Social interaction is both ubiquitous and central to understanding human behavior. Such interactions depend, we argue, on shared intentionality: the parties must form a common understanding of an ambiguous interaction (e.g., one person giving a present to another requires that both parties appreciate that a voluntary transfer of ownership is intended). Yet how can shared intentionality arise? Many well-known accounts of social cognition, including those involving “mind-reading,” typically fall into circularity and/or regress. For example, A’s beliefs and behavior may depend on her prediction of B’s beliefs and behavior, but B’s beliefs and behavior depend in turn on her prediction of A’s beliefs and behavior. One possibility is to embrace circularity and take shared intentionality as imposing consistency conditions on beliefs and behavior, but typically there are many possible solutions and no clear criteria for choosing between them. We argue that addressing these challenges requires some form of we-reasoning, but that this raises the puzzle of how the collective agent (the “we”) arises from the individual agents. This puzzle can be solved by proposing that the will of the collective agent arises from a simulated process of bargaining: agents must infer what they would agree, were they able to communicate. This model explains how, and which, shared intentions are formed. We also propose that such “virtual bargaining” may be fundamental to understanding social interactions.

中文翻译：

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社交互动的悖论：共享意向、我们推理和虚拟讨价还价。


社交互动无处不在，也是理解人类行为的核心。我们认为，这种互动取决于共同的意向性：双方必须对模糊的互动形成共识（例如，一个人向另一个人赠送礼物要求双方都意识到自愿转让所有权的意图）。然而，共同的意向性是如何产生的呢？许多著名的社会认知描述，包括那些涉及“读心术”的描述，通常都会陷入循环和/或回归。例如，A 的信念和行为可能取决于她对 B 的信念和行为的预测，但 B 的信念和行为又取决于她对 A 的信念和行为的预测。一种可能性是拥抱循环性并将共享意向视为对信念和行为施加一致性条件，但通常有许多可能的解决方案，并且没有明确的标准在它们之间进行选择。我们认为，应对这些挑战需要某种形式的“我们”推理，但这引发了集体主体（“我们”）如何从个体主体中产生的难题。这个难题可以通过提出集体代理人的意愿来自模拟的讨价还价过程来解决：代理人必须推断出他们会同意什么，如果他们能够沟通。该模型解释了共同意图的形成方式和内容。我们还认为，这种“虚拟讨价还价”可能是理解社会互动的基础。