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JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCHVOLUME XXVII, 2002

COLLECTIVE GOALS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION

RAIMO TUOMELAUNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

ABSTRACT: This paper gives an account of communi-cative action from the point of view of communicationas a cooperative enterprise. It is argued that this iscommunication both on the basis of shared collectivegoals and without them. It is also argued that peoplecan communicate without specifically formedillocutionary communicative intentions. The paper con-cludes by comparing the account given in the paperwith Habermas’s theory of communicative action.

I. COLLECTIVE AND PERSONAL GOALS

ut in a nutshell, the following view of the nature of communicativeaction seems worth considering. Communication presupposes a framework ofmutual knowledge (at least mutual true beliefs) and assumptions about lan-guage (or whatever representational system is used). This underlying levelneed not contain any knowledge or assumptions about the goals of the usersof language, in particular no assumption about the presence of a general goalof understanding each other (locutionarily and illocutionarily). Goals comein when people actually use language and linguistic expressions to achievetheir extralinguistic or, occasionally, linguistic goals. These goals can becollective or individual, depending on the case. I will argue that there ismuch communication (e.g., dialogue) that is best understood as joint or col-lective cooperative activity requiring reference to collective intentionality forits explication (cf. also Tuomela 1984, chap. 10, and 2000, for cooperation).

The present paper is concerned only with full-blown linguistic communica-tion, and, accordingly, communication using some natural or perhaps artifi-cial language as a means for expressing propositional thoughts. While itviews man as an essentially semiotic being, the notion of communicative

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action is conceptually, although nonreductively, based on the notion of ac-tion rather than vice versa. Communication is viewed here primarily as a tool,often central, for agents to achieve their extralinguistic goals and to satisfytheir extralinguistic needs and interests. The concerns and ways of arguing inthis paper are those of a philosophical action theorist rather than a linguist ora logician. More specifically, communicative actions will be viewed as one oftwo basic kinds of cooperative activity. While the present section introducessome background ideas and views, Section II presents three general theses anddefends two of them. Section III gives a conceptual clarification of communica-tive intentions and actions. It also includes a discussion of the third main thesisof the paper. Section IV discusses the special problem about whether iteratedcommunicative reasons have a central role to play, and Section V illustratessome simple cases of communicative action and discusses the problem of ratio-nally justifying some of their aspects. Section VI discusses Habermas’s theoryof communicative action and compares the present account with it.

As to collective intentionality, in our present context we need to considercollective intentions and joint intentions. Suppose we jointly intend to per-form an action X jointly, e.g., carry a table upstairs or discuss who will representour group at tomorrow’s meeting. We can express this kind of full-blown jointintention by the conatively used expression “We will do X jointly.” This ex-pression is assumed to be, or at least to be entailed by, our plan of action—explicitly or implicitly agreed on by us. Each of us can take this expressiondistributively to apply to himself. Accordingly, such a participant is then saidto have the we-intention to perform X, and thus to intend to participate in thejoint performance of X. A joint intention accordingly can be said to consist ofshared we-intentions about which there is adequate mutual knowledge.1

In the case of full-blown joint intention, there is in the case of each par-ticipant an intention to perform one’s part or to participate, which, however,is based on and derived from the joint intention. Furthermore, there is a strongjoint commitment, with accepted intersubjective obligations, to the partici-pants’ performing a joint action and, in the case of each participant, to per-forming a part of it. The obligations here are, so to speak, capable of survivingchange of mind, especially of intention. As aggregated personal intentionsdo not have these properties, we can see that communicative action based onjoint intention has special features not shared by communication based onmerely personal (“private”) intentions.

In other collective action contexts we get by with weaker notions andassumptions than plan-based joint intention and action requires. I have else-where discussed the notion of an “intended collective goal” that fits all casesof cooperative collective action (see Tuomela 1996a). This notion, while weaker,is still based on the participants’ having collectively constructed it as a collec-tive goal (the circularity here is central!). Roughly speaking, by a collective goal(or, equivalently in my technical terminology, intention-content), e.g., to keepthe village clean, I mean a goal intended by some persons believing orcollectively accepting that the goal state (or action) is to be collectively

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achieved, whether or not the goal by itself, so to speak, requires that it beachievable only collectively. A collective goal is crucially assumed to satisfythe following Collectivity Condition: On “quasi-conceptual” grounds, viz.,on the grounds of the participants’ collectively accepting it to be so, it is truethat if the goal is satisfied (in the sense an intention is satisfied) for any one ofthe participants (person having the goal) it is satisfied for every participant.Here the participants can be said collectively to accept the goal as theircollective goal, and this serves in part to make it a collective goal.

Persons may of course form the intention to act jointly or together for anumber of collective or individual reasons, but given the intention to acttogether, they must, in view of mastering “the” concept of acting together,presuppose at least that the others (or sufficiently many of them) will partici-pate. This is a “presupposition-reason” both for their continuing to have theintention of acting together and for their intention to perform their parts orshares in the collective action.

Let us speak of the we-mode or the group-mode (g-mode, g-concepts)when dealing with collective intentionality and action (and the like), andabout the individual mode (I-mode, i-concepts) when speaking of merelyindividual intentions, goals, and actions.2 Thus a g-intention will mean agroup-mode intention-content, which is a collective group intention whencollectively ascribed to some individuals (say A

1,.,A

m) and an individual group

intention when applied to an individual (Ai). Here the latter intention is as-

sumed to be conceptually and epistemically based on the former (i.e., we willdo X together, hence I will participate in X).

Any collective action that is based on a collective goal (and, to deal spe-cifically with a subcase, any joint action based on a joint intention) is clearlycooperative at least to some extent, and in fact I have elsewhere argued thatcooperation in the standard sense is precisely activity directed towards acollective goal. We may call analogous activity where the goals are merelypersonal or “private” (and, in the above terminology, collectively individualgoals) quasi-cooperation or, perhaps better, coordination.

II. COMMUNICATION AS JOINT ACTION ANDAS COORDINATIVE INTERACTION

In the main parts of the paper I wish to establish the following general theses:

(T1) There are cases of communicative action based on group-mode rea-soning and action.

(T2) There are cases of individual-mode communicative interaction.

(T3) At least in some cases of communication the participants need actuallyto have formed only perlocutionary communicative intentions aboutspecific g-actions or i-actions (or g-states and i-states respectively)but need not have formed the corresponding illocutionary intentions;nor need they have the collective goal of understanding each other.

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In Section VI, in the context of a discussion of Habermas’s theory of com-municative action, some additional theses about communication will be pre-sented and defended.

By communicative interaction and activity I mean, roughly speaking, in-stances of communication between two actors, S (the speaker) and A (theaudience) in which their communicative intentions (to be clarified later) formthe rationale (reason-basis) of action. Here S and A can be individual personsor groups of persons. It is assumed that S sends a message to A with a suitablecommunicative intention. Communicative activity thus is essentially socialactivity based on communicative intention. We are dealing with communica-tive joint action or collective action (e.g., dialogue), based on a joint (orcollective) intention, in the g-case and with communicative interaction orcoordination (e.g., signaling) based on merely personal intentions and prefer-ences in the i-case. What I mean by the technical terms “illocutionary” and“perlocutionary” communicative intentions must be clarified, for this dis-tinction seems somewhat ambiguous in literature. My preliminary character-ization is that an illocutionary communicative intention is S’s intention tomake A understand what he meant by the message he sent to A, viz., what themeant content of the message is. In contrast, a perlocutionary communicativeintention is S’s intention with the content that the audience A come to specifi-cally react, viz., believe or do something, in virtue of the message communi-cated. In the case of a perlocutionary communicative intention (in my specificsense) communication is an “essential” means for achieving the mentionedkind of “extralinguistic” aim (A’s action or state). Here “essential” means (only)that the assumption of communication occurs in the content of the intentionrather than being just an accidental means-action for achieving theextralinguistic aim.

As to (T1), I regard it as rather uncontroversial that some actors, S and A,may intentionally have a dialogue, converse together with a certain joint aimconcerning some topic. They may have the joint intention of reaching con-sensus through their discussion about who will represent their group at ameeting. They may of course also use linguistic communication just to helpthem to plan and to coordinate their actions to achieve a practical joint goal(e.g., to move a sofa upstairs). In some cases reaching consensus by groupdiscussion might not be the content of a full-blown joint intention, but itmust still be a collective goal satisfying the Collectivity Condition.

In its full-blown sense joint communicative action presupposes severalkinds of mutual knowledge about the participants’ shared understanding oflanguage and its use. Thus what a speaker says must be understood(“locutionary” understanding) and the same goes for what he means by whathe says (“illocutionary” understanding, cf. nonliteral use of language). Shar-ing various conversational norms and practices is also typically required for“heuristically” successful communication.3 The communicating persons donot always need even an underlying or implicit general collective goal of


achieving shared (locutionary and illocutionary) understanding. (Specialcases like “communication for the sake of communication” are of course adifferent matter.) Relevant underlying mutual knowledge and assumptionsnormally suffice and are needed (cf. Section III). Thus, for instance, theremust be a mutual belief to the effect that what is communicated (viz., what Smeans by what he says or otherwise communicates) must be understood bythe participants of communication. This claim can be argued for by analogywith the considerations below concerning the need for the psychologicalpresence of illocutionary intentions. Let me note, however, that personal goalsthat are not of the locutionary or the illocutionary kind are, however, oftenpresent and in the case of intentional communicative action some relevantpersonal (even if not perhaps private) goal must be present, given that anyintentional action has a telos (which I assume).

While (T1) hardly needs further defense, (T2) may seem more problematic.Considering the latter, suppose I spontaneously tell you—truthfully, we canassume that the weather is fine. In communicating I might have as my goalthat we achieve mutual knowledge—shared extralinguistic understanding—about this matter. (This would be perlocutionary understanding.) What aboutyou, the hearer? You could receive this information without the goal of achiev-ing shared understanding about the matter. Shared understanding might re-sult, to be sure, but it might just happen without your having it as a goal. I amperhaps “offering” you that goal, as it were, but you need not adopt it. Youhave understood (a) what I said by my utterance (locutionary understand-ing), (b) what I meant by what I said (illocutionary understanding), and willaccordingly believe that I said that the weather is fine. You may also come tobelieve in our example that (c) the weather indeed is fine (perlocutionaryunderstanding). However, you need not have acted intentionally here. Youjust “took up” the information (at least in a locutionary and illocutionarysense). If you did not act intentionally, you required no goal here, and henceyou need not have had the goal of our achieving shared understanding. (Thiscan be said even if in any linguistic community there seems to be a mutualexpectation that face-to-face communicators normally should be respondedto.) Yet this was a case of communication (at least as I define it): I intention-ally delivered some information to you in part for the reason that I had thecommunicative intention of delivering that piece of information to you. Thisis of course only one-sided message transfer (or signaling), but communica-tion it still is.

