Mistaken for family: Kantian optimization is not a kind of team reasoning

Abstract Standard game theory struggles to explain cooperation and coordination in collective action problems where rational strategies often fail to yield mutually beneficial outcomes. One response to this is team reasoning, which introduces group agency. Another is Kantian optimization, which retains individual agency but assumes universalization-based optimization. Some have proposed that Kantian optimization is best understood as a subtype of team reasoning, a member of the same theoretical family. This paper disputes that. By demonstrating that Kantian-style team reasoning does not necessarily lead to Kantian equilibrium, the paper concludes that Kantian universalization does not fit within the group agency framework.