 There is reason, moreover, to think that a strategy appealing to supra-individual entities as subjects of intentional states is misplaced if the social phenomenon in question is shared activity. It’s not at all obvious that an individual who is a constituent of a supra-individual entity is necessarily committed to what it is up to. For example, consider the U.S., which would on such a view count as supra-individual entity. The U.S. increases research funding in physics in order to win the space race with the U.S.S.R. I’m a graduate student benefitting from the additional funding, and I do research in rocket and satellite technology, and teach physics and engineering to undergraduates; indeed, I wouldn’t have gone into the area had it not been for the funding opportunities. I am in the relevant sense a constituent of the larger entity - in this case the U.S. - but I have no concern with the space race. I’m just doing my job, advancing my career, hoping to raise a family and be able to pay the mortgage, etc.; I frankly couldn’t care less about larger geopolitical issues, which are presumably the concern of the supra-individual entity that is the U.S. In contrast, a participant in shared activity arguably is committed to the collective endeavor and its aims - at least in the sense of commitment to an end implicated in any instance of intention or intentional action. So, while we haven’t ruled out that there are supra-individual agents (see below for more discussion), it’s not clear that we need to be committed to them in order to understand shared activity. 