What happens when the communication is continued? The former hearerthen becomes a speaker. Now he comments on the situation and must perhapshave the goal that the former speaker share with him the understanding of his“countermessage.” But here the former speaker need not have that collectivegoal—his goal may just be the personal one of delivering the information andperhaps of getting the communicatee to believe what was said. There can thusbe interactive communication without a shared goal (and especially without

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the shared goal of mutual understanding, in any of our three senses of under-standing). The participants’ relevant mutual knowledge and background as-sumptions do the work here that some other theorist would assign to sharedcollective goals. While full-blown communication requires much mutualknowledge (e.g., that a message with such-and-such a content has been re-ceived), achieving such mutual knowledge by communication often need notbe a collective goal, not even a merely presupposed one. (Language teachingand learning, etc., is a different matter.)

As to (T3), I regard it as a general psycholinguistic “parsimony” thesis, tobe defended in the next section. Let me note, however, that there is a relatedconceptual thesis that also is under consideration here but which I will notspecifically defend. According to it, it is true on conceptual grounds thatillocutionary intentions are not always needed for communication (except infallback cases having to do merely with understanding the meanings of lin-guistic expressions, etc.). The role that is often attributed to illocutionaryintentions is played by relevant mutual expectations (see Section III). Incontrast, (T3) says that at least in some perfectly standard cases occurrentillocutionary intentions are not needed. (T3) is facilitated by the truth of itsconceptual counterpart, but a strict entailment is not in question here.

III. COMMUNICATIVE INTENTIONS

In this section I will discuss the conceptual features of simple communica-tion by means of future-directed (perlocutionary and illocutionary) commu-nicative intentions, and in this connection also consider the generalpsycholinguistic thesis (T3). The realization of a communicative intention issocial in the sense of requiring action by both the communicator or speakerand his audience. I shall later consider in what sense this is or needs to beregarded as acting together or jointly. One of the main ideas underpinning thediscussion below is to investigate how much psychological content—some-thing a participant in communication psychologically undergoes—is neededfor full-blown communication to come about.

Basically, a communicative intention is one whose content cannot be sat-isfied without communication (viz., communicative action of some kind)between a communicator (“speaker”), S, and communicatee (“hearer”), A, tak-ing place. There can be intentions whose content does not require communica-tion, but the intender nevertheless ends up using communicative means whentrying to satisfy it. As to proper communicative intentions, they will at least inthe present paper be an agent’s complex intentions involving achieving a goal(some state of affairs) by means of his linguistic, or possibly nonlinguistic,“communicative” action. In saying this I am assuming that the concept of alinguistic action is understood and is taken to presuppose whatever under-standing a linguistic utterance involves. For a certain physical sound or scribbleto become a linguistic item it must be “syntactically” carved up so as to becomea syntactic entity of a language, indeed the language that the communicator


and communicatee here use. Whatever this process involves I will take forgranted here. What we get is syntactically viewed sentences, the “locutionary”entities we need. It is also—and this is no small “also”—taken for grantedthat such sentences have a certain disambiguated meaning in the context ofthe tokens of communicative action considered here. This does not entailthat meanings must be conventionally defined and “given” (although thisview is the one I endorse). All that my analysis builds upon is that a semanti-cally clear message is dealt with in the case of each token of communicativeaction, no matter how that has been achieved.

To consider an example, I am presently assuming that in the case of eachcommunicative token of the sentence “The weather is fine today” the speakertakes it to mean that the weather is fine (no matter if he possibly means to saythat the weather is terrible). An illocutionary intention is a communicativeintention that is concerned with semantical “uptake” and is satisfied if andonly if the hearer has taken up the message (understood its content, viz., whatS is purporting to say). Thus, if S intends to say that the weather is terrible bymeans of uttering “The weather is fine,” this intention is satisfied preciselywhen A takes S to mean that (viz., that the weather is terrible) by this utter-ance. A perlocutionary communicative intention, as I use the concept, is sim-ply a communicative intention aiming at achieving a nonlinguistic effectsuch as A’s belief or action or an effect going beyond that. Thus an illocutionaryintention is a semantical-linguistic “uptake-related” intention. In contrast, aperlocutionary communicative intention, while essentially communication-involving, is concerned with extralinguistic effects, possibly also effects notconcerning what the speaker purports to communicate. (I believe this accordswith how the terms are used, e.g., by Bach and Harnish 1979.)

Suppose an agent S intends to have the room ventilated by keeping thewindow open. He also intends to bring it about that the window is open—indeed that person A opens the window. (This is an extralinguistically satisfi-able intention.) He now decides to request agent A to open the window byuttering, say, “A, will you please open the window?” Let uttering this sen-tence be a token of the action type X

S. A’s action of opening the window will

be symbolized as XA. (This same symbol of an action will also be used below

to describe the performance of that same action.)Here we are dealing with S’s perlocutionary intention to bring about A’s

opening the window by means of XS. We can compare this communicative

intention with S’s original intention to bring it about that A opens the win-dow, accompanied by his means-belief that he can probably satisfy this inten-tion by asking A to open the window. Note that this combination of the originalintention with the use of linguistic means is different from the perlocutionarycommunicative intention. The latter can only be satisfied by means of theperformance of X

S, while in the former case S might change his plan and use

some other means to satisfy his intention that A open the window.

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What is going on in this kind of communicative situation? I argue that thespeaker here may—but need not—perform the following practical inference:

(i) S intends that the window be opened by A (viz., that XA).

(ii) S believes that, in this situation, he can best realize his intention byuttering a sentence (with the semantic content of) asking A to openthe window, viz., by performing X

S.

(iii) Therefore, S intends to communicate his request (and intention) thatA open the window to A.

(iv) S, therefore utters the sentence “A, will you please open the window?”viz., performs X

S, believing that this sentence, a member of an equiva-

lence class of several request-expressing sentence tokens allowed byX

S, adequately expresses his request.

(v) It is a mutual belief between S and A that (i)–(iv).

Clauses (i), (ii), and (iv) are not especially problematic and do not requirecomments. Note, however, that assuming there are several linguistic possi-bilities of realizing X

S, clause (iii) expresses a causal but not a logical conse-

quence. Clause (v) expresses the commonly accepted idea of intersubjectiveopenness of communication (that contrary to what is sometimes thought, isnot conceptually related to sincerity or lying). I will not discuss (v) here.

Clause (iii) expresses a communicative intention. What is the precise con-tent of this intention? Let us first consider the full conceptual content of anagent’s simple, noncommunicative intention, say his intention to open thewindow himself. Suppose our agent, S, opens the window in accordance withand (in part) because of his intention to open the window. This action satis-fies the intention in question. Why? Basically because this action is per-formed in accordance with and because of the content of the intention inquestion. If he accidentally stumbles on the window with the result that itopens, that does not satisfy his intention. If he mistakenly opens it because oftaking it to be a glass door he also intended to open, that does not satisfy theintention either. Let it thus be granted that the full concept of action inten-tion is reflexive in the sense that the agent must open the window as heintended. By itself the notion of reflexivity is not, and need not be, con-nected to iterated intentions, for it can be given a “fixed point” analysis (cf.Colombetti 1993, Airenti et al. 1993). Even if upon analysis it were so con-nected, that still would not by itself show that the intending agent actuallyneeds to perform such iterations in his mind, at least in normal circumstances.The concept of intention thus is one thing and the mental (psychological)state the intender nondispositionally needs to have is another.4

As a partial summary, we note that there are at least the following kinds ofintentions to be considered in the case of a communicator (speaker): (1) hisintention to mean something specific by means of his linguistic or, moregenerally, content-representing actions; (2) his illocutionary intention to getthe message through to the hearer or audience; and (3) his perlocutionary


intention to get the hearer to believe or do something (this “something”being specified by the content of the intention) as intended by the communi-cator. Which of these are needed in all communication? If there are linguisticconventions governing the meanings of the expressions at hand, then spe-cially formed intentions to mean by one’s utterances what the conventionssay they mean, are not necessarily needed. Communication can work on thebasis of mutually accepted conventions. The situation is analogous in thecase of illocutionary intentions. A communicator does not always actuallyhave to form the intention of achieving the communicatee’s consent concern-ing what message has been sent, although this hermeneutic aim is presup-posed to be there in the underlying mutual beliefs (cf. below). Cases whereactually forming the intention seems essential are such special situations as“communication for the sake of communication,” language learning, andcases of communicative breakdown. In the approach I am advocating, the jobof illocutionary intentions is done by underlying mutual beliefs (here broadlyincluding dispositions to come to have beliefs), as will soon be argued. Thecontent of such a belief could simply be given “by uttering ‘The weather isfine’ in certain standard circumstances C, the speaker means that the weatheris fine” or possibly by “The speaker expects that the hearer will understandthat by uttering ‘The weather is fine’ in C he means that the weather is fine.”The situation C involves shared default assumptions about sincerity and lit-eral speech. We recall that an illocutionary intention is satisfied preciselywhen the hearer understands the content of the message, viz., acquires a truebelief about what the meant content of the message is (as emphasized, e.g., inBach and Harnish 1979, chap. 1). Intention (3) is a perlocutionary communi-cative intention, requiring that the content of the communicator’s intentionnot only be understood, as in case (2) but, in addition, also be “accepted” or“obeyed” (believed or acted upon, as the case may be). Communication neednot always contain an intention of kind (3). When it does not, (2) is required.

