Joint Action: What is Shared?

Review of Philosophy and Psychology 2(1), 2011

Stephen Butterfill & Natalie Sebanz (eds.)

This issue is forthcoming in the
Review of Philosophy and Psychology [ISSN 1878-5158]
the new series of the ERP published by Springer.

Guest authors:

• Celia Brownell, University of Pittsburgh
• Mike Martin, University College London
• Elisabeth Pacherie, École Normale Supérieure
• Wolfgang Prinz, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Researchers have appealed to many kinds of sharing in explaining or characterising joint action. Joint actions are variously said to involve shared intentions or goals, shared task representations, shared attention, shared common ground, and more. Each putative case of sharing raises numerous questions. Is talk of sharing in this context literal or metaphorical; and if metaphorical, how is the metaphor to be understood? Is such sharing constitutively necessary for joint action? What cognitive and conceptual demands does such sharing place on the agents? How does such sharing facilitate joint action? How does it develop? What is its role in development? What awareness of other agents of a joint action, if any, does such sharing require? In what ways is such sharing apparent to us when we perceive or recognise joint actions done by others? Further questions concern interactions and conceptual relations between the different kinds of sharing. Do shared intentions interact with shared task representations? How many kinds of sharing are involved in joint action—are intentions shared in the same sense that task representations are, for instance?

This special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology aims to address questions such as these with contributions from social, cognitive and developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy.

Themes that contributors to the special issue may address include (but are not limited to):

• Plural predication and joint action
• Development of joint action and social understanding
• Shared intention
• Mechanisms for joint action
• Joint action and understanding other minds