• Chapter One: Sociality and Planning Agency


• 1. Modest sociality and the continuity thesis


• 2. Shared intention, individual intention


• 3. I intend that we J: a first pass


• 4. Individual planning agency: roles and norms


• 5. Individual planning agency: further ideas


• 6. Creature construction


• 7. Social functioning and social rationality


• 8. Constructivism about shared intention and modest sociality


• 9. Continuity, sufficiency, and Ockham's Razor


• 10. Deception, coercion, shared intentional, shared cooperative


• Chapter Two: Building Blocks, Part One


• 1. I intend that we J, and circularity


• 2. Interlocking and reflexive intentions


• 3. Intended mesh


• 4. Intending, expecting, and a disposition to help


• 5. Out in the open


• Chapter Three: Building Blocks, Part Two


• 1. I intend that we J, and the own-action condition


• 2. The settle condition, and persistence interdependence


• 3. Persistence interdependence and over-determination


• 4. Three forms of persistence interdependence


• 5. Persistence interdependence, etiology and temporal asymmetry


• 6. Further building blocks


• 7. The connection condition and mutual responsiveness


• 8. Taking stock


• Chapter Four: A Construction of Modest Sociality


• 1. The basic thesis


• 2. The emergence of modest sociality


• 3. Modest sociality and strategic interaction


• 4. Quasi-Lockean social ties


• 5. Social networks


• 6. Treating as a means?


• 7. Deception and coercion re-visited


• 8. The compressed basic thesis


• 9. Too demanding?


• Chapter Five: Modest Sociality and Mutual Obligation


• 1. Shared intention, social explanation


• 2. Shared intention, persistence interdependence, and mutual obligation


• 3. Gilbert on joint commitment


• 4. Normativity, sociality, and Ockham's Razor


• Chapter Six: Group Agents Without Group Subjects


• 1. Group agents and the basic thesis


• 2. Group subjects?


• Chapter Seven: Shared Deliberation, Common Ground


• 1. Shared deliberation and shared intention


• 2. Shared commitments to weights


• 3. Shared policies about weights


• 4. Where the group stands


• 5. Interdependence in policies about weights


• 6. Partiality and depth of shared policies about weights


• 7. Shared policy-structured acceptance


• 8. Shared policies of social rationality


• Conclusion: Interconnected Planning Agents


• Index

Michael E. Bratman has been at Stanford University since 1974. He is currently U.G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities and Science and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford. His major book publications are Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (1987), Faces of Intention (1999), and Structures of Agency (2007). He has been awarded an ACLS Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Stanford University Humanities Center. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Human beings act together in characteristic ways that matter to us a great deal. This book explores the conceptual, metaphysical and normative foundations of such sociality. It argues that appeal to the planning structures involved in our individual, temporally extended agency provides substantial resources for understanding these foundations of our sociality.