To argue for the psycholinguistic thesis (T3) and the absence, at least insome cases, of actually formed illocutionary intentions, let me say that thereare at least three kinds of reason that support my view. The first and basicargument is that communication can work without it, although not withoutintentionally performed linguistic actions. Communication can accordinglybe achieved on the basis of other kinds of intentions and wants plusillocutionary beliefs. The second reason is that our minds can and tend tooperate economically without excess “computational load.” The third rea-son, related to the previous one, is that there is simply ample evidence fromeveryday life that illocutionary intentions are not usually, or at least always,formed. I will now discuss these three arguments briefly.

Let me start with the general remark that motivating reasons for action can beregarded as fact-like entities that the agent endorses as his reasons. For in-stance, the fact that it is raining outside may be an agent’s motivating reason forhis taking his umbrella with him. Facts are accordingly often states external tothe agent, but they still guide his action via his motivational endorsement of

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them. Here the kind of parsimony feature seems to be operative that at least askilled agent does not usually consciously entertain more thoughts concern-ing his action than is necessary for functional performance. This general viewunderlies my arguments. As to the first of them, let us consider the analogywith bodily action such as tying one’s shoelaces or playing a piece of music.Think thus of the various actions a person performs when tying his shoelaces.Being skilled at the task, he need not waste much mental energy on forminga great many intentions for the actions (movements) resulting in his shoe-laces becoming tied. An action (here a subaction) can be intentional withoutbeing specifically intended, viz., without the agent’s having specificallyformed an intention to perform that particular subaction (see, e.g., Tuomela1995, chap. 2, for further discussion).

This applies also to communicative actions such as writing and talking.Thus, in successfully saying something the agent need not intend all thesubactions. A linguistic utterance can be intentional in the broad sense thatthe agent did not utter his words unintentionally. He might not have intendedto use a split infinitive (or, concretely, to say, e.g., ‘to quickly run’), but hisuse of it was not unintentional. On the whole, those skillful at the activity inquestion, such as talking, do not need many intentions—one for each “rou-tine” (a habitual complex of activities); the more skillful one is, the biggerthe routines become. The analogue of illocutionary intention in my system isthe illocutionary belief—indeed a mutual one—that the message will beunderstood and indeed has been understood by A. This belief is needed as amutual presupposition belief in a normal situation of communication (as Itake to be shown by our example of the request to open the window). Theupshot of my first argument is that a perlocutionary intention (viz., an inten-tion to achieve an extralinguistic result or effect) can motivationally performthe function some theorists attribute to illocutionary intentions. While aformed illocutionary intention is not always psychologically needed, thespeaker nevertheless must not act against the content of the intention that hecould have had.

As to the second reason for my view, one does not have to “clutter one’s mind”(one’s operating mind or “computational RAM-mind”) with psychological con-tent unnecessary for action (response, reaction) to come about. Illocutionarypresupposition-beliefs, qua being beliefs, are dispositional and do not nor-mally pose much of a mental burden (they basically belong to the “ROM-mind”),except what the situational specification of a general belief may involve.Communication can still successfully occur. Furthermore, presuppositionalbeliefs can even here be understood in a very broad sense so as to occasion-ally be only dispositions to believe (see Audi 1994 for a good discussion).

Here is a related point directed against postulating an excessive numberof (“introspectively” existing) intentions. A person may see that if he contin-ues to smoke he will face a great risk of lung cancer. He still intends to go onsmoking while he has no intention of increasing his risk of getting lung


cancer. This indicates that a normally rational person need not intend all thebelieved consequences of his intentions. In the present case of communica-tion, he need not form the intention to get the message through, althoughthat, contrary to the previous example, is a desirable entailed state or circum-stance; he simply takes it for granted when talking to somebody. Only ifthings start going wrong may he have to focus on the uptake problem andactually form the intention to achieve uptake.

The third reason against illocutionary intentions as specifically formedoccurrent states, everyday examples, has already been considered and willnot be further discussed here. (I grant that this is at best prima facie evi-dence—common sense might be wrong about this topic.)

Note that in the case of joint or collective communicative action inten-tions (1)–(3) may be collective or group-mode intentions (g-intentions). Thestandard situation, however, is that there is only a g-intention of type (3). Ininteractive i-communication (or coordinative individual mode communica-tion) the intentions are merely personal intentions (i-intentions), and oftenonly a perlocutionary i-intention (3) is needed.

Let us now consider the perlocutionary intention by S involved in our aboveexample:

(a) S intends that A open the window at least in part for the reason that Shad communicated to A his intention that A open it by means of X

S.

Underlying (a) we have this:

(b) S believes that, due to XS, A will correctly believe (understand) that S

intends him to open the window at least in part for the reason that Shad communicated his intention that A open it by means of X

S.

As argued, successful communication does not require that S in all caseshas to form the corresponding illocutionary intention (b) (change “believes”into “intends” in it), although it is of course true that S performed X

S inten-

tionally and certainly not aiming at A’s not achieving the belief in question,and perhaps—although this is not a requirement—with the general aim of notviolating the underlying mutual beliefs, which include (b).

The crucial point in (a) is that the satisfaction of this intention requiresthat the fact of S’s communication attempt must figure as at least a partialreason for A’s intentional action. Thus we can say that A’s action must be aconceptually and causally proper response to S’s intentional action X

S. If A

opens the window because it is very hot in the room but not even in partbecause S asked him to open it, that does not satisfy S’s intention either, sincewe took it to have the content that A open the window at least in part on thegrounds of S’s request. If S has merely used language as a convenient means ofhaving the window opened he might have had the mere opening of the win-dow as an event satisfying his intention. Note that A’s activity in this kind ofcase can be a full-blown intentional action or be acquiring the belief (e.g.,

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that the weather is fine). In the latter case we have only receptive activity, butwe may still speak of its conceptual-causal reason.

Let me still consider the satisfaction condition of the intention in (a). It issatisfied if and only if A opens the window at least partly for the right reason,viz., that S communicatively intended him to do so. It is presumed that Aunderstands that he is requested by S to open the window—and to open it forthe reason that S had communicated the intention that he open it. This is anillocutionary level belief, viz., concerned with the message’s having comethrough, so to speak. We can now say that a communicative act has beenperformed by S if it is an act performed because of a (perlocutionary orillocutionary) communicative intention. As indicated, the correspondingillocutionary intention is satisfied if and only if the message has comethrough—more precisely in our example case, if and only if S performed X

S

because of the intention that A come to believe that S intends him to open thewindow and A indeed came to believe this. When a communicative action isbased on a perlocutionary intention, communicative uptake may obviouslyoccur without the satisfaction of the perlocutionary intention.

I have been claiming that in a communicative situation the occurrence ofthe communicative action X

S (understood as a request or whatever is appro-

priate) must be at least A’s partial reason to open the window, if he doesindeed decide to obey the request. A may of course have many other reasonsfor his action. In the present situation S’s communication-involving inten-tion involves Xs’s being an essential communicative means to his goal thatthe window be opened. However, while it is in this sense a communicativeintention, it is not the only possible communicative intention in this kind ofsituation, not even the only one possible when X

S is used. Other possible

intention-contents in this kind of situation are:

(a) S intends, by means of XS, to ask A to open the window.

(b) S intends that A preferably open the window on the grounds of therequest (X

S)—but if not, S will open the window himself.

(c) S intends through XS that A open the window for some reason or other.

It is, however, common to the intention discussed in the text, viz., S’sintention that A open the window in part on the grounds that he is re-quested by S to do so, and (a)–(c) and to whatever other kinds of communica-tive intention contents there may be that the information-transferring actionX

S is assumed to be present. I have concentrated in this paper on the kind of

full-blown, ideal Gricean communicative intention that has often been dis-cussed in the literature.5 Let me emphasize that the assumption that the par-ticipants are responsive to each other in the reason-sense discussed isespecially crucial and unavoidable in the case of dialogue, viz., full-blowncommunicative joint action.


IV. IS IT NECESSARY TO ITERATECOMMUNICATIVE REASONS?

As we have seen, a speaker S’s communicative intention is an intention, tobe sure, but it is an intention entailing that another person, A, should beinvolved in satisfying it, and it also involves the use of a message as themeans of conveying the appropriate information to A. A communicative in-tention is reflexive like any intention. There is nothing special about this factin itself, in spite of much ado in the literature on the topic. As argued above,we do not need to express reflexivity especially in our ascriptions of standardintentions (e.g., A intends to open the window). The same goes for communi-cative intention, although in their case it is important, because of anotherperson’s involvement in the reason, to explicitly state the right reason foraction. There are several twists to the matter of reflexivity and iterativity, andI will consider some of them below.

Let me introduce some technical terminology to sharpen the earlier ac-count. I will speak of intentions to perform something by performing some-thing else; e.g., S may intend, by uttering something, to bring about that Adoes something or acquires a certain belief. A perlocutionary communicative(or “p-communicative”) intention can be symbolized by PC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A))

= S p-communicatively intends, by performing XS, to bring about A’s perform-

ing XA (or, acquiring X

A were we to speak of a belief) because of S’s intention.

Thus we can give the following reflexive fixed point definition:

PC) PC-IntS(By(X

S,X

A)) if and only if

IntS(X

S, X

A /

r PC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A))).

Here I use /r for the reason-relation (more accurately: the relation expressing

“at least in part for the reason that . . .”). As seen from the formulation, theconcept of P-communicative intention entails that a P-intention be reflexive.Definition PC) presupposes that the performance of X

S has brought about A’s

belief that S communicatively intends that he should do XA, in symbols, that

given XS,

MuBelS,A

(PC-IntS(By(X

S,X

A)),

although neither this mutual belief nor its component that A so believes needbe the content of S’s perlocutionary intention.

However, in some cases S may indeed have the mentioned kind ofillocutionary communicative intention. For instance, when S has repeatedlyasked A to perform X

A, he may start thinking that A may not have understood

his request. S then forms the corresponding illocutionary communicativeintention, defined by

IC) IC-IntS(By(X

S,X

A)) if and only if

IntS(By(X

S, Bel

A (IC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))).6

42 RAIMO TUOMELA

I claim that there is no special problem with reflexive intentions. Suchformulations as “S intends, by X

S, that A do X

A in accordance with this par-

ticular intention” are conceptually understandable and can be used linguisti-cally, despite the reflexivity expressed. A fixed-point formulation can refer toa definite entity despite its circularity. As an illustration, the simple equationx = 2x—1 is “circular,” as it defines x in terms of itself. Nevertheless, itssolution x = 1 is not itself a “circular object” (cf. Colombetti 1993, 352).Furthermore, fixed point formulations are empirically testable. For this welook at the empirical satisfaction conditions of such an intention. S’s inten-tion is satisfied by A’s opening the window least in part for the “right” reason,which is S’s X

S-mediated intention that he open it. Even if this intention is

conceptually reflexive, it suffices that A be in a certain right state, viz., has“in his head” the information that S intends that he open the window, and thathe act on this (noniterated) piece of information. He either opened the win-dow for the right reason or did not. It is all testable in terms of somethingtaking place in A, his relevant state.

