and material object.
20 We, Together

as it is sometimes called) in the philosophy of values.2 But the formal object

might also be illuminating for other “modes of modes” of intentionality in
addition to affective intentionality. Affective intentionality cannot be neatly
separated from the two other basic modes of intentionality, cognition and
volition (or theoretical and practical intentionality, respectively), because af-
fective intentionality involves cognition as well as volition (or conation), but
not all cognitive intentionality and not all volitive (or conative) intention-
ality is of the affective kind. If the idea of the formal object can illuminate
these two kinds of modes, too, it probably does so via an understanding of
truth and the good as the respective formal objects of cognitive and volitive
(or conative) intentional attitudes. Just as we can’t but fear what we “perceive”
as dangerous to what we love (although it might fill our mischievous hearts
with joy rather than fear if it is perceived as dangerous to somebody we hate),
we can’t but believe what we perceive as true, and we can’t but want what we
perceive as good (although we small-​minded egoists may recognize the good
only if it is our own).3
Truth and the good are formal meta-​objects for whole domains of inten-
tional modes (attitudes of the cognitive and the volitive or conative kinds
come in many versions). But in order to understand the particular practical
intentional mode that is intention and to avoid intellectualist or cognitivist
misconceptions thereof, it is important to recognize some of the differences
between the role of truth in cognition and the role of the good in volition or
conation. The good is more like the formal object of affective intentionality
in that the good (just as, e.g., danger, the formal object of fear) seems to have
a specific focus: the good is good for someone or something, and what might
be good for you might not be good for me (which needs to be distinguished
from the subjectivity of the good: what I perceive as good for you might not

2 The formal object is particularly interesting in affective intentionality because every emotion

seems to have a formal object of its own. In fear, it is danger; in anger, it is wrongdoing; and similarly
for the other emotions. Formal objects attach to the “material” object in virtue of some concern. In
fear, the object of one’s attitude (a dog’s approaching, for example) is “perceived” as dangerous in
virtue of one’s concern with safety (in terms of one’s vulnerability); in anger, the object (e.g., the dog
holder’s not having the dog on a leash) is perceived as wrongful in virtue of one’s concern with what’s
right (in terms of one’s mutual relations), and so on. It seems right to say that fear is the only way
to perceive danger; if one “knows” of a danger without fearing it, one does not really “see” it as the
danger that it is and likewise for anger and the other emotions. One certainly does not have to have a
fit of rage at every perceived case of wrongdoing, but if one is not at least a bit (or calmly) angered, one
does not see the wrongdoing as what it is.
3 To be sure, things are more complicated in our real mental lives. One complication (but perhaps

not the only one) is weakness of will and weakness of cognition, where we know something is better but
still fail to want it, or where we know something is not true but still find ourselves believing it.
 Acting Together 21

be what you perceive as such). This does not seem to be the case with truth.
Truth may be subjective in the same way (what I “perceive” as true may not
be what you “perceive” as such), but it does not seem to have a focus. If I per-
ceive it as true, I do not perceive it as “true for somebody” in the way things
work with the good. But perhaps we find something similar to truth in the
domain of the good, too—​in the superior good that is justice. Justice might be
subjective: what I perceive as just might not be what you perceive as such. But
if it’s just, it can’t be “just only for me” (and unjust for you). Justice includes
everybody—​if it has a focus at all, the focus is universal.
b. Direction of fit is a way to capture the basic normativity involved in in-
tentionality and to distinguish two “basic” types of intentional modes (meta-​
types, as it were, as modes are types of attitudes): cognitive and conative (or
volitive) attitudes. Perceptions and beliefs differ from desires and intentions
in that, in the former, it is the world that is the measure to which perception
and belief “ought” to conform (it is “the world” that has the say in whether
an attitude is a perception or an illusion, or whether a belief is true or false,
though the full story is a complicated one); in desire and intention, it is the
attitude that sets the measure, and in virtue of the attitude (or from the in-
tentional subject’s perspective), “the world” ought to be changed so as to be
made fit.4
A widely used but highly metaphorical way of applying the idea of direc-
tion of fit to the distinction between cognitive and conative meta-​modes of
attitudes is in terms of a mind–​world distinction; it is to say that in cognitive
modes the fit is mind-​to-​world (the world is the measure; the “responsibility”
for the fit, or the “mistake” in cases where no fit is achieved, is in the mind),
whereas in conative modes, it is the mind that is the measure, and the “mis-
take” in cases where no fit is achieved is in the world.5 This way of putting
things seems particularly helpful to distinguish between “misfits” in both
types: misfit in the case of belief is not corrected by changing “the world” in
such a way as to make it fit the belief, but by changing the belief. In the case
of desire, initial misfit is the default, and it is taken care of by changing “the

