Shared Intention, Organized Institutions

This chapter begins with the use of the planning theory of individual temporally extended human action in a construction of shared intention. It then develops a series of further constructions that build on each other: of Hart-type, criticism/demand-involving social rules; of authority-augmented social rules of procedure involved in the rule-guided infrastructure of an organized institution; of institutional intentions as outputs of social rules of procedure (where these intentions require neither corresponding shared intention nor a dense, holistic institutional subject); and of institutional intentional agency. These constructions articulate inter-related roles of our capacity for planning agency in important forms of human practical organization: temporally extended, small-scale social, and institutional.

الاشتراك في نية الصيام بين الفرض والنفل: دراسة فقهية (Shared-Intention in Obligatory and Voluntary Fasting: A Fiqh Study)

لما كان الصيام من أعظم العبادات التي يتقرب بها إلى الله عز وجل، وهو الركن الرابع من أركان الإسلام، ولما كانت النية معيارًا لتصحيح الأعمال؛ فحيث صلحت النية صلح العمل، وحيث فسدت النية فسد العمل، وإنما شُرعت النية لتمييز العادة من العبادة، أو لتمييز رُتَب العبادة بعضها عن بعض، ولما كانت مسألة الاشتراك في النية من المسائل التي تناثرت أطرافها بين كتب الفقه المذهبي وكتب الفقه عموماً، وكتب الفروع الفقهية، مما أوجد لبسًا لدى كثير من الناس، وكثرت أسئلة العوام للمفتين عنها، حيث يسعى المرء لتحصيل الخير والثواب، ومن ذلك أن يعدد النيات للعمل الواحد والعبادة الواحدة، فإن الهدف من هذا البحث هو بيان مدى مشروعية التشريك في نية الصيام سواء كان بين فرضين، أو نفلين، أو فرض ونفل. الكلمات المفتاحية: الصوم الواجب، صيام النافلة، النية، الاشتراك والتداخل. Abstract Fasting has always been one of the greatest devotional rites whereby one can achieve proximity with Allah. It is the fourth pillar in Islam. According to Islam, the intention is considered as the basis for the uprightness of an act. If the intention is sincere, the whole act based on that shall be surely correct, and if the intention is insincere, the whole act shall be incorrect. The intention is from the angle of Islamic jurisprudence looked at as a criterion legalized to differentiate habits from devotional practices and to discern various levels of devotional acts. The issue of relationship between intention and the acts has been thoroughly discussed in the sources of Islamic jurisprudence. Yet, the issue is unclear and rather confusing due to the doctrinal approach to the issue of intention. Generally, the people feel embarrassed over this situation. It is because the masses feel concerned over the true rewards of their acts in general and the devotional rituals in particular. This research is aimed at reidentifying the extent of legitimacy of combining fasting intentions either in obligatory prescriptions (fard), or in voluntary acts (nafl). Keywords: Obligatory Fasting, Supererogatory Fasting, Intention, Combination and Interference.

Part VI Terms and Interpretation, 20 Interpretation of Written Contracts

Commercially, this is the most important field of contractual law. In recent decades, English courts have declared that the task is to interpret written contracts (also known as ‘construction’) with sensitivity to shared purposes and aims. The courts have regard to the factual matrix within which the contract has arisen and to issues of business or commercial common sense. The courts will also read contractual wording without misplaced pedantry. Under the rubric of ‘constructive construction’, judges are prepared to rearrange text when it is clear that inapposite language has been used and it is also objectively obvious what the shared intention must have been. This process is illuminated by text, context, and (where there is genuine ambiguity) to commercial common sense, but not by deep reference to background party discussion or private opinion. Thus there are three evidential bars: the courts will not admit evidence of a party’s subjective intent or understanding; secondly, evidence of negotiations is inadmissible (but such evidence will be fundamental if a plea of rectification is made, on which chapter 21); thirdly, post-formation conduct is inadmissible (unless there has been a variation or estoppel by convention; on the latter [2.58]).

Introducing Social Breathing: A Model of Engaging in Relational Systems

We address what it means to “engage in a relationship” and suggest Social Breathing as a model of immersing ourselves in the metaphorical social air around us, which is necessary for shared intention and joint action. We emphasize how emergent properties of social systems arise, such as the shared culture of groups, which cannot be reduced to the individuals involved. We argue that the processes involved in Social Breathing are: (1) automatic, (2) implicit, (3) temporal, (4) in the form of mutual bi-directional interwoven exchanges between social partners and (5) embodied in the coordination of the brains and behaviors of social partners. We summarize cross-disciplinary evidence suggesting that these processes involve a multi-person whole-brain-body network which is critical for the development of both we-ness and relational skills. We propose that Social Breathing depends on each individual’s ability to sustain multimodal interwovenness, thus providing a theoretical link between social neuroscience and relational/multi-person psychology. We discuss how the model could guide research on autism, relationships, and psychotherapy.