A can justify his action by means of a suitable kind of practical inference.Consider thus the following schema representing such an inference in a some-what idealized way:

(1) An agent A intends to perform XA (in part) for the reason that agent S

intends, by his performance of XS, to bring about A’s performing X

A, if

S actually performs XS.

(2) A believes that agent S intended, by his performing XS, to bring about

A’s performing XA (as intended) and that agent S did actually perform

XS because of this intention.

(3) Therefore (by deconditionalization), agent A intends to perform XA in

part for the reason that agent S intended, by his performance of XS, to

bring about A’s performing XA (as intended).

(4) Therefore (on “purposive-causal” grounds), A performed XA (in part)

for the reason that agent S intended, by his performance of XS, to bring

about A’s performing XA (as intended).

(5) Therefore (on conceptual grounds), A performed XA as his part of the

communicative joint action X (in the g-case) or of the communicativeinteraction X (in the i-case).

(6) S and A have a mutual belief to the effect that (1)–(5).

Note that (2) expresses the satisfaction condition of the correspondingillocutionary intention, which to some theoreticians is the central communi-cative intention. As I have claimed, however, mentally “rehearsed” illocu-tionary intentions are not always required (seemingly contrary to currentopinion).7 Let me still emphasize that here action X

A is supposed to be per-

formed intentionally by A in part for the reason that S communicatively intends


A to perform it, and, as usual, intentional action is assumed to exclude theoperation of wayward causal chains (see Tuomela 1977, 1995 for the notionof purposive causation in [4]). It can thus be regarded as a tacit presupposi-tion that an intention—any intention, communicative or not—is to be ex-ecuted in accordance with and because of that very intention. Note that (6) isthe standard intersubjective openness presupposition for communication.8

I would like to point out that there is another kind of iteration problem thanthe iteration of reasons in my above sense that has provoked much discussion inthe literature (see, e.g., Bennett 1976, Kemmerling 1986, and Posner 1993, tomention only a few of the participants). This second kind of iteration problemarises from the possible lack of openness and to the presence of deception incommunication. I have already stated what I take to be the relevant require-ment of openness, but let us consider the central requirement in the literature.

In my system the basic communicative intention is expressible by:

IntS(X

S, X

A /

r Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))

Here the intention is taken to be reflexive and, as indicated, the reason partcan in principle be iterated. That is, we can substitute “X

A /

r Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))”

for “XA” in any embedded intention sentence IntS(By(X

S,X

A)). But although

we can do that we need not do it, as argued above, since we can define thesatisfaction conditions of the original intention in a clear, empiricallyunproblematic way.

Let me now consider the theorists, among whom Bennett (1976) shouldespecially be mentioned. I will use Posner’s (1993) clear formulation of thematter below, although he actually is against iterability. The basic intentionhere takes the form:

(a) IntS(Bel

A(X

A/r Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))).

Here the intention-belief part is iteratable, because of the openness require-ment, to give

(b) IntS(Bel

A(Int

S(Bel

A(X

A/

r Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))))),

(c) IntS(Bel

A(Int

S(Bel

A(Int

S(Bel

A(X

A/r Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))))))),

and so on.But there are problems here that need to be straightened out. There is the

problem about what the basic formula should best be taken to be and aboutwhether iteration is required. As to the first problem, it is not satisfactory forperlocutionary communicative intentions related to directives—such as S’sintention to bring about, by issuing an appropriate linguistic directive (by per-forming X

S), that A open the window. In such cases S’s intention is satisfied only

if he by means of XS brings it about that A opens the window. It is not enough that

A comes to believe that S intends that he (A) should open the window. But in theaccount under scrutiny, this satisfies S’s intention. This is right when we are

44 RAIMO TUOMELA

dealing with an illocutionary communicative intention. Of course, S can havesuch an intention, only that this intention is not al-ways needed.

Notice that in my account, too, A must of course be taken to believe that Sintends that he open the window in order for S’s intention to be appropriatelysatisfied. That A must so believe is due to the generally accepted idea thatcommunication can only work and be effective if it operates through thehearer’s cognitive system, in this case via A’s belief system. Thus, because ofthis extra assumption, A’s belief must also be assumed when discussing theadequacy of communication. Let me try to make this clearer. The adequatesatisfaction of any perlocutionary communicative intention—although thisis not part and parcel of the actual content of the intention—requires that thehearer believe that the sender communicatively intend as he does. In ourexample A must thus be assumed to take up S’s communicated intentioncontent, and this means that he must come to believe that S intended, by hisperformance of X

S, to bring about that A performs X

A and that agent S actually

did perform XS because of this intention. Thus S must have an underlying

belief (that in nonstandard cases is upgraded into the correspondingillocutionary intention), actually a mutual belief, that A come to believe thatS intended, by means of his performance of X

S, to bring about A’s performing

XA and that agent S did actually perform X

S because of this intention. My

conclusion concerning problem i) is that in many cases we need myperlocutionary basic formula rather than the belief-based formula, the latterapplying primarily to less common cases.

As to the iteration problem, even in those special circumstances where theillocutionary intention is present there is no need for the kind of iterationdiscussed above. To see why, note first that the above (a), viz., Int

S(Bel

A(p)),

obviously does not entail (b), viz., IntS(Bel

A(Int

S(Bel

A(p))), or c) or any higher-

order sentences, and that is almost the end of the matter. We do get the rel-evant conceptual entailment here of Bel

S-(Bel

A(-Int

S(Bel

A(p)))), but this does

not comfort an iterationist. What openness in the sense of mutual belief givesus is MuBel

S,A(PC-Int

S(By(X

S, X

A))) for the perlocutionary case and

MuBelS,A

(IC-IntS(By(X

S, X

A))) for the illocutionary case. (Cf. Kemmerling

1986, various points against iteration.)

V. COMMUNICATIVE ACTION ANDREPLICATIVE JUSTIFICATION

In this section I will consider communicative activity involving commu-nicative intention and explicate factors related to the reasons for performinga communicative action. In particular, I will consider the role of the partici-pants’ communicative intentions and expectations concerning each other’saction. Before going into this, recall that communication presupposes lots ofmutual background knowledge and assumptions. For instance, anyillocutionary act can be taken to presuppose the following mutual beliefs


(see Bach and Harnish 1979, 5–12). First, the speaker and hearer are assumed tohave mutual beliefs concerning the salient features of the situation or context.This will help, for instance, hearer A to disambiguate utterances by S such as “Iwent to the bank” by enabling him to recognize what S intended to say. Next wehave the general mutual belief that the members of the linguistic community towhich S and A belong share the language in which they communicate andwhose sentences they are able to correctly identify and understand. We alsoassume, thirdly, that it is a mutual belief in this speech community that when-ever a member says something to another member he is doing so with somerecognizable illocutionary intention. I will not discuss other presumptions suchas “preparatory” and “sincerity” conditions (see, e.g., Bach and Harnish 1979).

As has been said, a communicative action in general is one involving a com-municative intention. I will now give two more detailed sufficient conditions foran action to be communicative action. The first is: suppose S has a perlocutionaryintention (e.g., that A open the window). We then have a communicative act if theintention is fully satisfied, viz., if S performs X

S and A performs X

A (at least in

part) for the right reason. If the perlocutionary intention is not satisfied, becauseof A’s nonperformance of X

A, S may fall back on the illocutionary intention of

getting his message across to A (it is not necessary, as already indicated, that heactually should have formed this intention). In that case we should in any caseconsider the corresponding transmission belief, viz., that X

S causes the message

to be believed by A. If this belief is true, it means that A understood the informa-tion, and we then also have a (minimally) successful communicative act. Evi-dence for the message’s having come through (having been understood) need notbe required in one-sided communication, but we have to require such “common-able” or publically available information in the case of dialogue, and here thetransmission belief must be true for S. Clearly, in any linguistic communicativeaction there must be a transmission belief, and there thus is the conceptual andpsychological “potential” for an illocutionary intention.

To comment on joint communicative action, assume that some persons Sand A share the collective intention to communicate on some topic or to havea collective intention to achieve something (at least in part) by means ofcommunicative action.9 Call such joint communication X. The type of com-munication I have chosen as my example is asking questions and answering (cf.the analysis in Tuomela 1984, chap. 10). Assuming that S and A understandwhat questions and answers are, and correctly mutually believe that a certainexpression v is an appropriate question expression for expressing a wh-ques-tion (e.g., v = What time is it? or v = Why did this piece of copper expand?) andw an appropriate answer expression (e.g., respectively, w = Three o’clock, w =Because this piece of copper was heated, and all copper expands when heated).We can give the following rough-and-ready analyses of a why-question and itsanswer (these analyses do not presuppose g-communication):

46 RAIMO TUOMELA

ASK) S’s uttering a linguistic expression v (S’s performing XS) was an

action of asking why p if and only if S uttered v (performed XS) for the

reason that he intended, by means of his utterance action XS, to bring

about that A tell him why p (at least in part) for the reason that S intended,by his performance of X

S, to bring about A’s telling him why p (X

A).

ANS) A’s uttering a linguistic expression w (A’s performing XA) was an ac-

tion of answering S’s question why p if and only if A uttered w (performedX

A), believing it to express an answer to why p, for the reason that S in-

tended, by his utterance action XS, to bring about that A tell him why p (at

least in part) for the reason that S intended, by means of his performance ofX

S, to bring about A’s performing an appropriate action X

A telling him why p.

