ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes between two opposing views of shared intention: reductive views and non-reductive views. Reductive views assert that shared intention is best understood in terms of the properties and concepts already available in the understanding of individual intention and action, while non-reductive views deny it. Michael Bratman proposes an alternative reductive view of shared intention that gave an answer to John Searle's challenge that reductive views are either too weak or circular, and also differs in many ways from Raimo Tuomela and K. Miller's view. Margaret Gilbert noted that shared intention is tightly connected to interpersonal obligations and practices of holding accountable, and have argued that reductive views cannot appropriately account for such connections. Views such as Tuomela and Miller's as well as Bratman's have focused mainly on cases of shared intention involving very few individual participants and took place in a context in which authority relations and significant differences in power between such individuals are absent.