4 The locus classicus is Thomas Aquinas (2006), Summa Theologiae, Part 1, question 21, article

2, where Aquinas famously defines truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei and then distinguishes two
forms thereof, one in which res is the mensura and one in which intellectus is the mensura for the
correspondence.
5 The idea to cast this in terms of responsibility is John Searle’s (see, e.g., Searle 2001, 37f). Elizabeth

Anscombe (1963 [1957]), who does not use the expression “direction of fit” but provides an influen-
tial illustration of the idea, casts this in terms of assignment of the locus of the “mistake” (ibid., 56).
For the history of the expression “direction of fit,” its underlying idea, and its application in various
fields of philosophical inquiry, see Humberstone 1992.
22 We, Together

world,” not the desire (although the latter happens in the case of adaptive
preferences).6
One of the problematic consequences of direction-​ of-​
fit-​
centered
conceptions of intentional modes is that affective intentionality tends to
appear as an anomaly rather than as the crucially important domain of in-
tentional attitudes that it is because its direction of fit does not “fit” the di-
chotomy, as it were. Affectively intentional attitudes include the classical
“basic emotions”—​fear, anger, disgust, joy, and perhaps surprise, though
many of them occur in a “moody” form (in which they do not seem to have
an identifiable intentional content) as well as in a standard intentional form,
where they are clearly targeted at something.7
Affective intentionality is particularly tightly connected to values. Truth
and the good are values, too, and since these are the formal objects of cog-
nitive and conative attitudes, respectively, it is not just affective intention-
ality, but cognition and conation, too, that tracks value. But affective attitudes
have a way of specifying and situatively anchoring values. Fear is not just about
the good as such, it is about safety under the given circumstances; disgust
is about the purity or cleanliness of a particular object in a particular situa-
tion; and so on. As evaluations, affective intentional attitudes also connect
cognition to action tendencies (e.g., fear does not just diagnose danger; it
is therapy, too: it is jumping up and getting ready to leave). While some af-
fective attitudes are “fast thinking”8 and do a “quick and dirty” job that is
sometimes in conflict with a more reasoned evaluation, it seems plausible to
say that “slow thinking,” too, involves emotions (in traditional terms: there
are not only passions of the “violent” sort, there are “calm passions,” too).9 If
there is no other way to “know” (some) values than in affective intentionality,
then there is perhaps no other way to understand what these values are than
in terms of affective intentionality either.10

6 Adaptive preferences involve changing one’s desires according to one’s opportunities. Adaptive

preferences are usually discussed as forms of irrationality (see Elster 1983).

7 Joy can be the pleasure one feels toward something, so that it has content and is thus intentional,

or it can be simply a mood with no intentional content. One could perhaps argue for the view that
moods are intentional, too, and that the content of a mood is “how things stand in general,” especially
perhaps with regards to what the intentional subject cares about, as opposed to a specific intentional
object (see, e.g., Kriegel 2019).
8 For the distinction between fast and slow thinking, see Kahnemann 2011.
9 See David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1960 [1739]), book II, part I, sect. I.
10 A good selection of philosophical views on the relation between emotion and value are the

contributions to Roeser and Todd 2014.