Let me next discuss simple cases of practical reasoning in communicativecontexts. We start by considering g-communication or communication basedon a joint or collective intention. Let us consider a typical situation with acollective goal (Y), distributively shared by the two participants A

1 and A

2,

assumed to be attainable by collective action (X) with the part-actions X1 and

X2 in a two-person case with agents A

1 and A

2. I claim that “normally rational”

agents should be disposed to perform certain kinds of practical inferences inthis situation as needed. The case I am discussing is deliberately made simple.The following simple schema applies to any case with a collective goal (henceto all full-blown cooperation), although here I have applied it to communica-tion (see Tuomela 1996b for a detailed discussion and defense). Considerthus the following valid inference exhibited by Schema I:

(1) We (viz., A1 and A

2) g-intend to achieve collective goal Y (e.g., to

reach consensus about who will represent them in a meeting) andmutually believe so. (Assumed)

(2) Therefore, a) A1 g-intends to achieve Y and b) A

2 g-intends to achieve Y,

and A1 and A

2 mutually believe (a) and (b). (From [1] and the distribution

principle)

(3) We mutually believe (accept) that the bringing about of Y requires that weperform X together (e.g., discuss the matter) as a means to Y. (Assumed)

(4) Therefore, we collectively g-intend to perform X and mutually believeso. (Collective intention and mutual belief transferal via entailment)

(5) Therefore, we individually (and distributively) g-intend to perform Xand mutually believe so. (Transferal of g-intention and mutual beliefvia entailment)

(6) We mutually believe (accept) that our performing X together requiresthat A

1 does X

1 as his part of X and A

2 does X

2 as his part of X. (Assumed)

(7) Therefore, a) A1 g-intends to do X

1, given the truth of the presupposition

that A2 does X

2, and b) A

2 g-intends to do X

2, given the truth of the presup-

position that A1 does X

1, and it is a mutual belief among A

1 and A

2 that

a) and b). (6) and collective intention and mutual belief transferal viaentailment)


(8) a) A1 believes that A

2 will do X

2 and b) A

2 believes that A

1 will do X

1,

and it is a mutual belief among us that (a) and (b). (From [7], using the“replicative justification schema”; see below)

(9) Therefore, a) A1 g-intends to do X

1 and b) A

2 g-intends to do X

2, and it is

a mutual belief among us that (a) and (b). ([7] and [8], deconditionalization,mutual belief transferal)

To illustrate some aspects of our schema, we consider communicative “epi-sodes” consisting of the joint action of S and A having a dialogue about acertain topic, e.g., some properties of familiar metals. Here S (e.g., a pupil)may ask questions that A (the teacher) tries to answer. This is a joint conversa-tion of the type asking-answering, call it X, performed in turn, a sequence ofjoint action episodes in which S asks a question and A answers. There mightof course be only one question asked, accompanied by an answer. An equallygood example would be one in which one participant defends a thesis or view,and the other one tries to criticize it. To keep things very simple and strictlyin accordance with our earlier analysis, assume that our joint action X con-sists of only one asking-action (X

S) and one answer-action (X

A). The agents

share a joint intention (g-intention) of the form “we jointly intend to performa joint communicative action X.” The communicative action is defined byreference to the presence of a communicative intention in it.

I will now illustrate the situation in terms of a “replicative schema” (cf.Tuomela 1984, 1996b, and the structurally similar schemas of Lewis 1969). Insituations in which some interacting agents respond to each other’s actions inpart because of their expectations (beliefs) concerning each other’s actions(most notably when they share a mutual belief about what they intend to doand actually do, as below) and in which the agents are in analogous positions,we can discuss the situation in terms of the agents’ replicable practical rea-sonings—concerning participation in X and each participant’s performinghis specified part of it. The kind of social action situation in which the par-ticipating agents, thinking by analogy with each other and replicating oneanother’s reasoning, respond to each other’s expectations about what the oth-ers are going to do is of course very central and extremely common. Thereplicative schema to be given below concerns the replicative justification ofa person’s intention to participate in communicative joint action (querying-answering). It thus illustrates and explicates steps (5) and (9) (assuming aknown part-division) of Schema I. The replication of beliefs is based on theassumption that the agents act or at least can act in response to their assumedmutual belief about each others participation (for further discussion, seeTuomela 1996b). Note that in those cases in which the participants have madean agreement to communicate or to perform a communicative action, thismutual belief of course has a firm foundation.

Without further ado, here is my replicative schema for g-communication(in the case of cooperative two-person communicative joint action):

48 RAIMO TUOMELA

Replicative schema of justification for joint communicative action:

(2nd belief-justifying level)

(i) A believes that S believes that A believes thatS will participate in joint action X (asking-answering), and perform X

S (asking why p)

as her part. (BelA(Bel

S(Bel

A(X

S))))

(ii) A believes that S believes that A willparticipate in joint action X, and performX

A (answering why p) as his part, iff

p S will

participate and perform XS (asking why p)

as her part. (BelA(Bel

S(X

A/

p X

S)))

� ((i)&(ii))

(1st belief-justifying level)

(iii) A believes that S believes that A willparticipate, and perform X

A (answering why p)

as his part. (BelA(Bel

S(X

A)))

(iv) A believes that S will participate andperform X

A (asking why p) as her part, iff

p A

will participate and perform XA (answering

why p) as his part.

(BelA(X

S/

p X

A))

� ((iii)&(iv))

(action-belief level)

(v) A believes that S will participate and performX

S (asking why p) as her part. (Bel

A(X

S))

(vi) A g-intends to participate and perform XA

(answering why p) as his part, given (the truthof the presupposition) that S will participateand perform X

S (asking why p) as her part.

(G-IntA(X

A/

p X

S))

� ((v)&(vi))

(conclusion)

(vii) A g-intends to participate and perform XA

(answering why p) as his part. (G-IntA(X

A))

(viii) A participates and performs XA (answer-

ing why p) as his part of X (asking-answering).

In this schema ‘iffp’ means “presuppositional condition” and entails thatthe condition is truth-functionally necessary and sufficient. The schema ofreplicative justification justifies (v) on the basis of higher-level beliefs. Italso gives logically binding justification for one’s intention to participate in


collective action (vii) from within the very structure of the collective actionitself, so to speak, on the assumption that the other person’s participation ispresupposed for one’s own participation and from the mutual belief concern-ing this and the other’s performance of his part. An analogous interrelateddiagram of course is assumed for the other participant.

Logically speaking, we are dealing here with deconditionalization of in-tention and belief. The principle of intention deconditionalization is simplythat if agent A intends something p, given something q, and if he believes thatq, he will intend p categorically. Obviously, this principle is used to derivethe conclusion (vii) from premisses (v) and (vi). (In symbols, “Int

A(p) is infer-

able from the conjunction IntA(p/

pq) & Bel

A(q).”) Belief justification in this

schema goes in terms of the principle that if a person A1 believes that p given

that another person A2 believes that q, and if he believes that the other person

(viz., A2) indeed believes that q, then A

1 is entitled to believe categorically

that p. (In symbols, BelA2

(p) is inferable from the conjunction BelA1

(p/pBel

A2

(q)) & BelA1

(BelA2

(q)); in the diagram XS, the intentional performance by S of

his part-action, replaces BelA2

q.) Noticing this makes the schema of replica-tive justification easy to understand.

We still have to consider what, after all, makes the premisses in the dia-gram true. The right hand side beliefs (iii), (i), (...) simply spell out the as-sumption of mutual belief about first level belief (v) in terms of iterated loopbeliefs. The analogous condition-involving left hand side beliefs (iv), (ii),(...) are true on the symmetry that each participant is assumed by the others toreason analogously. They are thus taken to replicate each other’s reasoningand to assume similar things about the presuppositional givens of their partperformances. Accordingly, two kinds of mutual belief, condition-involvingand categorical ones, account for the truth of the right hand beliefs in myreplicative schema. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the other replica-tive schema to be presented below for “quasi-cooperative” i-communication.(Lewis 1969, in his elaborated treatment does not, however, explicitly presentthis kind of logical justification for his schemas.)

Another logical point worth making in this connection is that the pair ofactions <X

1, X

2> forms a Nash equiblibrium. These part-actions serve to make

up the collective goal X (viz., we can say that X = X1&X

2, that X is a conjunc-

tive combination of the part-actions). I am assuming here not only that theagents intend these actions respectively but that the performance of each oneis preferred by the performer to its nonperformance—this is part and parcel ofthe agents’ g-intention to perform X to be rational in the weak sense of beingpreferable to its nonperformance. In the present context, each agent prefers toperform his part-action to his not performing it, given that the other performshis part-action (recall (vi)). But this is precisely what an equilibrium amountsto. The underlying game, to continue to use game-theoretic terms, may evenbe one in which the agents’ interests within the game are opposed (e.g., ten-nis), as long has the agents prefer playing the game to its nonplaying. (Cf.

50 RAIMO TUOMELA

here the related result from game theory: in a choice situation in which (i)each participant is rational [viz., a utility-maximizer] and in which (ii) theparticipants have mutual beliefs about each others’ strategic choices, the choicesconstitute a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium [see Brandenburger 1992, 90]).

In normal life a case in which (vi) is derived in one’s practical inferencefrom (iii) and (iv) is not that rare, I suppose, although the higher-order infer-ences may not occur unless perhaps in very exceptional cases. Remarks analo-gous to those made when defending (T3) can be made in the present connection(see Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela 1997). It should be emphasized oncemore that the mutual belief that the belief premisses in this replicative schemadistributively explicate are ultimately based on and “come from” the agents’collective goal and the mutual belief about it in this situation.

In the case of i-mode communication, which can also be called coordina-tive communication, we can discuss practical inferences and a related repli-cative schema by analogy with the g-case. In the case of i-modecommunication we then get the following schema (where concerning ourcommunicative example, A

1 = S and A

2 = A).10

Schema II:

(1*) A1 and A

2 i-intend to achieve their respective goals G

1 and G

2 and

mutually believe so. (Assumed)

(2*) They mutually believe that their achieving their respective goals G1 and

G2 requires that they coordinate their actions accordingly; e.g., that A

1

does X1 and A

2 does X

2 or that A

1 does something X*

1 and A

2 does X*

2—

several alternative actions-combinations may be possible. (Assumed)

(3*) Therefore, a) A1 i-intends to do his share of coordinating, if

c A

2 does

his share of coordinating, and b) A2 i-intends to do his share of coor-

dinating, ifc A

1 does his share of coordinating, and it is a mutual

belief between them that (a) and (b). (From [1*] and [2*] via entail-ment-based intention-transferal)

(4*) a) A1 believes that A

2 will do X

2 and b) A

2 believes that A

1 will do X

1,

and it is a mutual belief between them that (a) and (b). (Assumed onthe basis of previous or current experience)

(5*) Therefore, a) A1 i-intends to do X

1 and b) A

2 i-intends to do X

2.

