Every product needs a process: unpacking joint commitment as a process across species

Abstract

Joint commitment, the feeling of mutual obligation binding participants in a joint action, is typically conceptualized as arising by the expression and acceptance of a promise. This account limits the possibilities of investigating fledgling forms of joint commitment in actors linguistically less well-endowed than adult humans. The feeling of mutual obligation is one aspect of joint commitment (the product ), which emerges from a process of signal exchange. It is gradual rather than binary; feelings of mutual obligation can vary in strength according to how explicit commitments are perceived to be. Joint commitment processes are more complex than simple promising, in at least three ways. They are affected by prior joint actions, which create precedents and conventions that can be embodied in material arrangements of institutions. Joint commitment processes also arise as solutions to generic coordination problems related to opening up, maintaining and closing down joint actions. Finally, during joint actions, additional, specific commitments are made piecemeal. These stack up over time and persist, making it difficult for participants to disengage from joint actions. These complexifications open up new perspectives for assessing joint commitment across species. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Revisiting the human ‘interaction engine’: comparative approaches to social action coordination’.

Beyond Single‐Mindedness: A Figure‐Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences

“…The mystery of metacognition (Frith & Frith, 2022) can only receive an adequate explanation if we attend more closely to the material metacognitive tools supplied by language in interaction: public cues to private states of mind that people make available in every turn at talk. The cognitive abilities of nonhuman minds are exceedingly hard to probe, except by studying sequentially organized social action (Bangerter, Genty, Heesen, Rossano, & Zuberbühler, 2022). And in computer science, we can only hope to build artificial agents and explain attributions of “intelligence” if we supplement the computational and cognitivist bent of the field with a deep understanding of situated interaction (Cassell, 2020; Ruane, Birhane, & Ventresque, 2019; Seibt, Vestergaard, & Damholdt, 2020; Suchman, 2019).…”

Revisiting the human ‘interaction engine’: comparative approaches to social action coordination

“…through predetermination of commitments prior to the interaction [56]), it is not always obligatory. Adrian Bangerter et al [8] argue that the feeling of mutual obligation intrinsic to joint commitment (the product) is not always formulated explicitly, but can emerge from a gradual, coordinated process of (not necessarily conventional) signal exchanges during joint action. Given that experts, including philosophers, agree that neither promises nor agreements are needed to establish a joint commitment, it becomes plausible that nonhuman primates and possibly other species might engage in joint commitments, something for which there is now some preliminary evidence in bonobos and chimpanzees [23,27,28].…”

“…From this viewpoint, the advent of language was preceded by the evolution of unique interactional ethology, or a ‘cognition-for-interaction’ [ 4 ], enabling communication through a distinct set of cognitive and behavioural capacities, metaphorically described as the ‘interaction engine' [ 1 , 2 ]. This assemblage has been hypothesized to have played a key role in facilitating the evolution of modern human communication [ 6 ], and along with it the engagement in joint action (collaborative activities that involve shared intentions, commitments and goals ) [ 8 – 10 ].…”

“…Normativity also invokes social accountability [ 18 ], or joint commitment, as the feeling of mutual obligation that binds participants to a joint action [ 8 , 10 , 54 , 55 ]. The principle of joint commitment is tightly linked to a normative understanding of how one is to act when engaging socially.…”

“…of modern human communication [6], and along with it the engagement in joint action (collaborative activities that involve shared intentions, commitments and goals ) [8][9][10].…”