Michael E. Bratman
I have been at Stanford University since 1974. My main research interests are in the philosophy of action, where this includes issues about social agency and about practical rationality. My book publications are Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason (1987); Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency (1999); Structures of Agency: Essays (2007); Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together (2014); Planning, Time, and Self-Governance: Essays in Practical Rationality (2018); and Shared and Institutional Agency (2022). I am a co-editor of Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings. I have been awarded an ACLS Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Stanford University Humanities Center. I am a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. My joint paper with David Israel and Martha Pollack, "Plans and Resource-Bounded Practical Reasoning," Computational Intelligence 4 (1988): 349-355, was the recipient of the 2008 International Foundation of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems influential paper award. I have been President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, and was Chair of the National Board of the American Philosophical Association from 2011-2014. In 2014 I received the American Philosophical Association's Philip L. Quinn Prize "in recognition of service to philosophy and philosophers, broadly construed." In 2019 I received the Lebowitz Prize for philosophical achievement and contribution.
Key Conversations with Phi Beta Kappa
Workshop: Shared Agency, Rationality, Normativity, March 2019, University of Vienna
Franz Brentano Lectures on Practical Philosophy given at University of Vienna, April 2017
- On Planning Agent’s Self-Governance Over Time
- Thinking and Acting Together
- The Rational Dynamics of Planning Agency
Pufendorf Lectures The Rational Dynamics of Planning Agency given at Lund University, June 2016
- Plan Rationality and the Strategy of Self-Governance
- Synchronic Self-Governance Synchronic Rationality
- A Planning Agent's Diachronic Self-Governance
- The Reflective Stabilility of our Planning Agency
Acting and Thinking Together, Studium Generale Groningen, Lecture Series at the University of Groningen, April 2015
Planning and Time, Stanford Humanities Center Talk given February 2015.
Faculti Media 2015 Interview on Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together 2014
New Books In Philosophy Interview on Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together 2014
CogSci 2013 Keynote Talk on shared agency in Berlin, Germany; Link to audio-only version here.
Routledge 2013 Lecture in Cambridge, UK
