The Moral Relevance of Intentions in Shared Action

When the members of a group commit a single shared act, the description of that act will often obfuscate the variety of intentions that the individual members harbored in contributing to that shared action. Suppose a pair of pilots are cooperating in furtherance of bombing a munitions factory, the explosion of which will kill villagers nearby. One pilot intends it as an act of terror; the other does not. We can also imagine a version of this case featuring only one pilot who harbors an intentionally morally different from the superior officer who ordered the bombing. In either case, the shared intention is limited to a suitably generalized description of their respective individual intentions. The point can also be put in terms of motivating reasons. Where different individuals work together toward one and the same end but for different motivating reasons, the description of the shared act in question will exclude reference to those specific motivating reasons. This picture of shared action introduces a problem, given that intentions are deontically relevant. If the description of a shared act obfuscates the more specific intention that the members harbored, we cannot reach an apt univocal moral judgment of the shared act. I call this the “problem of incongruent intentions” in shared action. I analyze and address this problem over the course of this chapter.