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Trying and the Arguments from Total Failure

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Abstract

New Volitionalism is a name for certain widespread conception of the nature of intentional action. Some of the standard arguments for New Volitionalism, the so-called arguments from total failure, have even acquired the status of basic assumptions for many other kinds of philosophers. It is therefore of singular interest to investigate some of the most important arguments from total failure. This is what I propose to do in this paper. My aim is not be to demonstrate that these arguments are inconsistent or that total failure and naked tryings are metaphysically impossible. Rather, my aim is be to build a case against the possibility of naked, independently existing tryings, by questioning how well we understand the scenarios invoked in their favour. Thus, rather than attempting to present a definitive metaphysical refutation of New Volitionalism, I attempt to diminish or demolish its underlying motivation.

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Notes

  1. This Gricean argument for the omni-applicability of the trying-description has received a lot of attention elsewhere, for example, Grice 1989, ch. 1 (orig. 1967), O’Shaughnessy 1973; McCann 1975; Hornsby 1980, ch. 3, Armstrong 1981; McGinn 1982, ch. 5, and Adams and Mele 1992. I will therefore not introduce and discuss it here. Let me just mention that not everybody accepts the Gricean argument and the idea that any action can described as an agent’s trying. It has been denied by, for example, Danto 1963, p. 440, Broadie 1965/1966; Jones 1983, and Hacker 1996, ch. 5.

  2. Among the people I suspect have overlooked the fact that Claim 2.1 can be established independently of Claim 2.2 are McCann 1975 and Armstrong 1981, but equally some of their adversaries, e.g. Moya 1992.

  3. This challenge to the New Volitionalist is posed by Danto 1966 and 1973, pp. 136–137. By showing that an agent can try to move but fail completely, the New Volitionalist has provided an argument both for the applicability of Claim 2.1 to minimal intentional bodily movement and for the existence of trying independently of bodily behaviour (Claim 2.2). There are, however, other ways of arguing for Claim 2.1. See General Worries: Basic Action below. It is therefore not the case that the Gricean argument for Claim 2.1 implies Claim 2.2.

  4. For an elaborate depiction and use of such scenarios, see O’Shaughnessy 1973.

  5. The claim that the internal event of trying is the agent’s basic action is explicitly endorsed by Hornsby 1980, ch. 1–2, Smith 1988, and Pietroski 1998. Not every New Volitionalist is committed to this theory of action-individuation; however, they are all committed to the corresponding view of bodily movement as a mere happening. In particular, O’Shaughnessy 1973; McCann 1974, 1975; Hornsby 1980, ch. 1–3, Armstrong 1981, pp. 74f., McGinn 1982, ch. 5, Smith 1988, Ginet 1990, p. 23, Pietroski 1998, Section 3, and Lowe 2000, ch. 9, all rely on such a notion of agency-neutral physical movements.

  6. For intuitions conflicting with the intuition propounded by the New Volitionalist, see e.g. Schopenhauer 1844/1966, p. 36, 143, James 1950, p. 500, Wittgenstein 1958, pp. 151–153, and 1967, Sections 611–628, Broadie 1965/66, p. 38, Danto 1968, pp. 55–56, Danto 1973, esp. p. 136, Morris 1988; Brewer 1993; Cleveland 1997; Hurley 1998, ch. 7.

  7. See Boring 1977 and Scheerer 1987. The intuition also fails to be supported by unequivocal reports from paralysed persons, see Gandevia 1982.

  8. Not many philosophers argue for this kind of qualia-theory of action or trying. It is however defended by Ginet 1990 and Hossack 2003. More mainstream Volitionalists like Armstrong 1981, p. 75, and O’Shaughnessy 2003, pp. 352, 354, deny the existence of any introspectable actish-quale.

  9. See Audi 1993, ch. 3.

  10. For similar use of the Landry Case, see Searle 1983, p. 89.

  11. Hurley 1998, pp. 272–76, offers an argument against internalism with respect to trying roughly to this effect. Also Melden 1968, pp. 74–75, argues that if volition were to be separated from execution, it would lose its specificity. Something similar seems to be suggested by Cole in his description of the deafferented person Ian Waterman, Cole 1995, p. 34. See also Gallagher and Cole 1998, p. 135. Some volitionalists do away with the content in order to avoid the problems concerning its specification, for example, Ginet 1990, pp. 31–38.

  12. For an explicit endorsement of this claim, see O’Shaughnessy 1992.

  13. This argument from total failure is structurally parallel to the argument from illusion or hallucination where the thought is that the content and the phenomenology of the hallucinatory state are identical to the veridical perception in relevant respects. But there are also some important differences between the two arguments. The argument from illusion receives much of its power from the fact that it intuitively latches on to illusory and false experiences in ordinary life. The argument from total failure, however, finds no intuitive foothold in our ordinary practical experiences. How often – if ever – have you found yourself not to be acting even though you had a full sense of embodied action? I venture never. Not that it is metaphysically impossible, but it is empirically unlikely given the intricate dynamic causal relations between willing, guiding, and moving in ordinary temporally extended motor action.

  14. This has been argued by Peacocke 1981 and Campbell 2003.

  15. As argued, for example, by Anscombe 2000, Section 19 (discussed by Hursthouse 2000, pp. 88f.), Morris 1988; Brewer 1993, and Haddock 2005.

  16. This argument has been formulated by Stout 2001. Not all Volitionalists are equally vulnerable to this objection. O’Shaughnessy (1991 and 2003), Zhu (2004) and in some places Ginet (1990, pp. 33–34) and McCann (1998, p. 140) all seem to support the idea that the trying has an action-guiding and -sustaining function—the trying lasts all through the action.

  17. See Brewer 1993, and for some replies, see Hornsby 1997.

  18. See note 3 above.

  19. This point has been forcefully argued by Nagel 1986, pp. 110–111, and Hornsby 1997, ch. 8.

  20. For this so-called “teleological” notion of basic action, see Hornsby 1980, ch. 6, and Enç 2003, ch. 2.

  21. This has also recently been argued by Hornsby 2005. It is interesting to note how far Hornsby in recent writings has moved away from her initial endorsement of New Volitionalism. See, for example, Hornsby 1998. For a discussion of Hornsby’s view of bodily action, see Haddock 2005.

  22. Note that this conception of basic intentional action not only fits our commonsensical ways of talking about action and our ordinary experiences of intentional activity, but also fits data from behavioural and neuroscientific psychology. Plenty of data show that agents are unaware of the finer details of their bodily movements. For a review of some the relevant data, see Jeannerod 1999.

  23. The author wishes to thank Jane Heal, David-Hillel Ruben, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful criticism of earlier versions of the paper. Thanks also to Søren Overgaard, Johannes Roessler, and Dan Zahavi for reading some of the material. Research for this article was funded by the Danish National Research Foundation and the Carlsberg Foundation.

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  1. Center for Subjectivity Research & Section for Philosophy, Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 142-145, Copenhagen, 2300 S., Denmark

    Thor Grünbaum

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Grünbaum, T. Trying and the Arguments from Total Failure. Philosophia 36, 67–86 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9096-2

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