An important feature of we-intentions in their role as creators of social institutions is that they can be iterated: given a we-intention of the form "X counts as Y in C," the "Y" in the intention may become the "X" in a higher-level intention.
Some see participatory intentions as an instance of an ordinary intention, familiar from the study of individual agency; if we-intentions are identified with, or built out of these participatory intentions, we would thus be offered the prospect of a reductive account of this we-intention in terms of ordinary individual intentions.
Scialdone et al. [18] noted that such use of inclusive pronouns is "consistent with Bagozzi and Dholakia [22]'s argument about the importance of we-intention in Linux user groups, i.e., when individuals think themselves as 'us' or 'we' and so attempt to act in a joint way".
For instance, is it a good thing that we attribute intention in the curious way that we do, and if so, why? (Is the Knobe effect a bug or a feature?) You can conduct more research to try to clarify matters, but you're left having to interpret the findings; they don't interpret themselves.
And when we introduce an intention in the fertile ground of pure potentiality, we put this infinite organizing power to work for us.
Such a we-intention is not in itself an action intention on a par with the participatory intention of a single agent, it is an 'aim intention' directed at the joint action (cf. Tuomela 2005; 329 30).
According to Searle, we-intentions only exist in the heads of individual human agents and, therefore, do not imply the existence of a 'super' agent that is the possessor of any given we-intention.
We-intentions play important roles in some branches of Sellars' practical philosophy, especially in the context of his attempt to bridge the gap between emotivism and intuitionism (1974), where he develops an account according to which normative judgments can both express people's attitudes, and have a claim to intersubjective validity.
On this account, all intentionality involved in group intention and group action is had by individuals, but it is conceived as intentionality of a special sort, which Sellars calls "action we-referential intention", or, in short, "we-intention".
Why must there be intention in intentional action, if intentions are plans?
Although we-intentions are held only by individuals, they are not reducible to I-intentions; in other words, a we-intention is not merely the sum of a certain number of I-intentions.
