This paper and its companion (‘‘The Planning Theory of Law I: The Nature of Legal Institutions’’) provide a general introduction to Scott Shapiro’s Planning Theory of Law as developed in his recent book Legality. The Planning Theory encompasses both an account of the nature of legal institutions and an account of the nature of legal norms. The first paper concerns the account of legal institutions. This paper concerns the account of legal norms.

The practical, normative dimension of planning is a plausible source of the ‘family resemblances’ noted by a number of legal theorists between Scott Shapiro’s Planning Theory and natural law jurisprudence. Foremost among these resemblances is Shapiro’s contention that the law, necessarily, has a moral aim. The moral aim thesis is at first glance surprising given Shapiro’s intention to defend exclusive legal positivism and unequivocal rejection of what he takes to be the core commitments of natural law theory. Shapiro’s (...) claim, however, is that although the law necessarily has a moral aim, this does not entail that it is successful in satisfying that aim. In order to assess this thesis, it is helpful to compare the Planning Theory with contemporary natural law approaches. Bringing Shapiro’s Planning Theory into dialogue with contemporary natural law theories can demonstrate some of the Planning Theory’s weaknesses as an alternative explanation of the ultimate grounds of the authoritativeness of legal norms. Some of these weaknesses, moreover, are instructive beyond the specific contours of the Planning Theory insofar as they generalise to other legal positivist approaches. In section one I consider Shapiro’s treatment of the so-called ‘Possibility Puzzle’ regarding the grounding relation between authoritative norms and legal authority. Shapiro’s denial of the capacity of earlier jurisprudential theories to resolve this puzzle overlooks what is – I suggest – a plausible solution developed by John Finnis on the basis of Joseph Raz’s theory of practical reason and norms. Section two then demonstrates why Shapiro’s attempt to combine a robust construal of the social facts thesis with a commitment to the thesis that law necessarily has a moral aim is ultimately unsuccessful. (shrink)

We have the capacity to act together in shared intentional and shared cooperative ways. This lecture argues that our capacity for the plan-based, mind-supported cross-temporal organization of our individual activities, together with certain further elements, suffices for our capacity for the mind-supported, small-scale social organization characteristic of acting together. These two fundamental forms of human practical organization––diachronic and small-scale social––are for us grounded in a common core: our capacity for planning agency.

This paper and its companion (“The Planning Theory of Law II: The Nature of Legal Norms”) provide a general introduction to Scott Shapiro’s Planning Theory of Law as developed in his recent book Legality. The Planning Theory encompasses both an account of the nature of legal institutions and an account of the nature of legal norms. This first paper concerns the account of legal institutions. The second concerns the account of legal norms.

What does it mean to hold a belief? Some of our ways of speaking in English suggest that to hold a belief is to have something in your mind: beliefs are things we acquire, defend, recover, and so on (Abelson, 1986). That is, believing is a matter of being in a state of having a thing. In this paper, I will argue for an alternative: believing is something we do. This is not a new suggestion. For instance, Matthew Boyle (2011) (...) defends a theory of belief as an activity, which he traces back to Aristotle. This paper, however, makes two new contributions: first, I argue for an analogy between belief and planning that fleshes out what it would mean to understand belief as an activity, and second, I aim to show how the resulting view can help sense of a variety of theories in cognitive psychology that suggest cognitive information storage is dynamic and reconstructive. (shrink)

In this essay, I focus on what appear to be Shapiro’s views about the normativity of law, as well as with his surprising claim that law necessarily has a moral aim. I argue that even if Shapiro offers a more compelling reply to the problem of the normativity of law than Hart offers in The Concept of Law, the moves that he makes appear to be equally available to a defender of Hart’s theory, and so in this respect, the (...) planning theory has no particular advantage over the practice theory. As for the Moral Aim Thesis, it appears to be in tension with Shapiro’s positivism. If he is right that law has a moral aim and law claims moral legitimacy, then he should embrace a richer account of the nature and normativity of law than the one that he has offered. (shrink)

Human beings act together in characteristic ways that matter to us a great deal. This book explores the conceptual, metaphysical and normative foundations of such sociality. It argues that appeal to the planning structures involved in our individual, temporally extended agency provides substantial resources for understanding these foundations of our sociality.