 Acting Together 23

A last introductory point to make about the meta-​mode of affective

intentionality—​a point that is particularly relevant when it comes to the
question of how intentionality can be joint, collective, or shared—​is that af-
fective intentionality is often bodily felt in a way that is less obvious in other
modes, especially in “purely” cognitive intentional modes. There is some-
thing to what it is like to be angry, or afraid, or guilty that involves the body.
Guilt may be felt as a “pang in the breastbone,” though it seems that it is
not felt in the breastbone in exactly the way toothache is felt in a particular
molar. The experience is not “of the breastbone,” but of the guilt, and it is felt
“breastbonedly,” as it were. In this way, affective intentional attitudes are not
“of the body,” but rather “bodily felt” attitudes that are intentional in that they
are “toward” something that is not (usually) itself the body.11
The triadic analysis of intentionality in terms of content, subject, and
mode cannot provide a universal definition of intentional attitudes. Though
content, subject, and mode are necessary and jointly sufficient for inten-
tionality, the definition of intentionality in these terms is obviously circular.
The content in question is intentional content, and likewise for the other
features. Also, content, subject, and mode do not really seem to be mutually
independent constituents or preconditions of intentionality. The analysis of
intentionality in terms of content, subject, and mode does not reduce inten-
tionality to independently existent constituents thereof. The analysis is not of
the reductive (or atomistic) but rather of the connective (or holistic) kind.12
Content, subject, and mode are unlike the atoms in a molecule that exist in-
dependently of each other and just happen to co-​exist in a particular mole-
cule; they are more like the letters of an alphabet that are what they are only
in virtue of how they are mutually related and work together. One should
therefore be careful not to predicate one’s understanding of intentionality as
a triadic structure of content, subject, and mode on a conception according
to which analysis is a reduction or decomposition of a complex phenomenon
into its simple and independently existing constituents, but consider the pos-
sibility that the features identified in the analysis exist as what they are only in
virtue of how they are related.
This is rather obvious in the case of the intentional mode (it is hard to im-
agine a belief or an intention to exist without anything that is believed or
intended therein, and without anyone who believes it or intends it), but

11 See Peter Goldie’s analysis of “feeling toward” in Goldie 2000, 58–​71.

12 See Strawson 1992.
24 We, Together

particularly important to keep in mind when thinking about content and

subject, too, where one might be tempted to think of the content as the
“world” that exists independently of whether anyone perceives it (or as
propositions that exist independently of whether or not they are true and
whether or not anyone has them in mind) and of the subject as “mind” that
exists even if it has no contact to reality, and thus to conceive of content and
subject as two substances—​and thus as independently existing—​that are re-
lated by mode. The analysis better steer clear of such issues, and this suggests
a connective rather than a reductive understanding of the proposed analysis
(this will be important to remember in the discussions of intentional subjec-
tivity in Sections 1.6 and 2.1).
If this is intentionality, what about intention is it that can be shared, and
how? Recall that I use “shared,” “joint,” or “collective” interchangeably when
it comes to intention, and I already mentioned above the reservations I have
against the expressions “joint” and “collective”: they evoke the image of
“collecting” or “joining” pre-​existing elements, which may not apply to our
case. “Collecting” and “joining” differ in that the latter suggests a connection
between the elements that is not suggested by the former. In a typical col-
lection, the elements are not connected to each other but merely put into an
arrangement in virtue of which they count as collected. Insofar as the unity
in question involves a connection between the elements rather than a looser
form of arrangement, “joint” might perhaps be preferable to “collective,” as
far as our case is concerned.
The word “sharing” deserves closer attention. It is used in a variety of very
different ways or stands for a series of very different and sometimes contra-
dictory conceptions, and it is important not to be distracted by equivocations
here. I first propose to distinguish type-​sharing from token-​sharing. In type-​
sharing, the unity of the shares—​what it is that is being shared—​is a type,
as in the case in which you and I, completely independently of each other,
share a preference for early 80s glam rock music, or in the case where two
people can be said to share their fear of dogs even though they have never
even met, let alone been confronted with a dog together. In the case of token-​
sharing, the unity of the shares (that which is being shared) is a token rather
than a type. Rather than a genus under which all the shares of the shared
fall (that which is being shared), in token-​sharing it is a whole (rather than
a type) in which the sharers participate or take part. In this taxonomy of
ways of sharing, two kinds of token-​sharing can be distinguished according
to whether the token (the unity of the shared that is a whole) that is being
 Acting Together 25

shared is dissolved or whether it is constituted in and by the sharing. I suggest

