Talk by Prof. Michael E. Bratman

May 23, 2022

The ERC-project "The Normative and Moral Foundations of Group Agency" PI: Prof. Dr. Herlinde Pauer-Studer is hosting a talk on ZOOM on May 23, 2022 from 18:00 – 19:30 by:

Michael E. Bratman
Professor of Philosophy
U. G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
https://philosophy.stanford.edu/people/michael-e-bratman

The talk will be held by Prof. Michael E. Bratman via ZOOM.
Abstract:
Individual human actions are normally embedded in forms of mind-supported cross-temporal organization. Think about growing food in a garden. Such temporally extended human activities are typically organized by plans and planning. Given our human limits we normally settle on prior, partial plans without settling on a fully worked out plan. Downstream planning and practical thinking, including the weighing of reasons, is structured by these prior, partial plans in part by way of distinctive pressures of plan rationality. And intentions are elements in this planning system. Consider now our acting together, as when we play a quartet. Here I articulate a construction of shared intention and shared intentional agency that builds on basic elements of our plan-based cross-temporal organization of our individual activities.  This helps support the conjecture that these two fundamental forms of human practical organization––diachronic and small-scale social––are grounded in our core capacity for planning agency.

Person:
Prof. Michael E. Bratman is the U.G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor in the School of Huma-nities and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His book publications include: Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (1987), Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (1999), Structures of Agency: Essays (2007), and Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together (2014). He is also co-editor (with John Perry) of Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings (2015).
In 2019 Prof. Bratman received the Lebowitz Prize for philosophical achievement and contribution.

Free Admission.

All interested Department members and students are welcome.