Abstract
In recent work, Peter Railton, Julia Annas, and David Velleman aim to reconcile the phenomenon of “flow”—broadly understood as describing the “unreflective” aspect of skilled action—with one or another familiar conception of agency. While there are important differences between their arguments, Railton, Annas, and Velleman all make, or are committed to, at least one similar pivotal claim. Each argues, directly or indirectly, that agents who perform skilled unreflective actions can, in principle, accurately answer “Anscombean” questions—”what” and “why” questions— about what they do. I argue against this claim and explore the ramifications for theories of skilled action and agency.
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Notes
Reported in Hagen (2011).
Wallace writes (2006, p. 153), “Anyone who buys the idea that great athletes are dim should have a close look at an NFL playbook, or at a basketball coach’s diagram of a 3–2 zone trap…”.
In arguing this way, Railton, Annas, and Velleman join a broader debate about the role of self-awareness in skilled action which has been ongoing in phenomenology and related fields. See, for instance, Brownstein (2010); Dow (ms); Dreyfus (2002a, b, 2005, 2007a, b); Gallagher (2005); Gottlieb (2012); McDowell (2007a, b); Montero (2010); Rietveld (2010); Schear (2013); and Sutton (2007). Note also that Railton (2009), Annas (2011), and Velleman’s (2008) goals are each broader than I have space here to address. I will thus be honing in on one particular claim each makes. Finally, note that the larger goal of understanding agency in unreflective action is also Frankfurt’s, who writes (2002, p. 90): “I am not so sure that deliberation and practical reasoning do play fundamental roles in our agency, if this means that they are essential to our capacity to function as agents. No doubt they figure prominently in our selection of ends and in our design of plans for reaching our goals. It is far from clear, however, that they are indispensable conditions of action.”
I do not have space to address the relationship between “knowing-how” and “knowing-that” in this paper, although what I say here may have ramifications for recent debates between “neo-Ryleans” and “Intellectualists.”
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for Philosophical Studies for suggesting this term.
Note that Railton includes “the wit’s lightning riposte” as an example of a skilled unreflective action (as I’m calling it). On Railton’s account, all action—including deliberative “mental” action—has nondeliberative skill (as he calls it) at its core. I discuss this aspect of Railton’s view in Brownstein (ms). See also Arpaly and Schroeder (2012).
While Railton says that agents who perform skilled unreflective actions can “typically” say what they are doing, he clearly intends an action being Anscombean to count as evidence for the action being agential. So cases of non-Anscombean yet agential skilled unreflective action will not just be exceptions to a claim about what’s typical, but will call into question what Railton takes to be evidence for showing that skilled unreflective actions are agential.
See Ryle (1949/2009).
Railton likens agent-competence to the skills needed for being an effective administrator. Just as an effective administrator can guide her organization to irrational ends, “rational driving is a distinctive way of deploying one’s driving competence and rational discourse and social conduct are distinctive ways of deploying one’s linguistic and social competences” (2009, p. 86). Rational action is one way of deploying agent-competence (2009, p. 86). While deciding to steal may indicate a failure in one’s rational competence, stealing ineptly indicates a failure in one’s agent-competence (2009, p. 87). Railton attributes weakness of will, indecision, failures to adjust means to ends, and other ordinary irrationalities to failures in agent-competence. (The reasons there are to be a competent agent might then count for what reasons there are to be rational. On the debate over whether there are reasons to be rational, see Railton (1997); Schroeder (2004); Kolodny (2005); Raz (2005); and Broome (2005, 2007).)
Practical intelligence is not excellence in practical reasoning (Railton 2009, p. 90). In describing practical intelligence, Railton stresses the primacy of affect in our immediate responses to the world. He writes, “Those with highly developed practical skills—in sports, seamanship, teaching, etc.—appear to draw upon this evaluation system, as refined by experience, in forming a quick intuitive ‘sense’ of what is happening in a given situation, and how to respond appropriately” (2009, p. 93). See also Railton (2012).
There is some ambiguity in Railton’s claim that fluent agency is “full-fledged.” He writes (2009, p. 103) that the regress problem can only be stopped if there are “ways in which individuals could come to embrace one reason over others autonomously, but not via a further ‘full fledged’ act.” I think what Railton means is that exercises of fluent agency are not “full-fledged” in the sense that fluent agents don’t choose, endorse, etc. their reasons for action reflectively; it seems that Railton identifies full-fledged acts, properly so-called, with reflective acts, in other words. However, exercises of fluent agency are indeed full-fledged in the sense that fluent agents act on the basis of reasons and do so autonomously.
Railton does not present these as necessary or sufficient conditions for fluent agency. Rather, he presents them as considerations that collectively distinguish agential skilled unreflective action from unintentional or mindless behavior. This is why I add “some preponderance of” in the formulation of ANSR (see below).
