Minimal Cooperation and Shared Agency

218 Pages·2020·2.383 MB·English

by  Anika Fiebich

Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality 11
Anika Fiebich  Editor
Minimal
Cooperation
and Shared
Agency
Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality
Volume 11
Series Editor
Raul Hakli, Dept of Political & Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki,
Finland
Managing Editors
Hans Bernhard Schmid, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Jennifer Hudin, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Advisory Editors
Robert Audi, Department of Philosophy, Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, USA
Michael Bratman, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Stanford, USA
Cristiano Castelfranchi, Cognitive Science, University of Siena, Siena, Italy
David Copp, University of California, Davis, Davis, USA
Ann Cudd, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA
John Davis, Marquette University, Milwaukee, USA
Wolfgang Detel, Department of Philosophy, University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
Andreas Herzig, Computer Science, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France
Ingvar Johansson, Philosophy, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
Byron Kaldis, Department of Philosophy, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Martin Kusch, Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria
Christopher Kutz, Law, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Eerik Lagerspetz, Department of Philosophy, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Pierre Livet, Department of Philosophy, Universite de Provence, Marseille, France
Tony Lawson, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Kirk Ludwig, Department of Philosophy, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA
Kay Mathiessen, Information Science and Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson,
USA
Larry May, Philosophy Department, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA
Georg Meggle, Institute of Philosophy, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
Anthonie Meijers, Department of Philosophy, University of Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The
Netherlands
Seumas Miller, Philosophy, Australian National University and Charles Sturt University,
Canberra, Australia
Uskali Mäki, Academy of Finland, Helsinki, Finland
Elisabeth Pacherie, Cognitive Science, Jean Nicod Institute, Paris, France
Henry Richardson, Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, Washington
D.C., USA
Michael Quante, Department of Philosophy, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
John Searle, Berkeley, USA
Michael Tomasello, Department of Developmental Psychology, Max Planck Institute,
Leipzig, Germany
First book series in Philosophy of the Social Sciences that specifically focuses on
Philosophy of Sociality and Social Ontology.
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Anika Fiebich
Editor
Minimal Cooperation
and Shared Agency
Editor
Anika Fiebich
Bremen, Germany
ISSN 2542-9094 ISSN 2542-9108 (electronic)
Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality
ISBN 978-3-030-29782-4 ISBN 978-3-030-29783-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29783-1
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Contents
1 Minimal Cooperation (Editorial Introduction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Anika Fiebich
2 What Is Minimally Cooperative Behavior? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Kirk Ludwig
3 Joint Action: Why So Minimal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Cédric Paternotte
4 What in the World: Conversation and Things in Context . . . . . . . . . . 59
Shaun Gallagher
5 S hared Intentionality and the Cooperative Evolutionary Hypothesis . . . 71
Glenda Satne and Alessandro Salice
6 Minimal Cooperation and Group Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Katherine Ritchie
7 Towards a Blueprint for a Social Animal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Stephen Butterfill and Elisabeth Pacherie
8 Modest Sociality, Minimal Cooperation and Natural
Intersubjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Michael Wilby
9 Solving the Hi-lo Paradox: Equilibria, Beliefs, and Coordination . . . 149
Francesco Guala
10 Proprietary Reasons and Joint Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Abe Roth
11 Motor Representation and Action Experience in Joint Action . . . . . . 181
Corrado Sinigaglia and Stephen A. Butterfill
12 From Collective Memory … to Collective Metamemory? . . . . . . . . . 195
Santiago Arango-Muñoz and Kourken Michaelian
v
Chapter 1
Minimal Cooperation (Editorial
Introduction)
Anika Fiebich
Abstract This chapter is an editorial introduction, which gives an overview of the
single contributions to that volume. It will illustrate that ‘minimality’ in cooperation
can be understood in various ways and that a distinction between internalist versus
externalist approaches to cooperation explains why some of the accounts defended
in this volume are incompatible with each other.
Keywords Cooperation · Minimality · Internalism · Externalism
This volume brings together top scholars in the philosophy of mind and action to
discuss minimality in cooperation. In general, ‘minimality’ can be understood in a
diverse number of ways. It can refer, for example, to the minimal or necessary cri-
teria for cooperation or, alternatively, ‘minimal’ can be understood in the sense of
‘basic’ or ‘simple’. Elucidating the variety of ways in which minimality can be
interpreted in the analysis of cooperation provides a genuine contribution to the
contemporary joint action debate. Notably, the main accounts in this debate (e.g., by
Michael Bratman, Margaret Gilbert, Raimo Tuomela or John Searle) provide suffi-
cient rather than necessary or minimal criteria for cooperation. A lot of discussion
in the debate deals with robust rather than simpler and more attenuate cases of
cooperation. Focusing on such minimal cases, however, may help to explain how
cooperation comes into existence and how simple cases interrelate with more com-
plex ones. Minimality in cooperation can be captured by focusing on particular
aspects of cooperation, such as minimal social cognitive skills and competencies, or
on how social roles and group memberships might deliver minimal cooperation
constraints. Finally, discussing minimality in cooperation with respect to the pecu-
liarities of different kinds of mental actions involved in cooperative activities (e.g.,
team reasoning or collective remembering) is also a fruitful enterprise.