Planning organizes our actions and conditions our effective-ness. To understand this philosophical hint better, the author investigates and juxtaposes two important accounts in action theory. He discusses the concept of a plan proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbiński in his praxiology (theory of efcient action), and the so called “planning theory of intention” by Michael E. Bratman. The conceptual meeting of these two proposals helps to remove aws in Kotarbiński’s action theory, it also shows the way, in (...) which we can enrich the idea of plans in the frame-work of intentions. Generally, praxiology occurs to be still an important perspective in action theory, which particularly shows how we can improve our understanding of planning when confronted with infuentialcontemporary accounts. (shrink)

Michael Bratman’s work is established as one of the most important philosophical approaches to group agency so far, and Shared Agency, A Planning Theory of Acting Together confirms that impression. In this paper I attempt to challenge the book’s central claim that considerations of theoretical simplicity will favor Bratman’s theory of collective action over its main rivals. I do that, firstly, by questioning whether there must be a fundamental difference in kind between Searle style we-intentions and I-intentions within (...) that type of framework. If not, Searle’s type of theory need not be less qualitatively parsimonious than Bratman’s. This hangs on how we understand the notions of modes and contents of intentional states, and the relations between modes, contents, and categorizations of such states. Secondly, by questioning whether Bratman’s theory steers clear of debunking or dismissing collectivity. Elsewhere I have claimed that the manoeuvres Bratman suggested to avoid circularity in his conceptual analysis (in 1992 and 1997) undermine the strength of his resulting notion of collective action. Bratman responds in detail to this objection in his new book and I return to the issue towards the end of the paper. (shrink)

"A fundamental feature of our individual, human agency is its organization over time. Think again about growing food in a garden, or taking a trip, or writing a book. A central idea is that our capacity for planning agency is at the heart of this cross-temporal organization of our individual, human agency. Appeal to this role of our capacity for planning agency both fits our commonsense self-understanding and, I conjecture, would be a part of an empirically informed psychological theory (...) that begins with-- but potentially adjusts--this commonsense self-understanding. The basic thought is that we are resource-limited agents who achieve cross-temporal organization in part by settling in advance on prior, partial plans. These somewhat stable partial plans help pose problems of means and preliminary steps, and in pursuit of needed coordination help filter potential options. They thereby provide a background framework for downstream thought and action"--. (shrink)

I praise Bratman's minimal account of shared agency, while expressing some doubts about the explanatory force of his central concepts and some puzzlement about what he means by norms.

A précis of Michael E. Bratman, Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together (Oxford University Press, 2014).

In Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together, Michael Bratman refines, systematizes, and defends his “planning theory” of shared agency, various elements of which were sketched in a series of earlier essays on the topic. The book is analytically rigorous and fairly technical at points, but organized and written with extraordinary clarity. It represents a valuable contribution to the literature on shared intention and joint activity, and is essential reading for philosophers working in that area.Bratman takes as (...) his central foils Margaret Gilbert and John Searle, both of whom argue that there is a fundamental discontinuity between individual agency and shared agency in that the resources needed to explain the latter extend beyond those that enable us to explain the former. According to those theorists, an adequate account of shared agency requires appeal to “some new and fundamentally different kind of practical element” : an irreducible “joint commitment” on Gilbert’s .. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to human information processing tend to deal with perception and action planning in isolation, so that an adequate account of the perception-action interface is still missing. On the perceptual side, the dominant cognitive view largely underestimates, and thus fails to account for, the impact of action-related processes on both the processing of perceptual information and on perceptual learning. On the action side, most approaches conceive of action planning as a mere continuation of stimulus processing, thus failing to account (...) for the goal-directedness of even the simplest reaction in an experimental task. We propose a new framework for a more adequate theoretical treatment of perception and action planning, in which perceptual contents and action plans are coded in a common representational medium by feature codes with distal reference. Perceived events (perceptions) and to-be-produced events (actions) are equally represented by integrated, task-tuned networks of feature codes – cognitive structures we call event codes. We give an overview of evidence from a wide variety of empirical domains, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility, sensorimotor synchronization, and ideomotor action, showing that our main assumptions are well supported by the data. Key Words: action planning; binding; common coding; event coding; feature integration; perception; perception-action interface. (shrink)