This recognition cuts against one criticism of her virtue-as-skill account (see Jacobson 2005), for Annas need not claim that all skilled actions are good models for virtuous actions. All Annas needs is a claim about some instances of skilled action. However, she endorses ANS insofar as she claims that all individuals whose skilled unreflective actions can serve as a model for virtue can give an account of what they do.
I am indebted to Taylor Carman for this metaphor.
While Velleman says that higher wantons dispense with self-regulation, I think he means that they dispense with deliberate or deliberative self-regulation. Formally speaking, in psychology, self-regulation is just the general process of managing cognition, emotion, and behavior. That said, it is usually (and often tacitly) assumed in the psychological literature that self-regulation is for managing emotion and behavior in the service of one’s reflective ideals or avowed goals. For discussion, see Fujita (2011).
Perhaps there is an interpretation of Velleman on which the higher wanton might still not have the capacity in principle to accurately answer Anscombean questions even after her techniques of agency have been reactivated. This strikes me as a coherent interpretation, though not a very convincing one, for what would self-awareness, self-criticism, etc. get you if you still couldn’t report what you were doing? If true, though, this interpretation would get Velleman off the hook for ANS.
What athletes et al. mean when they use the word “thinking” in this context is, of course, not clear. See footnote 32.
Quoted in Sutton (2007, p. 767).
For example, Yogi Berra purportedly said, “Think? How can you hit and think at the same time?” (quoted in Sutton et al. 2011, p. 80). Barbara Montero (2010, p. 106) quotes choreographer George Balanchine as saying, “don’t think, dear; just do.” See Sutton (2007) and Montero (2010) for illuminating discussions of statements like these.
Quoted in Beilock (2010, p. 224). Here is another example from football which exemplifies what John McDowell might call a “demonstrative concept.” In ‘The Art of the Pass,’ Sports Illustrated reporter Tim Layden (2010) has the following exchange with NFL quarterback Phillip Rivers: “Rivers wiggles the ball in his right hand, fingers across the laces as if ready to throw. He purses his lips, because this isn’t easy to articulate. ‘You always want to pick a target,’ he says. ‘Like the chin [of the receiver]. But on some routes I’m throwing at the back of the helmet. A lot of it is just a natural feel.’ Rivers strides forward with his left leg, brings the ball up to his right ear and then pauses in midthrow. ‘There are times,’ he says, ‘when I’m seeing how I’m going to throw it as I’m moving my arm. There’s a lot happening at the time. Exactly where you’re going to put it is still being determined.’ Even as it’s leaving the fingertips? More head-shaking and silence. Finally: ‘I don’t know,’ says Rivers. ‘Like I said, there’s a lot going on.’”
Quoted in Beilock (2010, p. 231), who follows the quote by saying, “[Athletes like Kim] can’t tell you what they did because they don’t know themselves and end up thanking God or their mothers instead. Because these athletes operate at their best when they are not thinking about every step of performance, they find it difficult to get back inside their own heads to reflect on what they just did.”
Quoted in Levine (1988).
Perhaps Payton/Kim/Bird-type reports are non-Anscombean because the report has come well after the agent has acted. Perhaps richer reports would be given if agents were really interrupted in mid-performance. I am doubtful about this. Research on memory in skilled action suggests that time-lags between performance and report are relatively unimportant. See Beilock and Carr (2001) and Sutton (2007) for a review of research on memory in skilled action, and also Anderson (2003) and Stone et al. (2010) on “retrieval-induced forgetting.” Note also: it is possible that individuals form episodic memories while performing skilled unreflective actions, but that the content of these memories is, for some reason, unavailable for report. See Sect. 4.1 for related discussion.
Pace Annas (2011, p. 29), who assumes that it is in the nature of skilled agents to be able to teach their skills to others. Professional hockey player Thérèse Brisson, for example, said, “Recently retired hockey players who played at high levels rarely make the ideal coaches for youth hockey. They know what to do, but they can’t communicate how to do it!” Quoted in Beilock (2010, p. 225).
Thanks to Alex Madva for making this point about novices.
For an eloquent discussion and interview with Steve Blass, see the radio program “This American Life.” http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/462/own-worst-enemy.
Dreyfus (2007a) and Montero (2010) both discuss the case of Chuck Knoblauch, an All-Star baseball player who suffered a similar fate as Blass. Montero is skeptical of Dreyfus’ interpretation of the Knobuauch case. She makes a distinction between the putative detrimental effects of attention on expert action and the (more plausible, in her opinion) detrimental effects of attention on highly automatized, everyday skills.
Montero (2010) argues that proprioception is a form of sensory bodily awareness. She argues against claims made by O’Shaughnessy (1998) and Gallagher (2003) that agents are usually unaware of proprioceptive information from their bodies. Montero argues (2010, p. 113), for example, that ballet dancer Britt Juleen experiences awareness of proprioception when she describes the aim of performance to be “feeling totally immersed [sic] the feeling of my body moving.”
