 Collective or shared intentionality has been assigned a prominent role in recent research in evolutionary anthropology and developmental psychology. Michael Tomasello and his collaborators have suggested that our capacity for shared intentionality is the most basic difference between humans and other primates. The evidence quoted for this claim is that while other primates seem to be apt strategic reasoners with an impressively well-developed sense of what other individuals perceive and want, the propensity to joint attention and the inclination to cooperation even where this does not immediately serve one’s own purposes is uniquely human. Tomasello argues that this basic cooperative-mindedness expresses a specifically human capacity for shared intentionality (Tomasello &amp; Racokzy 2003). It is only on this base that other distinctively human capacities, such as the capacity for language and morality, can develop (Tomasello 2009, 2016). Tomasello refers to Searle’s, Gilbert’s and Bratman’s accounts, but remains largely noncommittal as to the question of what exactly the conception of shared intention he has in mind amounts to (Schmid 2012). However, his conception suggests that a Searlean version may be the basic form of shared intention, and that a normatively stabilized conception of collective intentionality as developed by Gilbert may be adequate for the forms of shared intention coming a later stage in development. If Tomasello is right in claiming that the basic capacity for shared intention precedes the development of a full theory of mind, this places tight conceptual restriction on an adequate analysis of basic shared intention, this seems to rule out the common knowledge-condition that is implied even in Searle’s (2010) account.