This study examines the use of a modified form of the theory of planned behavior in understanding the decisions of undergraduate students in engineering and humanities to engage in cheating. We surveyed 527 randomly selected students from three academic institutions. Results supported the use of the model in predicting ethical decision-making regarding cheating. In particular, the model demonstrated how certain variables (gender, discipline, high school cheating, education level, international student status, participation in Greek organizations or other clubs) and moral (...) constructs related to intention to cheat, attitudes toward cheating, perceptions of norms with respect to cheating, and ultimately cheating behaviors. Further the relative importance of the theory of planned behavior constructs was consistent regardless of context, whereas the contributions of variables included in the study that were outside the theory varied by context. Of particular note were findings suggesting that the extent of cheating in high school was a strong predictor of cheating in college and that engineering students reported cheating more frequently than students in the humanities, even when controlling for the number of opportunities to do so. (shrink)

Since digital piracy has posed a significant threat to the development of the software industry and the growth of the digital media industry, it has, for the last decade, held considerable interest for researchers and practitioners. This article will propose an integrated model that combines the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and ethics theory, the two theories that are most often used in digital piracy studies. Data were obtained from university students in China, and the model was examined (...) using the structural equation model (SEM). The results show that moral obligation and justice, derived from ethics theories and TPB variables, such as attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, influence the behavioral intentions of individuals to commit digital piracy. The attitude of individuals toward digital piracy is also found to be influenced by perceived benefits, perceived risk, and habit. (shrink)

What grounds the capacity of human agents to engage in individual, temporally extended activity (e.g. a philosopher writing a book), small-scale social interact.

In ‘An argument against causal decision theory’, Jack Spencer shows that standard formulations of causal decision theory run afoul of his Guaranteed Principle. In the sequential choice problem he employs to make this case, the transgression stems from an awkward discrepancy between how causalists typically value present vs future acts. This note suggests a version of causal decision theory that avoids this incongruity and so respects the Guaranteed Principle in Spencer’s problem. However, this formulation, and hence symmetric (...) appraisal of present and future acts, is also shown to be insufficient to secure causalist satisfaction of the Guaranteed Principle in general. (shrink)

The study is an intercultural comparison of the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior (original and modified versions) to predict students’ intentions for academic cheating. The sample included university students from 7 countries: Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Turkey, Switzerland, United States, and New Zealand. Across countries, results show that attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and moral obligation predict students’ intentions to engage in academic dishonesty in the form of cheating. The extended modified version of the (...) class='Hi'>theory of planned behavior emerged as the best explanatory model predicting intentions to cheat. Significant cross-cultural differences were found and discussed. (shrink)

Anti-theory is a multi-faceted critique of moral theory which, it appears, is undergoing something of reassessment. In a recent paper Hämäläinen discusses the relevance of an anti-theoretical perspective for the activity of applied ethics. This paper explores her view of anti-theory. In particular I examine its relevance for understanding the formal guidance on pandemic flu planning issues by the Department of Health in the UK and some subsequent discussions around triage and reverse triage decisions which may be (...) considered by both Primary and Secondary Care Trusts. in setting their own policies and which may face clinicians in the eventuality of a pandemic. Following Hämäläinen in contrasting reflective equilibrium with her anti-theory inspired suggestion of an instrumental approach to moral theory in practice I demonstrate how this understanding complements the diversity of our intuitive moral judgements. Consequentially I suggest that this anti-theoretical instrumental approach is in greater accord with the conditions under which such policy planning and decision making is, or will be, made. Furthermore, on the grounds of keeping open the ethical dimensions of medical practice in conditions of uncertainty, i.e. during a pandemic, I suggest that the anti-theoretical instrumental perspective is, ethically, the preferable approach to producing such policies and guidelines. (shrink)

If you have ever had to move house, you will know this: the worst part is the sofa. You cannot do it alone. Nor will it be enough for me to just lift one end waiting for you to lift the other. We will have to work together to get the job done. If spaces are tight, we will even have to find a practical solution to a tantalizing mathematical puzzle: the moving sofa problem.Joint actions like that are part and (...) parcel of everyday life. But what exactly is special about acting together? After all, the actions of two strangers also depend on one another when one exits and the other enters through a revolving door, when they happen to walk side-by-side along a forest path, or when they exchange blows in a pub brawl.The problem is that two patterns of social behavior might look identical, even though one is a case of joint action and the other is not. There need not be an observable difference between the movements of old friends taking their morning constitutional together, on the one hand, a .. (shrink)

The financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many enterprises to suffer great losses. Thus, companies have to take measures such as pays cut, furloughs, or layoffs, which caused dissatisfaction among employees and triggered labor disputes. Therefore, this study explores the service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior based on the decomposed theory of planned behavior in order to understand the behavioral intentions of employees through their mental states, job attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. This study conducted (...) questionnaire surveys for employees in different industries, collected 281 valid questionnaires, and applied Structural Equation Model for the analysis. The results show: employees believe organizational justice in the organization is important, and when they feel treated fairly, their job attitudes and beliefs are enhanced. Employees’ job attitudes and beliefs support service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior, in other words, they have positive job attitudes and beliefs and will actively provide better service to customers. When employees are treated reasonably and fairly by the organization and have positive job attitudes and perceived behavior control, their spontaneous service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior is stimulated, thus increasing organizational development. (shrink)

The ontology of decision theory has been subject to considerable debate in the past, and discussion of just how we ought to view decision problems has revealed more than one interesting problem, as well as suggested some novel modifications of classical decision theory. In this paper it will be argued that Bayesian, or evidential, decision-theoretic characterizations of decision situations fail to adequately account for knowledge concerning the causal connections between acts, states, and outcomes in decision situations, and so (...) they are incomplete. Second, it will be argues that when we attempt to incorporate the knowledge of such causal connections into Bayesian decision theory, a substantial technical problem arises for which there is no currently available solution that does not suffer from some damning objection or other. From a broader perspective, this then throws into question the use of decision theory as a model of human or machine planning. (shrink)

Dealing with students who cheat can be one of the most stressful interactions that faculty encounter. This study focused on faculty responses to academic integrity violations and utilized the Theory of Planned Behaviour model to predict the target behaviour of whether faculty would speak face-to-face with a student suspected of cheating. After an elicitation phase to determine modal salient beliefs, a questionnaire was developed to measure the model’s variables. The respondent database contained 206 tenured and non-tenured faculty from two (...) large comprehensive universities. A stepwise multiple regression demonstrated the usefulness of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Overall the model explained 43 % of the variance in predicting faculty members’ intention to speak face-to-face with a student suspected of cheating. The most significant contribution was made by subjective norms ( β = 0.39), followed by attitude ( β = 0.34), and perceived behavioural control ( β = 0.24). (shrink)

We extend the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) for ethics in the workplace. Using a path modeling methodology, we find evidence that, for ethics, moral disengagement is an antecedent to the TPB predictors of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (PBC). We show that the TPB predictors mediate the influence moral disengagement has on ethical behavioral intentions. Thus, to improve ethical behavior, reducing moral disengagement is critical. We find support for including both types of PBC (self-efficacy and locus (...) of control) when modeling ethical behavior. We use four ethics scenarios and international data to test this model. We also evaluate potential positive influences on ethics in the workplace and find that recency of ethics training interacts with religiosity and activates it to reduce moral disengagement. We also find that principles-based ethics training enhances professionals’ self-efficacy to behave ethically. Experience, including time as a member in a professional accounting organization, increases both locus of control and self-efficacy to behave ethically. These variables—recency of ethical training, religiosity, principles-based professional ethics training, and experience—influence parts of the core TPB model, which in turn lead to improved ethical behavioral intentions. (shrink)

The application of extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (eTPB) has been demonstrated in various studies. The successful implementation of the extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (eTPB) will require better understanding of the rationales for the application in context. The paper presentation emerges from an interpretive and descriptive study which generated qualitative data through systematic literature review and document analysis. Thematic analysis was deployed to identify emerging and dominating themes as a focus for the interpretation. The analysis confirmed that (...) extended theory of planned behaviour explains behaviour through attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control and is capable of predicting and understanding human behaviour across various domains. However, the use of Theory of planned behaviour has been extended to enhance the predictive power of the model in understanding and influencing behaviours. Additional variables have emerged on top of the usual variables known as attitude towards the behaviour, subjective norms towards the behaviour, and perceived behaviour control. Still, the paper argues that although the diversity in variables exist among authors showing flexibility of the theory, this may create some confusion which may influence the capability of predicting and understanding human behaviour across various domains. The Theory of planned behaviour trend reflects that the choice of Theory of planned behaviour variables is determined by appropriateness and according to the context. Therefore, the paper argues that there are many variables for theory of planned behaviour but the dominant to be considered are clear knowledge and understanding ahead of all variables. (shrink)

