 This raises the following questions: in what sense can such activity be said to be “shared,” and what is it about friendship that makes shared activity so central to it? The common answer to this second question (which helps pin down an answer to the first) is that shared activity is important because friends normally have shared interests as a part of the intimacy that is characteristic of friendship as such, and the “shared” pursuit of such shared interests is therefore an important part of friendship. Consequently, the account of shared activity within a particular theory ought to depend at least in part on that theory’s understanding of the kind of intimacy relevant to friendship. And this generally seems to be the case: for example, Thomas (1987, 1989, 1993, 2013), who argues for a weak conception of intimacy in terms of mutual self-disclosure, has little place for shared activity in his account of friendship, whereas Sherman (1987), who argues for a strong conception of intimacy in terms of shared values, deliberation, and thought, provides within friendship a central place not just to isolated shared activities but, more significantly, to a shared life.