I am unsure whether a report of sensory bodily awareness could vindicate ANSR. Instead of choosing or endorsing a reason for action, the fluent agent, Railton argues, is “attuned to the reasons he faces” (2009, p. 106). Attunement is not quite a technical term for Railton, but it is close. Perhaps a report of a bodily feeling could count as evidence of attunement to one’s reasons for action.
Sutton is critiquing Dreyfus, who argues that expert athletes do not think at all during performance. Much of Sutton’s claim against Dreyfus turns on what one means by “thought.” Dreyfus claims (2007a, b) that the content of experience in flow is nothing more than attractive and repellent forces (attracting one into certain courses of action and repelling one from others). When he says this, I think his aim is to show that experts in flow need not have explicit or implicit propositional thoughts about what they’re doing. This is what counts as “thought” for Dreyfus. See Dreyfus (2002b).
Abernathy (1981). I suspect this is the case in other ball sports as well. An anonymous reviewer for Philosophical Studies suggests that a batter who successfully predicts where the ball will be, based on having watched the ball during some part of its flight path, could count as having watched the ball. This seems right, if the question is whether the batter has watched the ball at any point in time. But when a batter tells herself to watch the ball, I think she is telling herself to watch the ball at and through the point of contact. (In tennis at least, this is the way I was taught.) She is telling herself to look where the ball is, in other words, not elsewhere, even if elsewhere turns out to be where the ball will be. In this case, when the batter successfully predicts where the ball will be, she does not do so in virtue of having watched the ball in the sense that she meant it.
Dancers often “mark” their routines by modeling moves in a less-than-complete way, often by sequences of hand gestures that represent the individual moves of the routine. The interesting question about marking is what it adds to a dancer’s training and practice that merely imagining oneself performing the moves cannot do. See Kirsch (2010) for discussion. He argues that marking is likely either a way of anchoring projection to the targeted behavior or a form of self-imposed priming that increases the vividness of the dancer’s imagination.
Although I think there is an important difference between mere associative links and the sorts of associative mental states that might underlie skilled action. See Brownstein (ms) for discussion.
Although see footnote 31 for a qualification regarding ANSR.
For an overview of the neuroscience of flow, see Bruya (2010). For example, in Bruya (2010), Dietrich and Stroll (2010) describe a process of what they call “phenomenological subtraction,” in which there is a reduction of the specific contents of conscious experience when an agent is in flow due to down-regulation of the functional networks in the prefrontal cortex during strenuous activity. On neural localizations of skilled vs. unskilled action, see also Milton et al. (2007) and Milner and Goodale (1995, 2008).
This question could be cashed out in terms of character. Does her style of play express her character or does her self-understanding? I hesitate to use the term “character,” however, given its pride of place in recent debates about the moral psychology of virtue ethics.
Although I am trepidatious about using the term “character” (see footnote 39), it is worth noting that John Wooden, the most successful coach in the history of college basketball, purportedly said, “sports do not build character. They reveal it.” http://thinkexist.com/quotation/sports_do_not_build_character-they_reveal_it/208017.html. See also Lieberman and Eisenberger (2004) for an empirically oriented proposal that habits inform an “intuitive self” which is distinct from one’s “self-conception.” The intuitive self, they argue, is not reliant on the behavioral memories provided by episodic memory.
See, for instance, Gabbett and Abernathy (2013) for evidence of “perceptual expertise” in rugby players.
In calling patterns of perception, attention, and action representative of what an agent cares about, I am drawing upon Shoemaker (2011), who argues that agents can be “attribution-responsible” for actions even if they cannot answer for those actions (i.e. even if they are not “answerability-responsible”). I think Shoemaker’s account of responsibility for actions that conflict with one’s evaluative judgments could be made to show that individuals are also (attribution-) responsible for their skilled unreflective actions, but I do not have space to explore this question here, For discussion, see Brownstein (under review) Note also: Shoemaker’s sense of “care” is not Frankfurt’s. Another project for future work is to explore the relationship between these two different senses of what it is to care about something.
See Brownstein (under review) for my account of self-expression and responsibility in the context of implicit bias.
See Christman (2011, pp. 195–196) for argument.
Although see footnotes 17 and 31 for caveats.
See footnote 2.
Thanks to Alex Madva for pushing me to see this conclusion, in particular these questions for future research.
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Acknowledgments
For much needed help and feedback on this paper, many thanks to Nobel Ang, Michael Brent, John Christman, James Dow, Katie Gasdaglis, Tamar Gendler, Daniel Kelly, Eliot Michaelson, James Rocha and Steven Weimer. Special thanks to an anonymous reviewer for Philosophical Studies for cogent, detailed, and invaluable suggestions, and to Alex Madva for reading multiple drafts of this paper and for continuing to be an exemplary interlocutor and friend. I am also deeply grateful for all the helpful comments and questions I received after presenting parts of this paper at the 2012 Midsouth Philosophy Conference, the 2012 LSU Philosophy Conference, and the 2012 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association.
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Brownstein, M. Rationalizing flow: agency in skilled unreflective action. Philos Stud 168, 545–568 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0143-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0143-5