We Intentions

Concept and Significance

We intentions (sometimes called shared intentions, collective intentions, or “we-mode” intentions) are mental states in which an individual intends that we perform some action together, such as “We are going for a walk” or “We are building a bridge,” as opposed to “I am going for a walk” or “I am building a bridge.” Philosophers use the concept to explain what is distinctive about joint action—planning, acting, and reasoning together—in contrast with merely parallel or coordinated individual actions.

The central idea is that certain activities—playing in a string quartet, conducting a political protest, running a company—are not adequately described as a sum of separate “I-intentions.” We intentions are introduced to capture this irreducibly social dimension of agency, where participants see themselves as parts of a single, temporarily unified agent: a we.

These intentions play a key role in social ontology, philosophy of action, and political philosophy. They are invoked to explain the existence of groups and institutions, the nature of collective responsibility, and the basis of collective rights and obligations. A central philosophical challenge is to specify the content and structure of such intentions without collapsing them into either simple individual attitudes or mysterious “group minds.”

Major Theoretical Approaches

Philosophical accounts of we intentions can be grouped into several influential families.

1. Analytic, Planning-Theoretic Accounts

On analytic accounts, we intentions are constructed out of familiar individual mental states plus appropriate patterns of interpersonal coordination. Michael Bratman’s planning theory is a leading example.

Bratman characterizes a shared intention that “we J” (where J is some joint activity) as roughly involving:

• Each agent having an intention of the form: “I intend that we J,”
• Mutual responsiveness in intentions and actions,
• Interlocking meshing subplans, and
• Common knowledge (or something close) that these conditions hold.

On this view, we intentions are not ontologically primitive; they are analyzable in terms of suitably related I-intentions, beliefs, and plans. The “we” enters at the level of content (what is intended) and structure (how plans are meshed and coordinated), rather than positing a separate kind of group subject.

Proponents argue this preserves individual agency while still explaining joint action. Critics respond that such accounts, by relying solely on individualist ingredients, may fail to capture the normative and motivational unity characteristic of genuine group agency.

2. Irreducible “We-Mode” Views

In contrast, we-mode theorists maintain that we intentions cannot be reduced to I-intentions. Raimo Tuomela, for example, argues that when agents operate in a we-mode, they conceive of themselves as members of a group with a collective goal, and their intentions are essentially group-centered: they intend to do their part as a member of the group, not merely as an individual cooperating for personal reasons.

Similarly, John Searle claims that “we-intentions” (his term) are conceptually basic. For Searle, there is a difference between “I intend that we lift this table” and “I intend that I lift my side of the table while you (independently) lift yours.” The former involves a primitive sense of collective agency, not derivable from individual intentions plus beliefs.

On such views, we intentions are a distinct type of intentional state, involving a special mode of identification—“we”-identification—rather than just individual intentions directed at joint outcomes. Proponents argue this best explains the phenomenology of acting together, in which individuals often experience themselves as part of a larger acting subject.

3. Joint Commitment and Normative Accounts

A third family emphasizes normative relations among participants. Margaret Gilbert’s joint commitment theory is a central example. According to Gilbert, a group’s having a collective intention that “we J” essentially involves the members being jointly committed to J as a body. This joint commitment:

• Is not reducible to a conjunction of personal commitments,
• Can only be rescinded by the parties together,
• Grounds special rights and obligations, such as a right to demand conformity from co-participants.

On this account, an individual’s “we intention” is partly constituted by being party to such a joint commitment. What is distinctive is not primarily the mental content, but the interpersonal normative structure: participants stand in a special plural subject relation, and this gives their we intentions a binding, obligation-generating character.

Advocates argue that this explains the sense in which joint actions create mutual accountability—for example, two people promising to go jogging together may owe one another explanations for non-compliance. Critics question whether all cases of we intentions involve this robust normativity.

4. Deflationary and Skeptical Positions

Some philosophers adopt more deflationary views. They may accept that people speak of “we intend” but deny that this marks any deep metaphysical or psychological category beyond:

• Overlapping individual intentions,
• Mutual expectations,
• Or pragmatic features of conversation and coordination.

Others are skeptical about treating we intentions as foundations for group agency, arguing that complex institutions and collective responsibilities can be explained by social practices, legal conventions, or decision procedures, without positing a special kind of shared mental state.

Debates and Applications

Distinguishing Genuine Joint Action

A central debate concerns the criteria that separate genuine we intentions from merely parallel behavior. Standard examples include:

• Two people walking side by side by coincidence versus walking together for a stroll,
• Several workers each doing their tasks alone versus collectively constructing a house.

Different theories disagree over whether mutual responsiveness, common knowledge, joint commitment, or we-mode identification is the key marker of authentic we intentions.

Responsibility, Ownership, and Agency

We intentions are often invoked to ground collective responsibility and group agency. If members of a corporation share a we intention to implement a harmful policy, can the corporation be said to intend this and be morally responsible? Normative and we-mode views tend to support robust notions of group agency, while reductionist approaches typically aim to explain group responsibility in terms of interlocking individual responsibilities.

Questions about authorship also arise: when a committee issues a report, whose intention does it express? We intention theories attempt to clarify when such an output counts as the action of the group as such, rather than of particular individuals.

Social Ontology and Institutions

In social ontology, we intentions are used to explain how institutions (parliaments, courts, conventions) can exist and persist. Some accounts, especially Searle’s, link collective acceptance and we intentions to the creation of status functions (e.g., “this piece of paper counts as money”) and institutional facts.

Debates focus on whether such institutional facts require robust, primitive we intentions, or whether networks of individual beliefs, intentions, and practices suffice.

Practical and Interdisciplinary Relevance

Beyond philosophy, the notion of we intentions informs:

• Cognitive science and psychology, in the study of joint attention and shared agency,
• Economics and game theory, in analyzing coordination and team reasoning,
• Political theory, in understanding people’s participation in collective movements and democratic decision-making.

The continuing discussion centers on whether a fully adequate account of these phenomena must posit irreducible collective intentionality, or whether an enriched yet ultimately individualistic framework can do the explanatory work.

We intentions thus remain a focal concept for understanding how individuals can come to act, reason, and be responsible together, as more than a mere aggregation of separate agents.