ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters in the first part of this book. The part of the book addresses the question of how to think about the relation between individual and collective agency. It reviews the main non-reductive views about what it is for a group to share an intention. The part focuses on a different aspect of joint action, the normative relations that hold between individuals in a group who are acting together. It looks at a form of group agency that becomes salient in the context of institutional action, in which some individual member of a group, or some proper subgroup, acts on behalf of the group, in a way that licenses saying that the group thereby acts. The part also looks at the empirical work on the psychological and neurophysiological infrastructure of joint action, in cases which require real-time interaction and coordination for success.