As software piracy continues to be a threat to the growth of national and global economies, understanding why people continue to use pirated software and learning how to discourage the use of pirated software are urgent and important issues. In addition to applying the theory of planned behavior (TPB) perspective to capture behavioral intention to use pirated software, this paper considers perceived risk as a salient belief influencing attitude and intention toward using pirated software. Four perceived risk components related (...) to the use of pirated software (performance, social, prosecution and psychological risks) have been identified, measured and tested. Data were collected through an online survey of 305 participants. The results indicate that perceived prosecution risk has an impact on intention to use pirated software, and perceived psychological risk is a strong predictor of attitude toward using pirated software. In addition, attitude and perceived behavior control contribute significantly to the intended use of pirated software. However, the proposed direct relationship between subjective norm and intention to use pirated software is not supported. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This research applies the theory of planned behavior to corporate managers’ decision making as it relates to fraudulent financial reporting. Specifically, we conducted two studies to examine the effects of attitude, subjective norm and perceived control on managers’ decisions to violate generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in order to meet an earnings target and receive an annual bonus. The results suggest that the theory of planned behavior predicts whether managers’ decisions are ethical or unethical. These findings are relevant (...) to corporate leaders who seek to improve ethical work climates of organizations and to many regulators, accountants, corporate governance officials and investors. (shrink)

The value–attitude–behavior and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) appear to provide limited explanation for consumer green purchase behavior. This study aims to examine the relationship between pro-environmental value, consumption value, and TPB toward green car purchasing intention among the young Chinese generation. A total of 541 student responses were collected, and the results showed that altruistic value positively influenced subjective norm (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC), but negatively influenced green purchase attitude (GPA). Biospheric value positively influenced GPA (...) and PBC. Function value and emotional value positively influenced GPA, respectively, and emotional value fully mediated the relationship between function value and GPA. Furthermore, GPA, SN, PBC positively influenced intention toward green car purchasing behavior, respectively, and SN mediated the relationship between GPA and intention. This study shows how pro-environmental value and consumption value can influence components of TPB in green car purchase intention. (shrink)

How we live our lives depends on how we relate to our past, present and future. The article focusses on the relation to our future. The target of my critique is a “planning conception” that imagines the future as a realm that we can rationally plan and form in light of our ends. In the first section I present an outline of the planning conception, building on Bratman’s planning theory and Rawls’ idea of a life plan. The (...) second section highlights the attractions of the planning conception. I argue that this conception offers a prima facie intriguing view of the temporality of human life. It promises a life in which we can control the passage of time. The third section reveals severe limitations of the planning conception. I question the claim that plans are central to our self-understanding and to a good life. The planning conception tends to distort the temporality of human life with respect to past, present and future. Given this diagnosis, I sketch an alternative in the last section of the paper. I explore the temporal specifics of ways of understanding oneself as a person and argue that both the formation and the very form of these ‘ways of being’ do not follow the logic of planning. (shrink)

Argues from the planning theory of intention – as an account of means-end coherence – to a comprehensive form of ethical rationalism. Having raised objections to this result, the paper ends by sketching a way out.

Lays out basics of planning theory of law. Roughly, characterizes the internal point of view as a complex planning intention rather than a response to a recurring coordination problem. We are not responding to such a problem per se, but rather to a cooperation problem - and thus the structure of the attitude or intention must be different. It is officials who have the relevant attitude. Does not reject conventionalism, but argues that the convention is of a different sort (...) than is typically thought. Considers the basic commitment of legal positivism to be a commitment law as social fact. (shrink)

What happens to our conception of mind and rational agency when we take seriously future-directed intentions and plans and their roles as inputs into further practical reasoning? The author's initial efforts in responding to this question resulted in a series of papers that he wrote during the early 1980s. In this book, Bratman develops further some of the main themes of these essays and also explores a variety of related ideas and issues. He develops a planning theory of intention. (...) Intentions are treated as elements of partial plans of action. These plans play basic roles in practical reasoning, roles that support the organization of our activities over time and socially. Bratman explores the impact of this approach on a wide range of issues, including the relation between intention and intentional action, and the distinction between intended and expected effects of what one intends. (shrink)

The centrally-planned Soviet command economy was one of the twentieth century’s most radical and complex economic, political and social experiments. Its establishment did not coincide with the onset of Soviet power across the former Russian Empire in 1917-1918, but instead resulted from fifteen years of shifts, readjustments and breaks, and through experiments with both quasi-socialist market economics and centralised administrative command practices. The present article surveys the conflictual relationship between Soviet planning and Marxism in this period. It demonstrates how the (...) Stalinist command economy contradicted much of the theory and practice that the Bolsheviks themselves had thought ought to characterise the new economic system. (shrink)