This new essay collection by distinguished philosopher Margaret Gilbert provides a richly textured argument for the importance of joint commitment in our personal and public lives. Topics covered by this diverse range of essays range from marital love to patriotism, from promissory obligation to the unity of the European Union.

According to Margaret Gilbert, two or more people collectively believe that p if and only if they are jointly committed to believe that p as a body. But the way she construes joint commitment in her account – as a commitment of and by the several parties to “doing something as a body” – encourages the thought that the phenomenon accounted for is not that of genuine belief. I explain why this concern arises and explore a different (...) way of construing joint commitment, in order to avoid the concern. This leads me to propose a revised Gilbertian account of collective belief, according to which two or more people collectively believe that p if and only if they are jointly committed to p as true. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter, we recall some of the crucial aspects of Gilbert’s notion of joint commitment. Special attention is devoted to the importance of this notion both for human life in its social aspects (notably, the formation of group beliefs and the constituions of just joint commitments) and for social ontology (in particular, for the understanding of norm and institutions and of the intentionality of groups). Then, we briefly summarize the contents of the contributions collected in (...) the issue. (shrink)

I question the adequacy of Margaret Gilbert''s account of collectivefeelings of guilt as collective judgments which do not necessarilyhave any phenomenological components. I question whether joint commitment theory in its present form helps us to understand orresolve social conflicts.

There is reason to think that a particular concept of joint commitment informs much human behavior. This paper introduces the concept in question and briefly develops one argument for its centrality in human life. This argument focuses on the inherence in many central social phenomena of a particular kind of right.

On the relational conception of morality, the question of what we ought, morally, to do is understood as a question of how we ought to regulate our moral relations with one another. Despite its attractions, the philosophical foundations of the relational view are notoriously hard to make precise. In this paper, I offer a novel contractualist account of the foundations of relational moral obligations, which I call joint commitment contractualism. On this view, the normativity of relational moral obligations (...) is explained by reference to a distinctive kind of relationship in which moral agents have jointly committed themselves to the aim of justifying their behavior to each other on terms that others could not reasonably reject. (shrink)

This paper investigates the possibility of designing robots that are able to participate in commitments with human agents. In the first part of the article, we tackle some features that, we claim, make commitments crucial for human-human interactions. In particular, we focus on some reasons for believing that commitments can facilitate the planning and coordination of actions involving multiple agents: not only can commitments stabilize and perhaps even increase the motivation to contribute to other agents’ goals and to shared goals, (...) they also reinforce agents’ willingness to rely on other agents’ contributions. In the second part, we turn our attention to human-robot interaction. Here, we elaborate on five problems that roboticists could encounter in the attempt to implement commitments in human-robot interactions, and we argue in favor of some possible solutions to those problems. Finally, in the last part of the paper we zoom in on joint commitments, i.e., on commitments held by a plurality of agents towards shared goals. Given that the concept of joint commitment invokes the notion of a group, we discuss some more specific challenges that would have to be met for human agents to group-identify with robots. (shrink)

The phenomenon of shared intention has received much attention in the philosophy of mind and action. Margaret Gilbert (1989, 2000c, 2014b) argues that a shared intention to do A consists in a joint commitment to intend to do A. But we need to know more about the nature of joint commitments to know what exactly this implies. While the persistence of joint commitments has received much attention in the literature, their impersistence has received very little attention. (...) In this paper, we shed light on the impersistence of joint commitments by showing how joint commitments can be dissolved by unexpected events. (shrink)

This contribution intends to extend my previous attempt to defend modus vivendi as an alternative way to include people who do not share the essentials of a liberal society. The idea was to respond to a claim to realism: besides loyal citizens, whose doctrines overlap on the basics of a fair society, there are people whose loyalty towards institutions is not be wholehearted – since they do not concur to their public justification – but who may endorse them in a (...) stable way. I consider now a further way to deal with inclusion, compliance and stability: besides division on fundamental commitments and disagreement about values, peaceful coexistence may find strength in an alternative way to conceive the attitude of cooperation as rooted in a joint commitment. My argument will be presented as follows: a) I recall my conclusions about my idea of stable modus vivendi; b) I try and improve the wished outcome of stability in spite of partial political loyalty by reinforcing this with the argument of joint commitment; c) I draw some interlocutory conclusions. (shrink)

I defend some of Gilbert’s central claims about our capacity jointly to commit ourselves, and what follows from an exercise of it. I argue that, to explain these claims, we do not need to suppose, as Gilbert does, that we ever are jointly committed, that is, jointly in a state of being committed. I offer a diagnosis of why the gratuitousness of this supposition has been overlooked.