calling the first case distributive sharing, the second case contributive sharing.
For the first alternative, etymology is telling: some other Germanic languages
have the root word of the English word “sharing” in their word for “scissor”
(which is of Latin origin), and this idea is implied in the distributive concept
of token-​sharing, where sharing consists in dividing up a token whole into
parts that are distributed among the participant sharers, a process within
which the whole is dissolved into parts—​the shares. The sort of participation
that is involved in token-​sharing of the distributive kind is the taking a part
of the whole away for oneself, the claiming of a share for oneself from the side
of each participant in the sharing. To finally give an example, it is in token-​
sharing of the distributive kind that we share a cake (each of us receives or
takes a piece). The other concept of token-​sharing is contributive rather than
distributive in nature. In token-​sharing of the contributive kind, participa-
tion in the whole does not result in its resolution in parts. Rather than being
dissolved by distribution, the whole that is being shared is either constituted
or at least strengthened or reaffirmed as a unity by the sharers’ participation
(which accordingly is not literally participation at all, in terms of cipere of
a pars; rather, it is tribuere of a pars to the whole, and thus contribution).
To illustrate the difference between token-​sharing of the distributive and
of the contributive kinds, and the spectrum on which real cases of token-​
sharing move, consider the following two ways in which you and I can share
an apartment: either by dividing it up as neatly as possible into two separate
living quarters—​token-​sharing of the distributive kind—​or by inhabiting the
apartment together by making it the home in which you and I live together.
Real cases will often be somewhere in between, and, in this particular case,
it might even be that in order for us to inhabit the apartment together, as the
contributively shared home of our living together rather than alongside each
other, each of us needs their separate spaces, too.
It seems probable to assume that the kind of sharing involved in our living
together in general, and of the intentional sharing involved in living together
in particular, is the contributive token kind of sharing. It is token-​sharing, not
type-​sharing, because we do not live together, or share an intention simply in
virtue of our living lives of the same kind. If each of us lived in qualitatively
identical separated boxes we would not be living together, however similar
our lives would be as a result. And it is token-​sharing of the contributive kind
rather than token-​sharing of the distributive kind because we do not share
a life by cutting it up into pieces (though it does sometimes feel that way!)
26 We, Together

but by contributing to it through participation (though some distribution of

parts, e.g., in the division of roles, will certainly play a role, too).13
If something like this is the sort of sharing that is involved in the sharing of
intention, the further question is: where in attitudes of the form “we intend
to φC” is it to be found? It is quite obviously present in the intentional content
φC, the intended joint or plural action—​but is it only there, or is it in “we,”
the intentional subject, too? Or is it somehow the “intend,” the intentional
mode, too, that is shared as a “we-​mode”? All of these suggestions have been
made in the relevant received research, and the strengths and weaknesses
of the three main systematic positions in the field deserve to be examined
thoroughly.

13 One source of inspiration for this taxonomy of kinds of sharing is Collingwood 1942, esp. 19.66.

It deserves to be mentioned here that Collingwood’s New Leviathan is the most important source of
Wilfried Sellars’s concept of we-​intention that is, in turn, the immediate source for the late 20th-​and
early 21st-​century debate on shared, joint, and collective intentionality.
 1.3
The Content of Shared Intention

It might seem that a full answer to the question of what’s shared about shared
intention has already been given above. As pointed out in Section 1.1, the
kind of “we intend to φ” that interests here is “we intend to φC,” where it quite
obviously is the φ-​ing that is joint, shared, or collective since it is one token
action with a plurality of participants. Thus, it has a great deal of initial plau-
sibility to assume, as a default, that what is shared, joint, or collective about
shared, joint, or collective intention is the content and just the content. In
this view, no sharedness, jointness, or collectivity in the other features of “we
intend to φ” is needed, and thus no ruminating about a mysterious shared,
joint, or collective intentional subject and no equally mysterious additional
“we-​mode.” The initial plausibility of this approach to the analysis of “we in-
tend to φC” comes from the conjunction of the (perhaps historically some-
what contingent) fact that, in philosophical research, intention seems clear
and unproblematic in the case of individual, distributive, or singular inten-
tion, but somewhat unclear and problematic in the case of shared, joint,
collective, or plural intention, on the one hand, and Ockham’s razor, on the
other hand. If singular, individual, or distributed intention is taken as the de-
fault, then it seems evident to approach shared, joint, or collective intentions
within an extension strategy1: in this perspective, the shared, joint, or collec-
tive case is examined by means of an extension of an analytical framework
developed for the singular case. It examines what has to be changed in—​or
added to—​the analysis of singular, several, distributive, or individual inten-
tion to accommodate plural, joint, collective, or shared intention. It is plau-
sible to think, from this perspective, that the account that requires the least
change in (or addition to) the received analysis of intention to accommodate
for shared, joint, or collective intention is to be favored.
Let us call the view that what’s shared, joint, or collective about “we in-
tend to φC” is only content the content-​approach to (or the content-​account

1 For a critical reconstruction of the extension strategy pursued in most of the received research on

shared, joint, or collective intentionality, see Schweikard 2011.

