Abstract
On the Causal Theory of Action (CTA), internal proper parts of an agent such as desires and intentions are causally responsible for actions. CTA has increasingly come under attack for its alleged failure to account for agency. A recent version of this criticism due to François Schroeter proposes that CTA cannot provide an adequate account of either the executive control or the autonomous control involved in full-fledged agency. Schroeter offers as an alternative a revised understanding of the proper role of consciousness in agency. In this paper we criticize Schroeter’s analysis of the type of consciousness involved in executive control and examine the way in which the conscious self allegedly intervenes in action. We argue that Schroeter’s proposal should not be preferred over recent versions of CTA.
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Notes
The same worry can be traced back as far as T. Reid’s (1788/1969) criticism of proto-causal theories of action such as Hume’s and Hobbes’s. For instance, here is Reid articulating his criticism of Hobbes’s views: “to say that what depends upon the will is in a man’s power, but the will is not in his power, is to say that the end is in his power, but the means necessary to that end are not in his power, which is a contradiction” (1788/1969, p. 266).
Schroeter focuses on the work of two prominent defenders of such theories, viz., Harry Frankfurt (1988 and 1999) and J. David Velleman (2000). Strictly speaking, Velleman is the only one of these two authors who is in the business of trying to enrich CTA. Frankfurt explicitly rejects CTA in “The Problem of Action” (in 1988, p. 69). This is not to say that a Frankfurtian enrichment of CTA is impossible as precisely the work of Velleman (1992) and Bratman (2001) have shown.
Essentially, all behavior involving an action plan and the “anticipatory awareness of their unfolding” would be under the control of the conscious self, and this includes pretty much all our intentional actions. Given Schroeter’s analysis of intentional behavior it is surprising that he is not ready to generalize to include every single intentional action. In fact, he is careful to avoid proposing that he is offering anything like a set of necessary and sufficient conditions of intentional action where one would find the presence of executive control. Nonetheless, the fact remains that intentional action requires in his opinion the presence of executive control and thus of the conscious self. His misgivings about making such a definitional move are rather that “intentional action [is] a complex phenomenon which resists analysis in a set of simple necessary and sufficient conditions.” (Schroeter 2004, p. 646 footnote 20).
There are important exceptions to this tendency to ignore the role of consciousness in action, for instance Carl Ginet has given a lot of weight to the “actish phenomenal quality” present when acting (Ginet 1990).
This is different from current defenders of agent-causation in the debate over free will, such as Timothy O’Connor (2000). O’Connor is not obviously interested in offering an agent-causal theory of action simpliciter.
For instance, Maria Alvarez and John Hyman reject the thesis that actions are events and suggest the following. “What appears to be unsustainable is the doctrine that actions are events caused by agents. But it is possible to detach the concept of agent-causation from this doctrine, for the claim that there is a defensible conception of agent causation implies only that an action is a causing of an event by an agent: there is no need to suppose, in addition, that this event is the agent’s action, or that an action is itself an event” (1998, p. 224). See also E.J. Lowe (2001).
For reasons we will not explore here, it is not obvious that Hornsby’s proposal in 2004a and 2004b is really much of an improvement over CTA, for it seems to us that her proposal is as mysterious as ACTA is. Furthermore, as we argue below and notwithstanding his denials, Schroeter’s alternative proposal to CTA is little more than a species of ACTA.
Compare Schroeter’s remarks to some offered by Chisholm. “For if what we say he did was really something that was brought about by his own beliefs and desires, if these beliefs and desires in the particular situation in which he happened to have found himself caused him to do just what it was we say he did do, then, since they caused it, he was unable to do anything other than just what he did do. It makes no difference whether the cause of the deed was internal or external: if the cause was some state or event for which the man himself was not responsible, then he was not responsible for what we have been mistakenly calling his act” (Chisholm 1966, p. 13).
Alfred Mele (2003, chapter 10) addresses similar concerns raised by Velleman. Velleman (1992) expresses doubts about whether the CTA can account for “full-blooded” action or “human action par excellence” (Velleman 1992, 462). Velleman is concerned about what Schroeter calls “autonomous control” (what Mele refers to as “self control” in 2003, 222ff). The concern is that CTA affords agents a diminished role in exercising autonomous control. But, contra Schroeter, Velleman does not reject a reductive CTA type of story about executive control. He embellishes it in the interest of providing an account of autonomous agency. So while Mele’s reply to Velleman’s concerns resembles our present effort, our reply is to a more basic critique of the CTA, namely, CTA’s alleged inability to provide us with an adequate conception of the executive control that is the hallmark of all intentional action (whether autonomous or not). Thanks to a referee for pressing us on this point.
See Bishop (1989) for the most developed and rigorous philosophical defense of the role of feedback loops in intentional action.
The following dilemma is similar to one posed by Donald Davidson 1980, pp. 52–53.
Compare these remarks by Chisholm on the production of action to similar comments by him about making something happen directly in 1964, p. 620 and 1966, p. 17. Nonetheless, Chisholm dispensed with ACTA in what is probably his last statement on the topic of agency (see Chisholm 1995). Richard Taylor (1982) also dispensed with ACTA.
Earlier remarks in Schroeter’s paper on how executive control can be exercised are also quite telling: “Once an agent has decided to perform a given option, the action can normally be initiated at his command when the circumstances are appropriate. That is to say, the motor system can be directly activated by a command issued by the conscious self (‘Start going to the gym right now!’)” (Schroeter 2004, pp. 644–45).
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Aguilar, J.H., Buckareff, A.A. Agency, Consciousness, and Executive Control. Philosophia 37, 21–30 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9123-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-008-9123-y