Aristotle devotes Nicomachean Ethics IX.6 to the notion of homonoia. Commonly translated as ‘concord’ or ‘like-mindedness’, homonoia is a central concept in Aristotle’s account of political friendship. I argue in this paper that Aristotle’s concept of homonoia cannot be perspicuously rendered as ‘like-mindedness’ or its cognates. For homonoia does not just involve the sameness of belief or opinion: it involves both shared commitments to the same goals and collective action aimed at realizing those goals, and cognates of ‘like-mindedness’ do not (...) bring this activity-involving component of homonoia clearly into relief. I attempt to capture this activity-involving component by presenting a novel interpretation of Aristotelian homonoia as joint commitment. My interpretation of homonoia as joint commitment offers solutions to two puzzles associated with NE IX.6. First, it establishes the function of NE IX.6 within Aristotle’s broader theory of friendship. Second, it clarifies the proper relationship between homonoia and political friendship. (shrink)

Margaret Gilbert has long defended the view that, roughly speaking, agents share the intention to perform an action if and only if they jointly commit to performing that action. This view has proven both influential and controversial. While some authors have raised concerns over the joint commitment view of shared intention, including at times offering purported counterexamples to certain aspects of the view, straightforward counterexamples to the view as a whole have yet to appear in the literature. Here (...) we provide such counterexamples to show that joint commitment is neither necessary nor sufficient for shared intention. (shrink)

This paper discusses current debates about the normativity of joint commitments in analytical social ontology from a methodological point of view. I argue that collective-acceptance-based, critical-emancipatory, and experimental-philosophy-based approaches to social ontology all face challenges in accommodating the dynamic and strategic aspects of joint commitment. To make up for their shortcomings, I draw on evolutionary game theory and mindshaping approaches to social cognition, while distinguishing between the mental models that individuals use for reasoning about joint commitments (...) and the theoreticians’ models that philosophers construct for studying select aspects of social reality. (shrink)

Tomasello frequently refers to joint commitment, but does not fully characterize it. In earlier publications, I have offered a detailed account of joint commitment, tying it to a sense that the parties form a “we,” and arguing that it grounds directed obligations and rights. Here I outline my understanding of joint commitment and its normative impact.

I argue that obligations of an important type inhere in what I call 'joint commitments'. I propose a joint commitment account of everyday agreements. This could explain why some philosophers believe that we know of the obligating nature of agreements a priori. I compare and contrast obligations of joint commitment with obligations in the relatively narrow sense recommended by H. L. A. Hart, a recommendation that has been influential. Some central contexts in which Hart takes (...) there to be obligations in his sense are contexts in which there are obligations of joint commitment. Nonetheless, different senses of 'obligation' appear to be at issue. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In what sense is commitment essential to joint action, and do the participants in a joint action themselves perceive commitment as essential? Attempts to answer this question have so far been hampered by clashes of intuition. Perhaps this is because the intuitions in question have mostly been investigated using informal methods only. To explore this possibility, we adopted a more formal approach to testing intuitions about joint action, sampling naïve participants’ intuitions about experimentally controlled (...) scenarios. This approach did reveal patterns in participants’ responses which may hint at potential conceptual links between commitment and joint action. It did not however provide evidence to support the view that commitment is essential to joint action, at least not from the agents’ own perspective. We conclude that intuitions alone, even when drawn systematically from a large sample, may be a poor basis for theorizing about joint action. (shrink)

Collective intentionality is one of the most fundamental notions in social ontology. However, it is often thought to refer to a capacity which does not presuppose the existence of any other social facts. This chapter critically examines this view from the perspective of one specific theory of collective intentionality, the theory of Margaret Gilbert. On the basis of Gilbert’s arguments, the chapter claims that collective intentionality is a highly contingent achievement of complex social practices and, thus, not a basic social (...) phenomenon. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, Gilbert’s thesis that certain kinds of collective intentionality presuppose joint normative commitments is introduced. Second, it is argued that, on this view, individual commitments can only constitute the relevant kinds of collective intentional states if there are socially shared “principles of membership” that connect the force of individual commitments to a shared content. Third, it is shown that strong collective intentionality depends on the practical acceptance of shared norms and on the establishment of authority relations through mutual recognition. (shrink)

