Stephen A. Butterfill

What is it to be skilled at mindreading?

• Mindreading is a joint activity you can do alone: we generate and select explanations of thoughts and action that other people would recognize as reasonable.
• Social experiences plus context tune what feels plausible.
• This explains individual differences and offers new ways to measure mindreading skill.

When we act together, is there just one way our intentions can be shared?

• Three theories: plural (one intention with many subjects), aggregate (a group agent with its own agenda), and reductive (a structure built from individual intentions).
• Each fits different phenomena.
• Living out a theory of shared intention can make it true of us.

What distinguishes genuinely acting together from acting in parallel but merely individually?

• The standard view: shared intentions make the difference.
• Our alternative: a collective goal is enough, at least on standard criteria.
• This view is mechanistically neutral: it says nothing about what’s in your head.
• Payoff: we can identify targets of explanation without presupposing claims about which mechanisms explain them.