(Deconditionalization)

We can here assume that XS = the utterance of “What time is it?” X

A = the

utterance of “It is three o’clock.”In the case of coordinative communication we use ‘ifc’ for the standard

condition and use the condition-sign /c instead of /

p and get the following

diagram:


Replicative schema of justification for the case of coordinative two-personcommunicative episode:

– – – –

(2nd belief-justifying level)

(i) A believes that S believes that A believesthat S will participate in communicative episodeX (asking-answering) and perform X

S (asking

why p). (BelA(Bel

S(Bel

A(X

S))))

(ii) A believes that S believes that A willparticipate in communicative episode X andperform X

A (answering why p), if

c S will

participate and perform XS (asking why p).

(BelA(Bel

S(X

A/

c X

S)))

� ((i)&(ii))

(1st belief-justifying level)

(iii) A believes that S believes that A will par-ticipate and perform X

A (answering why p).

(BelA(Bel

S(X

A)))

(iv) A believes that S will participate andperform X

A (asking why p), if

c A will par-

ticipate and perform XA (answering why p).

(BelA(X

S/

c X

A))

� ((iii)&(iv)

(action-belief level)

(v) A believes that S will participate and per-form X

S (asking why p). (Bel

A(X

S))

(vi) A intends to participate and perform XA

(answering why p), ifc S will participate and

perform XS (asking why p). (I-Int

A(X

A/c X

S))

� ((v)&(vi))

(conclusion)

(vii) A intends to participate in X (asking-answering) and perform X

A (answering why

p). (I-IntA(X

A))

(viii) A participates in X (asking-answering)and performs X

A (answering why p).

52 RAIMO TUOMELA

VI. HABERMAS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION

Habermas has become famous for his analyses and theorizing related tothe notion of communicative action. In this section I will investigate how myown account of communicative action and cooperation relates to his account.My description of Habermas’s view will be very concise, but I will give refer-ences to those who wish to study his views more closely. The central sourcesused in the account below are Habermas (1981, 1985, 1991) and Cooke (1994).

It can be said that a communicative action for Habermas is a form of socialinteraction in which the plans of action of various agents are coordinatedthrough speech acts oriented toward agreement or consensus (Einverständnis).Here are two quotations giving a more precise sense to the notion: (CA1) “Ihave called the type of interaction in which all participants harmonize theirindividual plans of action with one another and thus pursue their illocutionaryaims without reservation “communicative action” (Habermas 1984, 294).(CA2) “Thus I count as communicative action those linguistically mediatedinteractions in which all participants pursue illocutionary aims, and onlyillocutionary aims, with their mediating acts of communicating. On the otherhand, I regard as linguistically mediated strategic action those interactions inwhich at least one of the participants wants with his speech acts to produceperlocutionary effects on his opposite number.” (Habermas 1984, 295). I willnot discuss the phrase “without reservation” here except for pointing out thatthe mutual belief requirement or “openness” requirement in Section III aboveis a standard explicate of this in other accounts. We need to discuss the kindof harmonizing (Abstimmung) of plans and the notion of an illocutionary aimin (CA1) and (CA2) in order to see how my account compares with Habermas’s.Before that some other features of his theory need to be considered.

Habermas’s theory of linguistic pragmatics derives from Bühler’s theoryand the latter’s three components of language use: the propositional, theillocutionary, and the expressive. In more modern terms, Habermas basicallytries to combine a truth-condition approach with a use-theoretic account,while also making an “epistemic turn” to knowing: “We understand a speechact if we know the conditions which make it acceptable.” The conditionsinvolved here are “validity conditions” for sufficiently rational languageusers. When a speaker, S, presents a claim (e.g., (a) “The earth is flat,” (b)“Please open the window,” (c) “This wine tastes great to me”) to a hearer, H, heis supposed to be raising three validity claims, perhaps not all of them explic-itly. First, there is the empirical truth claim that what he is saying is true insomething like a correspondence sense (the primary claim in a). Secondly,there is the normative claim according to which S’s claim is normatively cor-rect, e.g., that it is normatively right for S to ask H to open the window. Thirdly,there is the subjective validity claim that what is said is subjectively truthful(Wahrhaft). (Habermas repeatedly gives the cited meaning criterion related tovalidity conditions by making the latter only sufficient for understanding. But


he obviously needs to make at least the primary claim necessary as well, andthat is what actually happens in his discussion.)

Generally speaking, in the case of every speech act the speaker enters intoan interpersonal relationship of mutual obligation with the hearer, as theraised validity claims are to be defended if needed. In other words, the speaker isobliged to support her claim with reasons, if challenged, and the hearer isobliged to accept a claim unless he has good reasons not to do so (cf. thediscussion in Cooke 1994, chap. 3). Let me say that Habermas does not seemto distinguish clearly between understanding a sentence for which (i) thevalidity conditions do not hold and understanding a sentence for which (ii)the validity conditions do hold. One can understand “The weather is finetoday” in sense (i) if one knows, among other things, what its truth conditionsare. Habermas seems rather to require (ii), viz., that one must know that thetruth conditions in fact apply to the sentence in question. On the whole,Habermas’s theory of validity conditions has been regarded as problematic,but I will not here open this Pandora’s box (see the critical papers in Honnethand Joas 1991).11

According to Habermas, a communicative action aims at consensus (cf.“harmonizing of plans” in [CA1]). What the consensus exactly is about willbe considered later. He makes a strict distinction between consensus andinfluence—the two central mechanisms underlying the notions of social action(cf. [CA2]): “Consent and influence are—at least from the perspective of theactor—mutually exclusive mechanisms for coordinating actions. Communi-cation processes cannot be undertaken with the intention of reaching under-standing [consensus] with a participant in interaction and simultaneouslyinfluencing him, that is having a causal effect on him” (Habermas 1985, 153;consensus here means something like intersubjectively binding mutual knowl-edge). However, on the face of it, the quoted sentence clearly is untenable fornormal human beings, for there can surely be causal influencing when peopleare trying to reach agreement about something. This is not only conceptuallypossible but also common in actual life. One only needs to think of the kindof compromise-making involved in bargaining (cf. I notice that you are try-ing to causally influence me concerning how many squirrel furs I should givefor your bag of wheat). Even coercion may to some extent be involved. Thenotion of an attitude or orientation towards consent similarly allows strategicuse of language, conflict, and even coercion—Habermas’s dichotomy plainlyis too strict. Habermas may, however, want to respond to this kind of criticismthat a complex real process of arriving at a consensus can have causal aspects,but they belong to the strategic use of language rather. (For criticisms ofHabermas’s strict distinction see, among others, Tugendhat 1985 andBaurmann 1985; also cf. Habermas 1991.)

Before discussing the problem of what the participants of a communica-tive action are supposed to agree upon, let me state what Habermas considers

54 RAIMO TUOMELA

to be the functions of communicative action. “Under the functional aspect ofreaching consent, communicative action serves the transmission and renewalof cultural knowledge; under the aspect of coordinating action, it servessocial integration and the establishment of solidarity; finally, under the as-pect of socialization, communicative action serves the formation of socialidentities” (Habermas 1985, 168). I can agree that these are good desiderata,but I am not sure that Habermas has shown that communicative actions actu-ally function in these ways, as in real social life so many factors are involved.I cannot here consider these claims; they would require—and deserve—along treatise. Let me just say that Habermas seems to require that communica-tive action is necessary for the functions in question. For this claim to be trueit must be understood to mean that for some cases communicative action isrequired (cf. Habermas 1985, 174 ). However, recalling that communicativeaction in his sense requires interactive speech acts, we can often get alongwith less. We can get and often do get common knowledge or at least commonbeliefs without such interaction. (For instance, we may separately notice some-thing “out there” and notice that the other notices it, which leads to a mutualbelief without proper communicative action; and mutual belief serves to co-ordinate action.)

Habermas has not always been very clear—at least in his 1984 book—concerning what the agreement (consent) involved in communicative actionreally is about. In his reply to his critics he does make the distinction betweentwo different things that the agreement could concern: I shall initially distin-guish between the immediate illocutionary aim (or success) of the speaker—namely that the hearer understands her/his utterance—and the more farreaching aim that the hearer accept the validity of the utterance and thus takeon obligations which are relevant to the further sequence of interaction. Theillocutionary success in the narrow sense consists of understanding, whereasthe illocutionary success in the broader sense consists of a consensus whicheffects coordination, i.e., an interactive success” (Habermas 1991, 239f.).Habermas’s idea seems to be that it is because the broader sense is more likelyto bring about coordination, it is the right kind of illocutionary aim to beused in his theory of communicative action (and, thus in the criterion [CA2]).

Let us consider this important issue. What Habermas means by the narrowsense (and, equivalently, by understanding an offer made in a speech act)should be analyzed as follows in terms of the framework of this paper. Sup-pose S utters something x (a physical sound wave or string of marks on paper).To deal with an example, we let x be a physically described token of thesentence “The weather is fine today” and assume that this is what the speakertakes it to be. There could an intention to communicate the fact that a soundstring of a certain kind has been uttered, but that is not in our focus here (viz.,S communicatively intends to transmit to H that he believes that x is of kindK, e.g., “The weather is fine today.”). In our first important case (1) S commu-nicatively intends to transmit to H that he by x qua a sentence of kind K


means that something p (e.g., that the weather is fine today, or in ironic lan-guage use, that it is terrible today). In other words, S is here saying that p byx qua a sentence of kind K and intends to communicate this to H. Next, (2) Scan communicatively intend to make H believe that the weather is fine todayby uttering x qua a sentence of type K. Furthermore, (3) S can communica-tively intend that there be consensus between the participants concerning x-related things or, rather, things related to x qua K (or understood as p). In ourfinal central case (4) S intends (or perhaps communicatively intends) to makeH stay a little longer by uttering x qua a sentence of type K.

