We, Together by Hans Bernhard Schmid

Author:Hans Bernhard Schmid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

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1 We do not always fail to do something together just because we have no shared conception of what it is going to be. I present an analysis of what I call radical joint improvisation in Schmid 2020a, chap. 6. Radical joint improvisation requires of the participants to update their conception of what it is they are doing together with their partners over the course of the action according to the emerging picture of what is going on between them. I argue that an interesting feature of such cases is that they can, from the plural perspective, instantiate cases of action under no guise of the good (there is no reason for us, as a team, to do x rather than z, even though each of us will have their reasons why they go along with what only gradually emerges as the goal of the plural action).

2 See Schmid 2016d; for the role of collective emotions in plural practical self-knowledge, see Schmid 2017a.

3 For more on this proposal, see Schmid 2007 and Section 3.4.

4 One might think that normative expectations are not even necessary for intention because it is possible to do things intentionally even if one thinks one should not do them. However, in line with the above remarks concerning the guise of the good and the sort of practical commitment that is intention, there is an element of normativity involved even in cases of weak-willed intention.

5 One (but by far not the only) example is Raimo Tuomela’s analysis. Throughout his work (as far as I see), Tuomela assumes of individual we-intenders that they have the belief that they together will φ, which I take is a prediction. For an early version of his analysis see Tuomela 1984, 31f.

6 See Schmid 2013b.

7 Margaret Gilbert is rightly famous for arguing this point; see, e.g., Gilbert 2013.

8 An instructive discussion of the problems involved here is Peet 2016.

9 As far as I can see, this is the gist of, e.g., Michael Tomasello’s view on communication (Tomasello 2009).

10 To reinforce this claim at least a little bit (insofar as is this is possible through argument from authority), let me mention a lingualist parallel for this view in the work of Jürgen Habermas on the role of communication for linguistic meaning. His view, if I understand it correctly, is that any interpretation of another person’s speech is basically from the perspective of a conversation partner, a participant in the joint activity of discussing things out in pursuit of the joint intentional activity of pursuing truth and the good (although Habermas chooses the term “legitimacy” instead of the good).

11 See Aristotle’s analysis of friendship in his Nicomachean Ethics, esp. in book IX. For an interpretation, see Schmid 2016c.

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