We, Together. Hans Bernhard Schmid, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197563724.003.0004
28 We, Together

of) shared, joint, or collective intention.2 According to the content-​approach,

when we intend to φC, each of us intends to φC. The intending is a distribution
of attitudes: only that what is intended in each of the distributed intentions,
the intentional content, is collective, shared, or joint. In the case of the two of
us, you and me, for us to intend to φC is that I intend to φC and that you in-
tend to φC. The intentional subject (“we”) in “we intend to φC” is, according
to the content-​approach, distributive rather than collective. In the case of the
two of us, it’s you and it’s I. The right analysis “we intend to φC,” according to
the content-​account, is “weD intend to φC.”
Content-​accounts recognize that this cannot plausibly be the full story.
I intending to φC and you intending to φC, independently of each other, is
obviously insufficient for us to intend to φC. For how could I involve you in
the content of my intention if I had no clue about what you are up to? It does
not seem implausible to assume, as the most prominent content-​accounts
do, that participants in shared intention need to know about each other’s
intentions.3
An element of social cognition is involved in content-​accounts of shared
intention: I need at least to know, believe, or assume in some other way (e.g.,
in terms of cognitive expectation) that you are similarly disposed, and vice
versa for you. However, thinking further about what exactly has to be added
to each of us intending our φC-​ing, things easily become rather complicated,
for it seems plausible to claim that what has to be added in terms of social
cognition cannot be limited to me believing that you are disposed to engage
in our φC-​ing, too, and you believing the same about me. For how could I be-
lieve (know, expect, etc.) that you involve me in the content of your intention
if it were not for my belief (knowledge, expectation, etc.) that you believe
(know, assume, expect, etc.) that I am similarly disposed, and vice versa for
you? Once we’ve taken this first step in the analysis, it seems that we have to
go all the way through ever higher orders of mutual social cognition, with no

2 The clearest and most prominent example of a content-​account of shared, joint, or collective in-

tention in recent academic research in philosophy is Michael E. Bratman’s (see, e.g., Bratman 1999,
esp. Chaps. 5–​8). Raimo Tuomela’s (and Kaarlo Miller´s) account of we-​intention has features of a
content account, too. In this account, it is not each participant’s intention “that we φC” that is the de-
cisive element of analysis, but rather each participant’s intention to do their part (Tuomela and Miller
1988). This avoids some of the problems to be discussed below, but, since it is as their part that each
participant intends their participation (Tuomela 2005), it seems to be the case that, as the whole to
which one’s part is intended as a part, φC figures in the content after all. However, Tuomela has made
the “we-​mode” the key label for his analysis, which suggests that, alongside his source Wilfried Sellars
and John Searle, he should be placed in the camp of the “we-​moders” (see Section 1.5).
3 For knowledge/​belief versions, see, e.g., Tuomela and Miller 1988; Bratman 1999.
 Acting Together 29

final destination in sight. We have, it seems, to make a structure of (however

implicit) infinitely iterated mutual beliefs (knowledge, expectations, etc.)
part of the analysis.
With higher-​order social cognition of rapidly increasing levels becoming
involved in such accounts, the structure of the analysis quickly turns out to
be complicated and either simply impossible for the sort of limited cognizers
that we are or at least cognitively more demanding than seems acceptable
for the sort of participants in joint intention that a plausible account thereof
should be able to accommodate. We may not think that human infants are
proper social meta-​cognizers (with beliefs about what others believe) and
therefore don’t really participate in joint intentional activities, but perhaps
we would still like to be able accommodate them as participants in our con-
ception of what it is we’re doing together.4
There are several ways of tackling this challenge from a content-​account
perspective in the literature. Content theorists either argue that higher-​order
beliefs may be construed as dispositional rather than occurrent, so that they
need not consume actual mental resources,5 or they appeal to some rational
base (or reason) for higher-​order attitudes that renders the formation thereof
redundant (e.g., some “social ground”6), or they resort to a weaker version
of social cognition (e.g., reliance rather than belief or knowledge).7 In the
latter regard, it does perhaps make sense to expand the range of reciprocal
attitudes beyond the “purely” cognitive range. Trust or just hope that the
other participants are suitably disposed may be an attitude of the affective
rather than the cognitive kind.
The problem of the necessary social cognitive or affective infrastructure
assumed in content-​accounts of shared intention is important and inter-
esting in many respects. But it easily distracts from a much more funda-
mental problem with content-​accounts of shared intention: the problem of
determining what exactly it is that each of us intends when weD intend to φC.
As we have approached the issue above, what each of us intends is our
joint (token) action, and this is problematic because it might be a non-
starter independently of the problem of what has to be added to it to make
the account hold water. The assumption that joint actions (in terms of token