Here (1) is an illocutionary intention in the sense of this paper. It is satis-fied if and only if H has takes it up and in this narrow sense understands it.This is Habermas’s narrow illocutionary aim. Habermas’s broad illocutionaryaim seems to correspond to (2) (a perlocutionary aim in my technical termi-nology); see Habermas 1984, 298, and 1986, 236–8. However, the abovequotation is compatible also with the broad (3). Case (4) connects toHabermas’s strategic use of language—conscious strategic use of language.(Generalizing, and speaking in terms of linguistic actions rather than commu-nicative intentions, we may start speaking of intended versus unintendedeffects of actions, anticipated versus unanticipated effects of actions, etc.;that is, standard distinctions of action theory.)

While it seems that Habermas’s broad illocutionary aims are of the kind(2) he often speaks using the consensus terminology in (3). While (2) entails(3), the latter includes many kinds of things. Let MK(q) stand for the partici-pants’ mutual knowledge (consensus) that q, where q is the sentence of kind Kthat x is taken to be. In principle q can have any content. Here are someexamples related the our weather example: a) the weather is fine; b) the weatheris not fine; c) the case is unsettled, d) the participants believe differentlyabout weather (viz., they do not both believe [a] or [b] or [c]). The partici-pants’ broad illocutionary aim could be taken to achieving MK(q) for somerelevant weather-related sentence q, viz., roughly, (Eq)MK(q). Another possi-bility would be to take q to be the disjunction of (a), (b), and (c) and possiblysomething else as well, for instance, plainly that S has uttered x qua a sentenceof kind K (this possibility should also be included in my first alternative).12

This broader interpretation of Habermas’s notion of a broad illocutionaryaim actually falls in between my notions of an illocutionary and perlocutionaryaim. My own account of communicative action is compatible with requiringthat there be a mutual expectation among the participants that consensus in thepresent broad sense be reached. While thus a successful dialogue may in somecases (but not in all cases) require the acceptance of the speech act offer (in thesense leading to the belief or action satisfying [2] above) especially if theparticipants aim at forming a plan to act together. On the other hand, the partici-pants can often get along with less, viz., with merely understanding what theother one is intentionally saying or with one of the above alternatives (a)–(c).

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Thus, in our example, I can certainly have a successful dialogue and mean-ingful debate with you about whether the weather is fine without having tobelieve that the weather is fine. What this entails is that if indeed Habermasrequires consensus and acceptance of speech act offer in a sense related to (2), herequires too much agreement in the case of many normal tasks than is neededor desirable for a general theory of communicative action.

To end this paper I will present and defend some theses, in part alreadyargued for, relating Habermas’s approach and his communicative actions,termed CA, to mine:

(H1) a) Communicative action in the sense of this paper (viz., communica-tive action is either g-communicative or i-communicative action requir-ing a communicator and a communicatee) is similar to Habermas’s exceptthat there is no need generally to require the acceptance of the speech actoffer (in the discussed strong sense). b) There can accordingly be both i-consensus (viz., consensus consisting of merely personal attitudes andachievable by separate symbolic or communicative action) and g-consen-sus (viz., consensus consisting only of properly collective attitudes andachievable only by means of collective action).

(H2) a) Some CA is joint action (at least in the weak sense of acting to-gether in the sense of Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela 1997) while someis not. b) Some communicative action in my sense is not CA.

(H3) All CA is collective social action, viz., collective action performedfor the same social reason (here: achieving consensus); in this contextcollective social action is understood as collective action performed forthe same social reason, in the sense of Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela(1997).

(H4) a) CA is cooperative action at least in the sense of “coaction” (coor-dinative interaction) with shared private goals (types or tokens, in thesense explicated in Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela 1997). b) Not all CAneed to be cooperation in my full sense of cooperative action, viz., actingtogether towards a shared collective goal.

(H5) There is communicative activity (“communication of thought con-tents”) that is not communicative action, CA, in Habermas’s sense, nor inmy sense but which is central for the reproduction of symbolic structuresin a society.

Let us now briefly consider the tenability of these theses. As to the broadthesis (H1), we recall that the purpose of communicative action is to reachconsensus both in the narrow and the broad illocutionary sense in Habermas’saccount. In my account communicative action must minimally comply withthe underlying mutual expectation of consensus in the narrow sense. Con-sensus may be reached by means of many kinds of collective social actionand we can accordingly speak of both i-consensus and g-consensus, even


when dealing with the shared aim (i-aim or g-aim) of reaching consensus.Briefly, the participants have i-consensus concerning an aim p when theyhave p as their merely personal goal and have mutual belief about this. Asomewhat sharper analysis would go in terms of “we-attitudes” in the sense ofTuomela 1995, chap. 1: the participants have i-consensus concerning an aimp if and only if they have p as their merely personal goal, believe that theothers also have p as their merely personal goal, and believe that this is amutual belief among them. In the case of g-consensus, we basically requirethat the aimed p be a collective content accepted by the participants in termsof “we” and otherwise impose the same requirements. The participants canalso have consensus concerning their beliefs (and, for that matter, other atti-tudes). Similar distinctions and analyses apply to them.

As we know, Habermas divides social action into communicative and stra-tegic action. The former, in contrast to the latter, is action undertaken for thepurpose of reaching consensus. This might suggest that communicative ac-tion (viz., CA) amounts to g-communication in my sense while strategic com-munication would amount to i-communication. This seems to be a wrongsuggestion, however, as reaching consensus (binding common belief or knowl-edge for Habermas) does not require a shared collective goal and acting to-gether towards it nor of course a plan or agreement to act towards consensus.Norm-based action suffices to show this—there is an intersubjectively bind-ing consensus that there is such a norm to be obeyed but there need not a beshared collective goal to obey the norm (cf. Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela1997, and Tuomela 1995, chaps. 2–3, for related arguments).

In Habermas’s view, CA leads to consensus, and consensus leads to thecoordination of action. Here the consensus may concern a plan of joint actionand be, e.g., a joint intention to go swimming (rather than, say walking). Inother cases it could concern mutually accepted views, e.g., that it is going tobe sunny and warm today. Such a mutual belief (mutually accepted view)could underlie joint action, e.g., in the sense of being a reason for forming thejoint intention, say, to go swimming together today. Now, in the scheme a) CA-> b) consensus -> c) coordinated action (with the arrow meaning “leads to orcontributes to”) none of (a), (b), or (c) requires full-blown joint action oracting together. Furthermore, we can note that there can be much coordina-tion on the basis of mere narrow linguistic success so that (b) need not alwaysamount to the “acceptance of a speech act offer.”

Clause (a) of (H2) basically clarifies and sharpens a part of (H1) and pre-supposes Habermas’s (1985, 153) notion of consensus. However, one maywonder why Habermas does not require consensus to be a collective goal(e.g., you and I both aim at agreement and mutually believe and accept this).Although some remarks by him suggest something like this, the only clearstatement I have found is the mentioned reference to consensus as mutualknowledge, which, as was said, can be satisfied in terms of merely personalgoals. So the conclusion is that (H2)(a) is acceptable. Clause (b) is true on the

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ground that in my account communicative action is essentially defined onthe basis of communicative intention. This allows that some actions thatcount as strategic (and thus not CA) in Habermas’s sense are communicativeactions in my sense (cf. the “only” in CA2); and those actions can be per-formed “without reservation.”

(H3) is a broad thesis that cannot be properly discussed without a detailedtreatment of collective social action, broadly understood as intentional col-lective action for the same social reason. In Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela(1997) acting for the same social reason is explicated in terms of the notion ofacting on a shared we-attitude (cf. Tuomela 1995, chap. 1). In Habermas’s casethe achievement of consensus—either i-consensus or g-consensus—can beregarded as the shared social reason (and the shared we-attitude). Space doesnot allow me to discuss the matter further here, and thus I must leave (H3)somewhat conjectural.

(H4) is an informative thesis, as it excludes some collective social action.I must also leave (H4) somewhat conjectural here. Basically, however, thenotion of a coaction towards a shared private goal means action towards sucha shared goal by means of “peaceful” actions, actions not undermining theothers’ attempts to achieve the goal.13 The shared personal goal here of courseis Habermasian consensus. When consensus is accepted as a collective goalfor a group, then we are dealing with full-blown cooperative communicativecollective action.

As to (H5), it claims that Habermas’s notion of CA is too strong for clarify-ing the role of communication and for the functions communication can have,e.g., in creating and upholding symbolic structures and social institutions ingeneral. Consider, for instance, a gypsy girl who by dressing in a special waynonlinguistically “communicates” something about the gypsy culture. Shemay not do it intentionally, and even when she does it intentionally thereneed not always be an audience of the kind Habermas’s speech act analysis ofcommunicative action requires. This type of case, when collective, will be acollective social action, anyhow, even if it need not be even coaction in thementioned sense. Potentially this kind of case could be strengthened into afull-blown CA (or to a nonlinguistic counterpart of CA) in the sense that thegypsy girl could have communicated in the sense of CA.

The symbolic and “meaningful” nature of our social world does not de-pend on the kind of face-to-face communicative action that Habermas’s ac-count or, for that matter, my counterpart notion suggests, although it is requiredfor some cases and is in a sense potentially required for any situation in whichsymbols are being created, reproduced, and, especially, transmitted or com-municated to others. Let me end by considering this issue briefly.

