Remarks on joint commitment and its relation to moral thinking

ABSTRACT

Tomasello contends that the emergence of joint commitment is a decisive step in the development of human moral thinking. I delineate the nature and normativity of joint commitment as I understand it, and argue that it is at best not clear that an understanding that we are jointly committed in some way necessarily brings with it any specifically moral understandings. That is not to deny that a variety of moral concepts will appropriately come into play in the context of an established joint commitment.

KEYWORDS:

• Agreements
• decisions
• directed obligation
• joint commitment
• Michael Tomasello
• moral concepts
• “ought”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. His first reference to joint commitment is, I believe, in the introductory chapter (2016, p. 4). In the longer discussion that follows, joint commitment is at the forefront of the discussion at pages 64–65.

2. See, for example, Tomasello (2016, pp. 4, 40, 66). For my own discussions, see Gilbert (1989, 2003, 2006, 2014); also see Gilbert (2018).

3. In 2000 or thereabouts, Tomasello kindly contributed a paper to a workshop entitled “On Social Facts: On and with Margaret Gilbert” convened in Leipzig by George Meggle. I don’t believe that his paper – “Can two apes walk together?” – was ever published in its workshop form. (His answer to the question of his title was, as I recall, “No.”)

4. I regret that, due to unforeseen circumstances, I have been unable to discuss these or any other points with Tomasello in person at a 2016 workshop on his book. Thanks to Neil Roughley and an anonymous referee for comments on a previous draft of this material.

5. Naturally, some roughness is involved in a short exposition. For some longer treatments see Gilbert (2006, ch. 7) and Gilbert (2014, ch. 2).

6. Elsewhere, I have distinguished in particular between personal decisions and personal intentions as sources of personal commitments of the will, and argued for analogous differences among joint commitments (see Gilbert, 2006). In this section, and in this comment generally, I focus on aspects common to both.

7. For discussion of basic versus non-basic cases, see Gilbert (2006, pp. 140–141).

8. There is a relatively nuanced discussion of how to be freed from a joint commitment in Gilbert (2006, pp. 141–144.)

9. See, for example, Gilbert (1990) on the point about morality and self-interest.

10. I say more on this point in Section 5.

11. For an extended discussion of this and the previous point, see Gilbert (2018).

12. Gilbert (1989) discusses acting together, collective beliefs, group languages, social conventions, and social groups, among others.

13. Later Tomasello (2016, p. 66) makes it clear that explicitness need not involve language, see the text below.

14. See Tomasello (2016, p. 66) allowing an “implicitly” offered “Let’s…”.

15. For more on agreements, also promises, see, for example, Gilbert (2006; ch. 10; 2014; ch. 13).

16. For more on quarreling, etc., see Gilbert (2014, pp. 26–28).

17. For some related discussion, see Gilbert (2006, ch. 7).

18. For the record, I myself do not (I think) ever write of the parties to a joint commitment being committed to one another. I am not sure what it is to be committed to another person, though people often talk this way, but I take it to be different from being committed (in part) by them or (on the receiving end) with them.

19. See Tomasello (2016, p. 7), “it is of the essence of joint commitments that “we” agree to sanction together whichever of us” does not conform to the commitment. As suggested in the text above, what we may understand, more precisely, is that we should exercise our standing to rebuke non-conformity to the extent that such rebuke will help to bring about future conformity – as it may tend to do.

20. Stanford (2017) also expresses concerns as to the justification of Tomasello’s invocation of moralized notions of desert and respect in the context of his explanatory project.

21. The notion of “equivalence” here is that of rights theorist Wesley Hohfeld (1964). Roughly, equivalent terms describe the same relation. See Gilbert (2018) for extended discussion of the family of terms emphasized in this paragraph.

22. This paragraph responds to a comment from a referee.

23. On the collective “we”, see Gilbert (1989, chapter. 4).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margaret Gilbert

Margaret Gilbert is Melden Chair of Moral Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, at the University of California, Irvine. Her many books include On Social Facts (1989), A Theory of Political Obligation (2006), and Rights and Demands (2018).