For almost three decades, Margaret Gilbert has introduced a new account of social facts taking “joint commitments”, not only explicit but also implicit, as the cement of sociality properly understood. Gilbert has used this original account of collective phenomena to clarify a variety of issues, both in the philosophy of rights and in the philosophy of the social sciences. This paper focuses on the latter domain; it argues that although Durkheim and Mauss are central references in her pioneering work, (...) On Social Facts, Gilbert’s model has been underestimated in the fields of sociology and anthropology. This may come from the fact that Gilbert provides the reader with only imaginary examples. To overcome this difficulty, Bouvier investigates several historical examples in two related domains:, the political and the religious. Another reason for this relative lack of interest may come from Gilbert’s very unconventional interpretation of the Durkheimian explanation of social beliefs. Although, on the one hand, her “contractualist” (or Rousseauist) interpretation permits a sharp illumination of certain social facts, it may, on the other hand, impede the recognition of the specificity of other kinds of beliefs, which sociologists and anthropologists—including Durkheim—usually consider as collective beliefs. Bouvier, by contrast, introduces alternative models, illustrating them with similar, although ultimately distinct from previous, historical examples. (shrink)

Transgenerational social actions are collective actions that endure over a considerable period of time and require the cooperation of multiple generations. Yet, it remains unclear what kind of obligations and rights, if any, allow actions to persist through the ages, binding future generations to be part of them. This paper proposes a way forward by considering transgenerational actions as a particular type of long-term joint commitments. Drawing on plural subject theory, I explore the conditions for membership, normativity, and justification (...) of transgenerational joint commitments, while also amending the model to address classical issues of asymmetry, non-existence, and non-reciprocity of future generations. The proposed approach meets three desiderata: transgenerational actions do not rely on individual intentions but are collective in a strong sense, they are normative in a social sense but can encourage the development of a personal moral sensitivity to transgenerationality, and they are both stable over time and flexible enough to resist paternalism through the proxy acts of representatives of future generations. (shrink)

In Morality and Socially Constructed Norms, Laura Valentini argues that moral obligations to respect social norms can be explained without invoking the concept of ‘joint commitment.’ Her resulting account is, in one important sense, individualistic, and therefore struggles to account for widely held intuitions about the normative significance of social norms. I argue that we can rescue the notion of joint commitment from Valentini’s objections, and incorporate it into a version of her account that preserves its (...) insights. (shrink)

This chapter responds to a range of questions posed by sociologist Annette Schnabel with respect to the author’s joint commitment account of group belief along with other aspects of group life. Some questions concern the contrast between joint commitment and personal commitment, the contexts in which joint commitments are likely to develop, and how they can facilitate human interaction in the case of problematic structures of inclinations such as a “prisoner’s dilemma.” Other questions concern (...) the mechanisms that lead people to conform to their joint commitments, and the relationship between the beliefs and preferences of groups to those of individuals. (shrink)

Joint commitments are compared and contrasted with personal decisions and intentions: all are in some sense commitments of the will. They provide one with sufficient reason for action, independently of one’s inclinations and self-interest. Aspects of joint commitment discussed include their formation, basic and non-basic cases, and ways of being freed from them. An argument is presented for the obligating nature of joint commitments. The directed obligation argued for is not context-sensitive and is therefore, in a (...) sense, ‘absolute’. (shrink)

I focus on the motivational role that Gilbert attributes to joint commitment. Using Bacharach’s game theoretical analysis of non-summative group agency, I point out that Gilbert’s account of social actions conceptually requires the obliteration of individual preferences and individual rationality. Then, I investigate whether acting because of a joint commitment is rational in some sense, focusing primarily on the phenomenon of asking and giving the permission to defect (fair defection) when a joint commitment is (...) in place. I show that the obliteration of individual preferences prevents the possibility of rational fair defection. Finally, I analyze Gilbert’s recent suggestion concerning the introduction of personal preferences in her account, and I show that such introduction cannot solve the problem with the (ir)rationality of fair defection, and that personal preferences can hardly be consistently included in Gilbert’s account. (shrink)

This essay sets out with some care the author’s concept of a joint commitment, introduced in her book On Social Facts (1989). It then addresses some comments on her work from Ulrich Balzer, Rudiger Bittner, and Michael Robins. In particular it considers a question from Robins: how can people become jointly committed if they are not already “joined at the hip”. It is argued that this is not a matter of the expression of conditional personal commitments, where a (...) personal commitment is understood in a manner specified. Also addressed is Balzer’s concern about large-scale joint commitments, and Bittner’s contention that acting together does not involve obligations and rights. (shrink)

This chapter argues that collective beliefs as understood here play a central role in conversation. Whatever else is going on in the course of a paradigmatic conversation, the participants are negotiating the establishment of one or more collective belief on the basis of proposals made by one or another of them. This was first argued by Margaret Gilbert in On Social Facts. The present chapter both draws on and amplifies that discussion.