We-intention to continue playing mobile multiplayer games: the role of social play habit

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to develop and test a theoretical model that accounts for an individual's we-intention to continue playing a mobile multiplayer game.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on habit-intention and habit formation theories, this study conceptualizes social play habit as a determinant of the we-intention to continue playing and identifies its antecedents. The proposed model was tested through a survey of 277 players of Honor of Kings, a popular mobile multiplayer game.FindingsThe results indicate that developing social play habit is critical to the formation of a we-intention to continue playing in the context of mobile multiplayer games. The results also suggest that technological (social features embedded in the game) and individual (desire for co-play and privacy concerns) factors jointly influence social play habit.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to the literature on we-intention by conceptualizing social play habit and verifying its role in facilitating a shared intention to continue playing mobile multiplayer games. Our work responds to the call for understanding the mechanism by which multiple people form a shared intention to continue using an information technology at a collective level. Our findings provide significant insights into the design of information technologies for collaboration.Originality/valueThis study is among the first to extend the literature on gaming habits by considering other players' involvement. Specifically, our study shifts researchers' attention from gaming habits characterized by individual properties to social gaming habits characterized by communal properties.

Shared Agency Without Shared Intention

The leading reductive approaches to shared agency model that phenomenon in terms of complexes of individual intentions, understood as plan-laden commitments. Yet not all agents have such intentions, and non-planning agents such as small children and some non-human animals are clearly capable of sophisticated social interactions. But just how robust are their social capacities? Are non-planning agents capable of shared agency? Existing theories of shared agency have little to say about these important questions. I address this lacuna by developing a reductive account of the social capacities of non-planning agents, which I argue supports the conclusion that they can enjoy shared agency. The resulting discussion offers a fine-grained account of the psychological capacities that can underlie shared agency, and produces a recipe for generating novel hypotheses concerning why some agents (including, arguably, the great apes) do not engage in shared agency.

THE FEATURES OF MEDIATION IN EFL CLASSROOM INTERACTION: TEACHER PERSPECTIVES

The classroom is a place where the teacher, as an expert and the knower, teaches students through interactions influenced by several sociocultural backgrounds. Moreover, the teacher plays a role in mediating language learning processes by providing effective mediation. In brief, mediation can be defined as all objects delivered by the teacher to mediate the students to bring their current ability to the targeted performance. This current research serves to describe the features of mediation applied by English teacher in one lower secondary school in the EFL classroom context. This qualitative-based inquiry applied classroom observation and interviews as instruments to explore how the teacher mediated language learning in the classroom particularly for beginner-level students in one private school in Jakarta. The findings showed that the features of shared intention are the most salient to be mediated. This indicates that the teacher is very concerned with helping and facilitating the students to perform tasks. In addition, in mediating values, challenges, change and competence, the teacher creates engaging classroom discourses, selects particular tasks, and nurtures a positive classroom climate. Moreover, the teacher sets herself as a mediator as well as mediation as an ideal form of behavior and language model in the class.Keywords: English; foreign language; mediation; sociocultural view.

Strange loops of attention, awareness, action, and affect in musical improvisation

This chapter champions the notion of ‘strange’, paradoxical, level-crossing feedback loops as a means to address the shortcomings of information-processing approaches to cognition, especially as applied to musical improvisation. It highlights the inherent challenges of studying improvisation and consciousness, and suggests ways that embodied and enactive theories of cognition, and emerging ideas in predictive processing and social psychology, may offer productive ways to understand mind and consciousness, and the dynamics of collective musical improvisation. Improvising music together, the chapter argues, involves joint action, embodied coordination, collective attention, and shared intention in ways that challenge conventional understandings of cognition and consciousness.

Bratman on shared intention

In work that spans almost four decades, Michael Bratman has developed a rich account of human agency. At the centre of this account lies an understanding of intentions as individual planning states. A significant strand in this enterprise has been his work on shared agency, culminating in his 2014 monograph, which aims to extend his account of individual agency to cover cases of what he calls “modest sociality”, i.e. simple cases of acting together. Central to this endeavour is Bratman’s analysis of shared intention, which for him is not asui generisphenomenon, but can be understood in terms of his concept of individual agency, as the main components of his account of shared intention are already available in his account of the intentions of a single person.In this paper, I want to critically examine Bratman’s approach to shared intention. I will proceed as follows: In Section 1, I will describe the analytic strategy that guides Bratman’s analysis. Section 2 will introduce his central claim that the fulfilment of a list of conditions suffices for a shared intention to be present. In Sections 3 to 5, I will discuss and criticise some of these conditions. In Section 6, I will draw some positive conclusions from my critical arguments.

Seeking Balance

This chapter examines professional women's motivations for part-time and flexible working beyond a ubiquitous balance-seeking goal. Three common motivations form shared intention narratives that express what women hope to achieve with their employment adjustment: resolving work–life conflict, protecting careers, and expanding careers. Close examination of how women explain their motivation for their particular working arrangement reveals the layers of meaning attached to it and the complexity of the practical and ideological settlement it reflects. This particular employment transition holds far greater significance in mothers' lives than a simple adjustment to the contract of employment. The chapter illustrates how mothers' working hours choices are morally potent, socially informed, and internally justified as the right way for them to do things at the time. An important finding is the pursuit of part-time and flexible working arrangements with the express intention to expand career opportunities.