Third 2022/2023 Groningen PPE Colloquium: Michael E. Bratman (Stanford)
| When: | We 08-03-2023 15:15 - 17:00 |
| Where: | Faculty of Philosophy, Room Omega |
Michael E. Bratman (Stanford) - Shared and Institutional Agency
Faculty of Philosophy, Room Omega (followed by drinks)
Abstract: In this talk I discuss some main ideas in my 2022 book, Shared and Institutional Agency: Toward a Planning Theory of Human Practical Organization. Our human lives involve remarkable forms of practical organization: diachronic organization of individual activity; small-scale organization of shared action; and the organization of institutions. A theory of human action should help us understand these multiple forms of human practical organization and their inter-relations. A key is our capacity for planning agency. Drawing on earlier work on the roles of planning agency in the cross-temporal and small-scale social organization of our agency, I focus on the role of our planning agency within our organized institutions. I draw on ideas, inspired by H.L.A. Hart, that our organized institutions are rule-guided, and that to understand this we need a theory of social rules. I draw on the planning theory of shared intention to understand social rules. I understand an organized institution as involving authority-according social rules of procedure in a way that makes room for pluralistic divergence. This leads to a model of institutional intention and––drawing on ideas from Harry Frankfurt––institutional intentional agency. The account charts a path between views of, among others, Kirk Ludwig, Phillip Pettit, and Scott Shapiro. It sees our capacity for planning agency as a core capacity that underlies not only string quartets and informal social rules but also, thereby, the rule-guided structure of organized institutions. And it supports adjustments in views of mind, intention and agency that are built into Donald Davidson’s fieldshaping work.