The sense of commitment directs us towards our goals, shielding us from distractions and temptations, and thereby facilitates a wide range of cooperative activities and institutions characteristic of our species. Building upon recent research, this paper identifies cognitive, motivational and social factors that elicit or enhance the sense of commitment. It surveys studies on cognitive and motivational mechanisms, including control mechanisms, that may support the sense of commitment. This research is organized into a framework that enables us (...) to relate these distinct mechanisms to one another. It also allows us to formulate novel hypotheses about how these mechanisms may interact to help us stay on course toward our goals. (shrink)

After noting that joint commitments can be made gradually and by more subtle means than those constitutive of agreements and promises, and that they may obtain in large populations spread over great distances, this chapter argues that many central social phenomena other than agreements and promises are constituted by joint commitments with associated demand-rights and directed obligations. These phenomena range from the instantaneous occurrence of “mutual recognition” between two people in close proximity to large, enduring social groups. They (...) include shared intentions or plans, doing things together, and collective attitudes such as collective value judgments. It is argued also that a particular kind of joint commitment offers an intelligible ground for command authority. Thus, should joint commitment be the only source of demand-rights, such rights will still be ubiquitous in human lives. (shrink)

This paper concerns the credibility problem for commitments. Commitments play an important role in cooperative human interactions and can dramatically improve the performance of joint actions by stabilizing expectations, reducing the uncertainty of the interaction, providing reasons to cooperate or improving action coordination. However, commitments can only serve these functions if they are credible in the first place. What is it then that insures the credibility of commitments? To answer this question, we need to provide an account of what (...) motivates us to abide by our commitments. We first discuss two conceptions of the nature of the commitments present in joint action and of the norms that govern them. We contend that while normative considerations may have some motivational force, there are reasons to doubt that they, by themselves, could provide a sufficient motivational basis to fully explain why agents abide by their commitments and thus why their commitments are credible. In the next two sections, we discuss two proposals regarding further sources of motivation, reputation management and social emotions. We argue that while reputation management and social emotions certainly play a role in motivating us to act as committed, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons to think that neither captures the most basic motivational force at work in sustaining commitments. We propose instead that the need to belong, i.e., the need to affiliate with others and form long-lasting bonds with them, is what primarily motivates us to interact and engage with those around us and act so as to preserve and reinforce the bonds we have forged with them. We argue that the need to belong is a more basic proximate motivation for conforming to commitments, in the sense both that affiliative behaviors are evidenced much earlier in human development than either reputation management or social emotions and that the need to belong is at least part of an explanation of why we care for our reputation and why we care about others’ assessments of our behavior. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the proposal that a central function of commitments within joint action is to reduce various kinds of uncertainty, and that this accounts for the prevalence of commitments in joint action. While this idea is prima facie attractive, we argue that it faces two serious problems. First, commitments can only reduce uncertainty if they are credible, and accounting for the credibility of commitments proves not to be straightforward. Second, there are many other ways in (...) which uncertainty is commonly reduced within joint actions, which raises the possibility that commitments may be superfluous. Nevertheless, we argue that the existence of these alternative uncertainty reduction processes does not make commitments superfluous after all but, rather, helps to explain how commitments may contribute in various ways to uncertainty reduction. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the role commitments may play in shaping our sense of joint agency. First, we propose that commitments may contribute to the generation of the sense of joint agency by stabilizing expectations and improving predictability. Second, we argue that commitments have a normative element that may bolster an agent's sense of control over the joint action and help counterbalance the potentially disruptive effects of asymmetries among agents. Finally, we discuss how (...) commitments may contribute to make acting jointly emotionally rewarding, both by improving coordination and by inducing or reinforcing the circumstances under which shared emotions emerge among co-agents. (shrink)

Volume 28, Issue 1, February 2020, Page 114-127.

Important work on alignment systems has been applied to philosophical work on joint action by Tollefsen and Dale. This paper builds from and expands on their work. The first aim of the paper is to spell out how the empirical research on alignment may be integrated into philosophical theories of joint action. The second aim is then to develop a successful characterization of joint action, which spells out the difference between genuine joint action and simpler forms (...) of coordination based on alignment. I begin by introducing the empirical research and two definitions of joint action. I then argue that instead of using this research in conjunction with Searle’s account of collective intentionality, as Tollefsen and Dale suggest, we would be better served by applying this research to Gilbert’s account of plural subjects. In the final sections I distinguish between alignment, coordination, and joint action, clarify the roles of joint commitment and sub-personal alignment in joint action, and argue that... (shrink)