Scott J. Shapiro (Yale University – Law School) has posted Massively Shared Agency (RATIONAL AND SOCIAL AGENCY: ESSAYS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF MICHAEL BRATMAN, M. Vargas and G. Yaffe, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The modern world is characterized by the enormous scale of social life. Business corporations, consumer cooperatives, trade unions, research universities, philanthropic organizations, professional associations, standing armies, political parties, organized religions, governments and legal systems, not to mention the collaborative ventures made possible by the internet, all harness the agency of multitudes in order to fulfill certain objectives. The modern world, we might say, is one defined by “massively shared agency.” And yet, philosophy has no viable theory for analyzing these ubiquitous activities. Although the theory of action has seen a recent turn from a more or less exclusive concern with individual agency to concerns with pervasive forms of shared activity, as when you and I sing a duet together or paint a house together, the accounts of shared agency produced are unable to account for the existence of massively shared agency.
In this paper, I set out what I take to be the most interesting and plausible theory of shared agency that currently exists, namely, the one developed by Michael Bratman. I then point out two major limitations of Bratman’s theory: first, that it applies only to ventures characterized by a rough equality of power and second, that it applies only to small-scale projects among similarly committed individuals. I then develop the important insights of Bratman’s theory into a new account of shared agency, one that will be applicable to small egalitarian ventures as well as massive institutional practices involving authority structures.