A. Fiebich (*)
Bremen, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1
A. Fiebich (ed.), Minimal Cooperation and Shared Agency, Studies in the
Philosophy of Sociality 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29783-1_1
2 A. Fiebich
The volume captures minimality in cooperation in the following ways:
(i) From Minimal to Full Cooperation
Starting from an account of full cooperation, Kirk Ludwig arrives at an account
of minimal cooperation by asking what features can be discarded while at the same
time retaining some form of social cooperation. Ludwig argues that cooperative
behavior essentially involves cooperating agents who intend to contribute with one
another to achieve a shared goal (i.e., agents who share an intention in a distributive
sense). For this reason, cooperative behaviour involves, but goes beyond, mere
coordinated behaviour. On this approach, minimally joint intentional action coin-
cides with minimally cooperative behavior. Ludwig discusses four features that are
jointly sufficient for fully cooperative behavior: (i) shared intention, (ii) absence of
conflict, (iii) willingness to aid, and (iv) full effort. If (i) is the minimal condition,
the failure of (ii)–(iii) should be compatible with cooperation. Competitive games
and verbal arguments violate (ii) but nonetheless count as cooperative activities.
Violations of (iii) are also compatible with cooperation and shared intention. One
may intentionally sing a duet with another person in the absence of any error with-
out being willed to help if she falters. One may even interfere with another’s part (to
promote one’s own) without intending to undermine the joint effort. An example of
a violation of (iv) is a work slowdown. This is a case in which full effort is withheld
but workers have not ceased to cooperate with management entirely. All the cases in
which cooperation occurs, Ludwig argues, include shared intention as their com-
mon feature, and there are no cases of cooperation in which it is missing. In addi-
tion, Ludwig argues that minimal cooperation does not require rationality and is
compatible with coercion. Ludwig ends by comparing his account with ‘game-
theoretic cooperation’, arguing that it is not the target notion of social cooperation,
but at best provides rational underpinnings for shared intention (and hence genuine
cooperation) in solving coordination problems.
(ii) Context and Emergence of Minimal Cooperation
Cédric Paternotte starts by discussing various ways in which minimality in coop-
eration can be understood by referring to (i) scale minimalism (i.e., cooperation
involving a minimal number of interchangeable agents), (ii) conceptual minimalism
(i.e., cooperation that builds upon a minimal conceptual core), (iii) ontological mini-
malism (i.e., cooperation involving a minimal number of entities needed for its char-
acterization); and (iv) cognitive minimalism (i.e., cooperation requiring minimal
cognitive skills and abilities). Reviewing a number of minimal approaches to coop-
eration in the literature, Paternotte illustrates that although these kinds of minimal-
ism are not mutually exclusive, they are rarely all adopted simultaneously. Moreover,
the different kinds of minimalism allow for pluralism. For example, an account may
be minimal in a conceptual sense, because it essentially builds on the concept of joint
commitment, while another account counts as conceptually minimal, because it does
not allow for subtracting a specific mental attitude (e.g., a we-i ntention). Paternotte
embraces pluralism even further by introducing what he calls a ‘contextually mini-
malist approach’ that focuses on cases of cooperation that occur in contexts in which
1 Minimal Cooperation (Editorial Introduction) 3
those factors that typically favor cooperative behavior are absent. Examples such as
demonstrations, deliberation, and collective free improvisation are not minimal in
either of the traditional senses. On the contextually minimal approach, however,
such cases are minimal with respect to the contexts in which they occur.
Shaun Gallagher discusses the minimal conditions, resources and processes
involved in the emergence of cooperation that is not preceded by the formation of a
distal or prior shared intention. Communicative practices, like bodily gestures and
speech acts, are first-order practices: they are not governed by reflective awareness or
explicit planning, but are second-person practices, i.e., they are most often performed
for others in social interaction. Gallagher discusses cases in which the meaning of
such practices arises through the dynamics of the social interaction (e.g., when play-
ing hopscotch together). Here he draws on Goldstein’s notion of ’gestalt’ according
to which the relation between abstract and concrete cognitive processes should be
understood on a foreground/background gestalt model rather than on a hierarchical
one. On this account, the dynamical relations shape the relata in a way that cognitive
processes like memory or imagination are not separated from the social interaction,
but are continuous with, and intervene in, first-order communicative practices.
