Jonas Faria Costa

Research interests

Joint action; collective intention; game theory

Supervisor

• Dr Thomas Smith

Current research

Social ontology is the field of enquiry that tries to understand joint action. Most accounts focus on simple cases of small groups. However, we cannot understand the social world if we cannot explain joint action involving large numbers of people. My research takes an interdisciplinary approach, involving philosophy, economics and social psychology. I defend the idea that the analysis of groups cannot be reduced to the analysis of its individual members. Joint action exhibits certain features that are not present in individual action. One of the focus of my research is to analyse what makes a person a member of a joint action in complex cases, e.g. involving coercion or alienation.

Margaret Gilbert (2014) theory of joint commitment correctly identifies the normative aspects of group agency, but her theory is insufficient to explain how the members of a group successfully coordinate. Michael Bacharach’s (2006) concept of team reasoning can explain how group members coordinate and it is compatible with the normative aspects identified by Gilbert. Both theories, on their own, fail to explain collective action in complex cases. However, the combination of these two theories provides an account that can explain group agency even in complex cases, such as the ones involving coercion and alienation.

Other information

My research is funded by the School of Social Sciences of The University of Manchester.

I did an MA in Philosophy at The University of Manchester (2017/2018). I obtained my Bachelors in Philosophy in the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (2010/2014), in Brazil.