ABSTRACT
The prevailing descriptions of autonomy reiterate over and over that persons are separate from one another. Philosophers move insensibly from the distinctness of human bodies to the separateness of their lives in the complex debate over ethics and political theory. They argue that "different people live different lives. Each life consists of experiences that are not shared with other lives. These facts are sometimes referred to as the 'separateness of persons'". A frequent objection to the separateness of persons is that there are other ways of thinking about the actions of groups. Sometimes group members act separately; sometimes the members act jointly. Methodological individualism asserts that events in the social domain are explicable by reference to the acts and states of individual persons. Joint actions are performed when the actors conform to certain conventions and understand those conventions. A different aspect of joint actions is illustrated by Jeremy Waldron's analogies between individual acts and the parts of an opera.