4 See, e.g., Tollefsen 2005.

5 See, for a discussion, Blomberg 2012, 55.
6 See Sivertsen 2015.
7 Arguments against belief and for reliance are in Alonso 2009.
30 We, Together

plural actions) are intended distributively by the participant individuals is

problematic.
One way to approach the problem is the following. The ways in which we
live together—​the forms of our shared, joint, or collective activity—​often
involve positions from which individuals can (and indeed do) intend joint
actions, in a way. This is paradigmatically the case when our boss (or some
influential member who is in a position to do so) decides what we’re going to
do next. But let’s assume that, between you and me, you’re the boss. If your
intending that we φC determines what will be done, then how would this
not make redundant my intending that we φC, as it is assumed in content-​
accounts? After all, given that, between you and me, your decision (as the
boss) settles the question of what we are going to do, all that is left to me (as
the subordinate), in terms of practical commitment, is to go along and do
my part (knowing that in virtue of your decision, it is my prescribed part
in our φC-​ing). Claiming that each one of us (weD) needs to intend our φC-​
ing seems like implausibly assuming that everyone is the boss in shared in-
tentional activity, with no subordinates around. The analysis of “we intend
to φC” in terms of “weD intend to φC” seems to result in a vicious sort of
overdetermination of the intended plural action: if your intention already
determines what we are going to do I cannot plausibly assume mine to play
the same role.8
It can plausibly be objected that for you to intend our joint action, you
need not take yourself to be in total control of me. Assuming some degree of
influence on me may be enough. And you need not assume that I am simply
going to do what you expect me to do (this would arguably be a case of so-
cially extended singular action rather than plural action); rather, you may
reasonably expect me to be influenced by you in such a way that I develop a
pro-​attitude towards our φC-​ing, too, so that when we go to work it is indeed
the case that you intend that we φC, and I intend it, too.9
But whether or not the sort of pro-​attitude is indeed the sort of practical
commitment that is intention (a problem to which we will turn shortly), the
question is: How is it that you can assume that what you intend for us to do
influences me in such a way as to form such a pro-​attitude towards our φC-​
ing? Perhaps you can’t just rely on your charms here, powerful as they might
be, for what is needed in terms of power might have to be more reliable and

8 This paraphrases a critique originally put forward by David Velleman in Velleman 1997.
9 See Bratman 1999, Chap. 6.
 Acting Together 31

robust than that—​at least if your intending for us to φC is different from you
intending just to try to make us φC by making me, too, want for us to φC.
Similar worries exist with regards to other sources of power, such as persua-
sion. Perhaps, however, your intention is simply a brilliant idea that you as-
sume I will easily recognize as such and adopt it, too? In that case, you need
to know me rather well already, which probably already involves established
ways of intentionally doing things together between us (how else would
you know so well that I am going to adopt your plan?)—​or your intention
will simply be to propose your idea to me and perhaps convince me with the
powers of rational arguments of your suggestion, rather than for us to be φC-​
ing. But in order for your arguments to rationally convince me, we need to
engage in discourse, and it is part and parcel of rational discourse that one
cannot reasonably approach it with a preset outcome as the intended result.
You can certainly approach a rational discourse with an idea in mind of what
might be the result (thinking that you already know and that I will have to
agree), but that cannot be the intended goal. You can intend to convince me
of your view within a discourse in which we are jointly intentionally engaged,
but this is an intention that you can form only based on our intentionally
engaging in a discourse together. Except perhaps for extreme scenarios that
leave no reasonable room for another argument to win out in the discourse,
there is something paradoxical about the concept of you intending for us to
engage in joint deliberation for the purpose of convincing me of what you had
in mind for us to do. For it is part and parcel of the kind of joint intentional ac-
tivity that is joint deliberation that we have to intend it open-​mindedly, as it
were, and without already being settled on a specific outcome as its purpose.
It has to be part and parcel of your attitude towards our rational discourse
that I might convince you of something else, or we, together, might come up
with an entirely new idea, or whatever we’re doing is not a rational discourse.
On the other end of the spectrum of potential sources of influence, let’s
not forget about coercion.10 After all, some coercive means are efficient with