(iii) Minimal Cooperation and Group Membership
Glenda Satne and Alessandro Salice challenge Michael Tomasello’s take on the
‘Cooperative Evolutionary Hypothesis’ (CEH) by providing an alternative minimal
collective view. According to CEH, human-specific skills for cooperation draw
essentially on the capacity to understand behavior in terms of mental states.
Tomasello distinguishes between two forms of social intentionality as being part of
a two-step evolutionary story: first, cooperation relying on joint intentionality in
small-scale groups, which draws upon joint attention and coordination, and second,
collective intentionality in large-scale groups that involves establishing a cultural
common ground. The authors argue that social intentionality is collective from the
onset with different stages of development, and point to a number of difficulties that
Tomasello’s account of joint intentionality bears in the light of developmental
research. Following Michael Bratman, Tomasello argues that cooperation in small-
scale groups relies on joint intentionality in which two (or more) agents share a goal
to cooperate in accordance with, and because of, each other’s sharing that goal,
which is mutual common knowledge between them. This definition is cognitively
demanding since the possession of mutual common knowledge presupposes a
capacity for building meta-representations and for attributing mental states to one-
self and others. Moreover, it excludes preverbal infants’ helping behaviors as an
instance of joint intentionality and cooperation. Reviewing a number of develop-
mental findings, Satne and Salice argue that cooperation is present in ontogeny long
before the capacity for mental-state attribution develops. On the minimal collective
view, infants’ helping behavior is a case of cooperation that involves social inten-
tionality in virtue of having a sense of engagement and group membership.
Katherine Ritchie‘s defence of an externalist approach to minimal cooperation
stands in opposition to the traditional internalist idea that cooperation essentially
depends on mental factors like collective or shared intentions. On her approach,
4 A. Fiebich
minimal cooperation occurs when the members of a group play roles in an organiza-
tional structure and share a common goal. While Ritchie acknowledges that internal-
ist approaches may be valid in small-scale cases of cooperation, she argues that they
cannot be scaled up to large-scale cooperative activities. Her focus is on large-s cale
cases of cooperation, such as legislative bodies or corporate teams. In such cases
group members may not be acquainted with other members or their mental states, but
are nonetheless cooperatively pursuing a common goal. Notably, not even knowledge
of the common goal may be required for there to be minimal cooperation in a large-
scale case. The members of a spy network, for example, may not know about the goal
of the network but could be minimally cooperating in virtue of their roles being
functionally integrated to achieve an end. Ritchie highlights that minimal coopera-
tion requires playing roles in an organized group structure, which rely on norms and
obligations. This normative dimension of cooperation rules out that the parts of a car
engine functioning in concord can be regarded as a case of minimal cooperation.
(iv) Minimal (Social) Cognition in Cooperation
Stephen Butterfill and Elisabeth Pacherie isolate some cognitively undemanding
forms of cooperation that different hypothetical creatures, who possess divergent
minimal social kills and cognitive abilities, are able to perform. They start by postu-
lating a creature called ‘Alphonso’ and his kin, whose social cognitive skills are
limited to tracking other people’s action goals, which allows them to coordinate their
own action towards a joint goal (e.g., moving a boulder together). Alphonso and his
kin act on that goal, which is most salient; and where there is none, they simply pick
up a goal, which is not too costly to end up acting alone, and pursue it under the
assumption that their kins will join. On some occasions, however, it is too dangerous
to act on that assumption (e.g., when hunting a large pig). In these cases salience is
required as a proxy for common knowledge. Salience is induced, for example, by
stimuli like loud noises (‘salience heuristic’), and if an event is not salient enough,
the characteristic response of others may work as a proxy (‘triangulation heuristic’).
The salience heuristic may fail, however, in situations, for example, where there are
two pigs and neither is more salient than the other. In such cases, communicative
skills such as gesturing and pointing are required, which are possessed by Alphonso’s
descendants called ‘Beki’. The triangulation heuristic, in turn, may fail on occasions
where it may be beneficial for the individual to hide a characteristic response for
others. In cases such as this, deceptive skills are required, which are possessed by
Alphonso’s descendants called ‘Bemi’. Communicative and deceptive skills are pos-
sessed by creatures called ‘Kimi’, who were born by parents stemming from both
groups. Butterfill and Pacherie highlight that these examples illustrate that groups
who do not possess sophisticated cognitive capacities, like belief reasoning, needed
for joint action according to classical accounts, are still capable of engaging in coop-
eration based on minimal cognitive skills and different proxies.
Michael Wilby distinguishes between three families of collaborative activities: (i)
massively shared agency, (ii) modest sociality, and (iii) minimal cooperation.
Minimal cooperation can be basic in a sense that it is performed as an end in itself,
or it can be a means to execute elements of plans within modest sociality such as
proposed by Bratman. Wilby focusses on the latter and discusses the social cognitive