Introduction

This week we first encounter joint action and the second (of two) main question for the whole course: What distinguishes doing something jointly with another person from acting in parallel with them but merely side by side? We will investigate the leading, best developed attempt to answer this question (Bratman, 2014). We will also consider some initial objections to that answer.

Notes

This is the first lecture on the second (of two) main part of the course. Here we turn to the question, What distinguishes doing something jointly with another person from acting in parallel with them but merely side by side?

In this lecture we first encounter the key ideas you will need for Assignment 3, which is also the second piece of assessed work you will submit.

This lecture does not depend on you having studied any previous sections.

In case you missed some of the earlier lectures, this lecture has been written to avoid depending on you having already studied those lectures. After this lecture, you should be able to write a basic essay for Assignment 3. In the lecture following this one, will go deeper and make explicit connections with earlier lectures.

For the minimum course of study, consider only these sections:

• The Question
• Bratman on Shared Intentional Action

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References