10 The claim that coercion is incompatible with joint intentional activity is controversial between

the relevant authors. Michael E. Bratman famously rules coercion out, most famously in his treat-
ment of the “mafia-​sense of ‘we’” where a mafia kingpin throws a victim in the trunk saying “we’re
going on a trip together”; this trip is not, Bratman argues, a case of what he calls shared cooperative
activity (Bratman 1999, 100). Margaret Gilbert claims that agreements constitute joint intentions
even if one of the relevant parties is forced to agree by the other party holding them at gunpoint
(Gilbert 1993). The scenarios of each of the authors differs in that Bratman’s mafia victim does indeed
not figure as an agent in the story at all, whereas Gilbert rightly points out that even coerced actions
are still the victim’s own actions, though the use of “choice” is, as Gilbert recognizes, ambivalent in
this case. Gilbert thus concluded that joint intentions can come to exist even between perpetrators
and victims of coercion (which means, in her account, that the relevant structure of entitlements
32 We, Together

considerable modal robustness and independently of previously established

joint intentional practices. You cannot just intend for you and a perfect
stranger to make a trip together—​unless you have a gun. But if you simply
lock me up in the trunk of your car and drive away, we’re not making the trip
together in the way that is characteristic of a plural action for it does not in-
volve me as an agent. It is something you do to me rather than something we
do together. If you hold a gun to my back and force me to come along, then
I am involved as an agent in the ensuing trip, and I might even develop some
sort of a pro-​attitude towards our making a trip, though probably only as a
means to secure my own survival. It does seem plausible that we can inten-
tionally act together for individually quite different reasons. If you and I walk
together it can be that one of us is in it for the sake of the company, whereas
the other has a further agenda in mind, such as picking the companion’s
brain—​we’re still doing it together. Even though, as a practice, our acting to-
gether is more robust the more we share the reasons for engaging in it,11 it is
perhaps unavoidable that at some level of fine-​grainedness of the descrip-
tion, our reasons differ from each other. Even if we’re both in it simply for
the sake of our company, the way in which our company appears as a good,
from each of our perspectives, will differ according to our own conceptions
of its value. But it would be a far step from acknowledging that individual
participants can (and perhaps must) have reasons of their own, to some de-
gree, to saying that we’re intentionally acting together even if our reasons can
clash with each other in such a way that one of the participant’s only reason for
participating is to avoid the other participant’s threat to life. The complexities
involved here should certainly not be underestimated (after all, threats come
in many shapes and forms, and they are sometimes hard to distinguish from
offers, and cooperation under perfectly threat-​free or uncoerced conditions
might be rare). But I submit that it is plausible to assume that an analysis of
the intentional infrastructure of acting together should not have to rely ex-
clusively on such motivations as fear of one’s partners.
For other forms of influence, it seems that we can reasonably assume to
have them only within some established cooperative context. In these cases,

and obligations comes to exist between the participants and that normative pro tanto reasons for the
coerced party to do their part are created even though, in most cases, there will be overriding reasons
for not doing their parts). Insofar as, under such conditions, acts of apparent “agreement” cannot
reasonably be construed as intentional under any other “description” than to avert an imminent and
clear threat, however, I tend to think that this scenario does not constitute shared intention.

