ABSTRACT
It is often necessary that agents’ actions are coordinated if they are to successfully exercise shared (or “collective”) agency in acting together. An eloping couple clink plastic beakers of cheap wine together to toast their escape, sharing a smile of achievement; on the beach in front of them a small group of roadies are putting up a marquee outside for a concert later that evening while the musicians, having been made to wait while the audio technicians replace a cable, playfully improvise on stage. In cases like these, successfully exercising shared agency involves coordinating actions precisely in space and time. Such precise coordination is not, or not only, a matter of having intentions and knowledge, whether individual or collective. Intentions and knowledge states may play a role in long-term coordination—they may explain, for instance, why the couple’s both being on the beach tonight is no accident. But they cannot explain how the precise coordination needed to clink beakers or to share a smile is achieved. Given that it is not only intention or knowledge, what does enable two or more agents’ actions to be coordinated, and so enables exercises of shared agency such as these?
