Shared intention normally leads to joint action. It does this, it is commonly said, only because it is a characteristically stable phenomenon, a phenomenon that tends to persist from the time it is formed until the time it is fulfilled. However, the issue of what the stability of shared intention comes down to remains largely undertheorized. My aim in this paper is to remedy this shortcoming. I argue that shared intention is a source of moral and epistemic reasons, that responsiveness to such reasons on the part of each individual reinforces her own relevant attitudes, and that this enhances the stability of the shared intention as a whole. We thus discover an important self-reinforcing and stability-enhancing mechanism at the heart of shared intention and action. It follows from this proposal that the psychological commitment that an individual exhibits in joint action is normally a function not only of her own participatory intention, as often maintained, but also of her endorsement of the reasons created by her group’s shared intention to so act.

共同的意图通常会导致联合行动。人们常说，它之所以能做到这一点，只是因为它是一种典型的稳定现象，一种从它形成到实现的过程中往往持续存在的现象。然而，共同意图的稳定性归根结底的问题在很大程度上仍然没有得到充分的理论化。我写这篇文章的目的就是要弥补这个缺点。我认为，共同意图是道德和认知原因的来源，每个人对这些原因的反应强化了她自己的相关态度，这增强了整个共同意图的稳定性。因此，我们在共同意图和行动的核心发现了一个重要的自我强化和稳定增强机制。从这一建议可以看出，个人在联合行动中表现出的心理承诺通常不仅取决于她自己的参与意图（如经常所坚持的那样），而且还取决于她对其群体共同采取行动的意图所产生的原因的认可。