11 This point is made forcefully in by Bennett Helm (2008).

 Acting Together 33

you still need to assume that I’m up for joint action with you, and, except per-
haps under extreme circumstances, this is not a reasonable attitude to take
towards a perfect stranger as it presupposes that some degree of cooperative-​
mindedness is already established between the prospective participants. If
we’re friends or family, co-​workers, or perhaps even just fellow engaged citi-
zens, however, then you may intend for us to φC and perhaps expect that I am
going to form a similar attitude once I have grasped the brilliance of your
idea. But, in any such case, we’re already intentionally active together (living
together, spending time together, participating in public life together), of
which your intention that we φC is just a specification. If we’re on a hike to-
gether, and if you know that I am open to good suggestions, you may intend
that we take one way rather than another. But this presupposes that we’re
already in this together, in principle, and it is only based on our cooperation
that we can take an intentional initiative of this kind. In other words, shared
intentional activity explains the sort of influence at work here, as a feature of
its infrastructure, rather than the other way around.
This easily appears as a depressingly conservative view. Surely, one might
object, we can initiate shared intentional activities that go beyond already
established cooperative contexts. How else would we ever be able to start
something new together? And is it not true that, quite often, something new
starts with somebody coming up with an idea for something they could do
together with agents with whom they have not previously cooperated? The
point here is not to deny that this is possible. Rather, the point is that coming
up with an idea for something one wants do together with somebody with
whom one has not previously cooperated in any way cannot be the sort of
practical commitment that is intention—​an intention is not simply an idea
that one wishes to realize. We can intend to propose a project to a potential
partner, to win them for a joint plan, or suchlike, but this is not the same as
intending the planned joint action. We cannot involve each other’s agency in
our own intention without being in a position to do so in virtue of the struc-
ture of an already established joint intentional activity, as in the case where,
in conversation with you, or within an established practice, I leave it up to
you to determine what you and I are going to do together.
This brings us to the central problem of content accounts. In the basic case
of acting intentionally together—​in the case that does not already presup-
pose an established joint intentional activity or practice—​no individual can,
by themselves, intend a joint action because intention, in the sense of the
word that is relevant here, is action self-​referential. Action self-​referentiality
34 We, Together

means that the subject of the intention and the agent of the intended action
have to be the same. The sense of the word “intention” that is relevant here is
practical commitment. In ordinary language, we sometimes speak of inten-
tion in a looser sense, but the relevant sense here is the meaning of the word
in which “intentional” is the intentional subject’s practical commitment to
the intended action. The sort of commitment, however, is self-​commitment. It
is not the sense of commitment in which a judge can commit a defendant to
jail, but the sense in which the intentional subject is thereby self-​determined
to the intended action, which therefore can only be their own.
Intentions can, of course, be given up or simply forgotten, but, as long as
they stand, they are practical self-​commitments. This is different in cases
where what we colloquially call “intention” is just an intense desire or perhaps
a more or less worked-​out plan for how to do what we, in this loose sense, al-
ready “intend.” Having a plan is, as such, not a practical self-​commitment—​
only by adopting it, committing to it as one’s own can a plan become involved
in an intention.12 Having a plan is, as such, insufficient for intention, and
perhaps it is not even necessary: we might not have a plan of how to do it in
order to intend. It does seem true that we need to know at least what needs to
be the case for us to have done what we wanted to do in order to intend, and
also have at least some inkling about how to go about it, and if this is having
a plan, then having a plan does indeed seem to be necessary (though still
not sufficient) for having an intention. But the sort of know-​how involved in
most intentions seems more adequately captured as a (minimal) skill rather
than as a plan.
In many languages, the agential nature of intention is not immediately ob-
vious because “intention” can also be used propositionally, as well as in other
ways. I can intend to go for a walk, but I can also intend that we go for a walk,
and I can even intend for you to go for a walk. The non-​action referential
phrases (“intend that . . .,” “intend for . . . to . . .”) grammatically allow for a
distinction that is absent in the agential phrase: the distinction between the
intentional subject and the agent of the intended action; they suggest that
intention is not necessarily action-​self-​referential. If I intend that we go for a
walk, the intentional subject is “I,” but the agent of the intended action seems
to be “we.” If I intend for you to go for a walk, the intentional subject is “I,” the
agent of the “intended” action seems to be “you.” But if I intend to walk, the

12 The “planning view” of intention (that recognizes the role of commitment) is most prominently

supported by Michael E. Bratman (esp. Bratman 1987; for the application of the planning view of in-
tention to the shared case, see Bratman 1999).
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 “Do you suppose he has heard of that game, Dan?” laughed
Walter.
“We’ll soon know,” replied Dan with a smile as he stepped out
upon the platform, where the outstretched hand of the harness-
maker grasped his first of all.
“I say, Dan,” demanded Silas, “I hear ye beat ’em all.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, sir, I did! Have the New Yorks said anything to you yet?”
“Not yet,” laughed Dan.
“Wait till you hear of what Dan does next year,” suggested Walter.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:
Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.
Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been
preserved.
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