ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part distinguishes an informal notion of public information, information intuitively shared openly by everyone in a community. It focuses on the question how the reader should understand a group justifiably believes something. The part begins with collective rationality and of cooperation and then on their basis an account of the collective rationality of cooperation, the conditions under which it is rational for a group to cooperate. It looks at the theory of team reasoning introduced separately by Robert Sugden and Michael Bacharach. The part also focuses on distributed cognition in relation to collective intentionality. It also distinguishes between the effects of the actions of many agents, their bringing about shared a goal, and groups that themselves constitute an agent.