The account I have been advocating of communicative action is essen-tially geared to the use of a symbols or representations, not language. Accord-ing to it, we live in a “meaningful” and (in principle) communicable world inpart constructed by ourselves (cf. a precise statement of this in Tuomela and


Balzer 1999). Underlying this view is the simple fact that we as agents actintentionally, viz., for a reason. Acting for a reason entails that we produceand create events and states in the world in a purposive way and indeed, touse my technical terminology, “purposive-causally” (cf. Tuomela 1977, 1995,1998). We thus need purposive causation to account for both single-agentand collective acting for a reason. This is a dual-aspect model in which thereis conceptualization (symbolization) of the relevant parts of the world—viz.,reason-contents—and causation of events in accordance with these reason-contents. I argue that, instead of Habermas’s strictly dichotomous consent-oriented versus strategic actions, these—together with jointness notions suchas collective acceptance and collective goals—are the proper building blocksthat we need to account for both intentional action and the unintended ef-fects of action as well as for the institutional social structures and symbolicforms (often in concrete manifestations) around us—e.g., money, law, power,status, leadership, church, national flag, car, and so on.14

ENDNOTES

I wish to thank Maj Tuomela, Georg Meggle, and Kaarlo Miller for comments.1Unfortunately space does not permit a more detailed discussion here—see especially Tuomela1995, chap. 3. In that book I defend a view of we-intentions according to which a we-intending person must conatively accept the intention-expression “We will do X” (X beingthe intended joint action in question) and must be disposed to engage in relevant practicalreasonings. By way of a partial summary the following analysis can be presented:

WI) A member Ai of a collective G we-intends to do X if and only if, based on the

(explicit or implicit) agreement to perform X jointly made by the agents A1,..,A

i,..,A

m,

(i) Ai intends to do his (agreement-based) part of X (as his part of X);

(ii) Ai has a belief to the effect that the joint action opportunities for an intentional

performance of X will obtain (or at least will probably obtain), especially that anappropriate number of the full-fledged and adequately informed members of G, asrequired for the performance of X, will (or at least will probably) do their parts ofX, which will under normal conditions result in an intentional joint performance ofX by the participants;

(iii) Ai believes that there is (or will be) a mutual belief among the participating members

of G (or at least among those participants who do their parts of X intentionally astheir parts of X there is or will be a mutual belief) to the effect that the joint actionopportunities for an intentional performance of X will obtain (or at least probablywill obtain);

[(iv) (i) in part because of (ii) and (iii).]2In Tuomela 2000 a precise criterion for the distinction between the I-mode and the we-modeis given. Without further clarification we will here state this criterion, termed (ET*) inTuomela 2000, where ATT refers to a propositional attitude (e.g., ATT = Goal) that can be

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attributed to a group member and CA to collective acceptance entailing collective commit-ment, and p is a sentence:

(ET*) A sentence “We ATT-relate to p” expresses a g-attitude for group G in a situationif and only if in that situation, for group G, the sentence “We collectively accept that weATT-relate to p” is true, and “We ATT-relate to p” entails and is entailed by “We collec-tively accept that we ATT-relate to p,” understanding collective acceptance here to in-volve collective commitment to p. Put in logical notation, ATT (we,p) expresses ag-attitude for G in a situation if and only if, for G, CA(we, ATT(we,p)) and CA(we,ATT(we,p)) <-> ATT(we,p) in that situation.

3An example of a conversational principle is Grice’s much-discussed Cooperative Principleand the conversational maxims related to it (Grice 1989, chap. 2). We may note in thisconnection that Grice seems to require common goals in any normal communication:

Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected re-marks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to somedegree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to someextent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direc-tion. . . . Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage atwhich it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in whichyou are engaged. One might label this the Cooperative Principle. (Grice 1989, 26)

4Mutual belief is often assumed to mean iterable beliefs or dispositions to believe in thesense set out in chap. 1 of Tuomela 1995, which is somewhat less demanding psychologi-cally than, e.g., Lewis’s (1969) notion of “common” belief. Thus in the two-person case,you and I believe that p, I believe that you believe that p (similarly for you), I believe that youbelieve that I believe that p (similarly for you), and so on, in principle as far as the situationdemands. In many cases we can get along with a notion of mutual belief defined simply byour belief that p and our belief that we believe that p. A considerably stronger, “fixed point”notion of mutual belief is as follows: we mutually believe that p if and only if we believe thatp and also believe that it is mutually believed by us that p. We can correspondingly make adistinction between what one might call the iterative or the level-account and the reflexive or“fixed point” account. Under certain assumptions concerning the notion of belief it can beproved that the iterative approach that continues iterations ad infinitum gives the fixed pointproperty as a theorem (see Halpern and Moses 1992).

I suggest that these ideas can also be applied to intentions. Without really going intodetail, let me just say that in the present paper intentions are regarded as reflexive. A person’shaving an intention to perform X means, on analysis, that he has the intention to perform Xin accordance with and because of this same intention to perform X. (On the contrary, theiterative account iterates intentions and speaks of intentions to intend, and so on.)5Let us consider briefly the early Grice’s views. I will be interested only in communicationbelow and assume that questions of linguistic meaning (broadly understood) have beensettled. Let me cite the analysis from Grice:

“S meant something by uttering x” is true iff, for some audience A, S uttered xintending a) A to produce a particular response r, b) A to think (recognize) that Sintends (a), c) A to fulfill (a) on the basis of his fulfillment of (b). (1989, 92)


My above requirements for a perlocutionary communicative intention entail Grice’s condi-tions, applied to future-directed intentions, although I have arrived at my conditions fromdifferent considerations. Note that A cannot act for the right reason unless he has the belief (b).

However, the important requirement that in (b) A must acquire his belief via S’s commu-nicating his intention to him is missing in Grice’s treatment.6Although I wish to keep reflexivity and iterability as separate notions, it can still be arguedthat in the present setup this entails that Int

S(X

S, X

A /

r Int

S(X

S,X

A /

r PC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A))), and

so on indefinitely, with the reason-part iterated. Cf. the analogy with mutual belief pointedout in note 4, and see Meggle 1980 for logical machinery and assumptions that can be usedfor making this precise.7The views on communication I present in this paper have been influenced by the work ofBach and Harnish 1979. Some differences are that a) these authors do not make the distinc-tion between g-communication and i-communication that I make, b) they assume the pres-ence of illocutionary communicative intention in all communication (or this is the impressionI got), and c) they rely on a special principle of expression that I do not accept.

As to (b) and (c), Bach and Harnish think that communication expresses an attitude andaccordingly require that communication express an attitude in the following sense:

(EXP) For S to express an attitude to A is for S reflexively to intend A to take S’sutterance as a reason to think S has that attitude. (15)

Crudely put, when I tell you that the weather is fine, according to (EXP) I must express mybelief that the weather is fine so that you find it out. When I ask you to open the window Imust be expressing the attitude that I desire that you open the window. But that seems toomuch to require. In my approach it is enough that you open the window because of myperlocutionary communicative intention, independently of any underlying attitude. As wehave seen, this suffices for communication.

(EXP) also entails that any communication involves an illocutionary communicativeintention. Moreover, a communicative intention is one such that recognition of the commu-nicative intention is necessary and sufficient for its satisfaction. But this is what I mean byan illocutionary communicative intention, and thus it does not cover perlocutionary commu-nicative intentions in my sense. In my system the ubiquitous place of these authorsillocutionary intention is taken by a corresponding belief, as indicated. (As to how to definecommunicative intentions, see also Recanati 1986 and Bach 1987; both of these are accountswith which the present paper disagrees.)8Let me here, without further comment, give a simplified formalization of the above reason-ing. It is as follows for the g-case, with reflexive action-reasons:

1) IntA(X

A/r PC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))/

p (X

S/rPC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))

2) BelA(X

S/rPC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)))

3) Therefore (on conceptual grounds), Int(XA/r PC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A))).

4) Therefore (on “purposive-causal” grounds), XA/r PC-Int

S(By(X

S,X

A)).

5) MubelS,A

(1)&2)&3)&4)).9There are various kinds of (more or less) cooperative “joint” action or acting together.These have been discussed in detail in Tuomela and Bonnevier-Tuomela 1996; also cf.Tuomela 1993. It is worth pointing out particularly that some participants may act

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together in a rudimentary sense (we call it ATr) without having mutual belief or expectation

about the others’ participation. More generally speaking, in acting together mere sharedbelief may sometimes suffice. Epistemically stronger forms of acting together are obtainedby requiring mutual belief (giving a class we call AT

mb), or mutual knowledge, or even

knowledge based on agreement-making or a joint plan (we call this class ATp).

10Most topics of this section are discussed in chap. 5 of Tuomela 2000, where also a simpleformalization of general forms of the schemas I and II is presented.11Let me here, however, consider one issue, viz., the problematic nature of the normativevalidity condition. Why should social norms be involved here? Tugendhat is one of Habermas’scritics on this issue:

When a child beggar in Lima says to me “give me a sol,” he is neither commandingme nor is he appealing to any validity claim, and yet nobody without a specialterminology would say that he is not performing a communicative act. (Tugendhat1985, 184)

I would say that this is rather an attempt at a communicative act, as the bypasser has still toreact to the child’s request. But ignoring this small point, I take Tugendhat to be on the righttrack. To see better what is involved, we first distinguish between making a request ingeneral and begging. The begging institution notion is presupposed in this example but theconcept of request does not depend on it. However, we can without further ado include theknowledge of the begging institutions among the presuppositions here. But this is stilldifferent from assuming anything about the local social norms concerning begging. Beggingmay be normatively allowed in one society but prohibited by a social norm in another. If wewant to distinguish between linguistic and other understanding (as I think we should), it isat least problematic to include the normative validity condition generally in an account oflinguistic meaning. We may want more invariance of language use from one situation toanother for language to function in a general way, e.g., intersocietally. The actual psychologi-cal explanation—and a deeper understanding—of a begging action-token is a differentmatter and may sometimes if not always require knowledge of normative rightness. (Habermas1991 contains a reply to Tugendhat, but no new arguments are given in it.)12Kaarlo Miller’s comments strongly affected this paragraph.13A concise analysis of the meant notion of coaction can be given as follows (see Tuomelaand Bonnevier-Tuomela 1997):

(CO) Agents A1 and A

2 coact compatibly (in a weak sense) in a situation S relative

to the same I-mode goal G (either type of goal or a token of type G) if and onlyif

(1) It is possible for A1 and A

2 to satisfy their goals in compatible ways (viz., their

goals can be satisfied by them without conflict);

(2) (a) A1 intends to achieve G without means-actions conflicting with A2’s at-

tempts to satisfy his goal and believing that he can achieve it at least with someprobability in that context although his relevant G-related actions are depen-dent on A2’s relevant G-related actions, and he acts so as to achieve G; and b)analogously for A

2

(3) a) A1 believes that (1) and (2), and b) analogously for A

2.

14The present paper draws from Tuomela 1997, a paper aimed at a German-speaking audience.


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