Abstract
The folk picture of agency suggests that human beings have basic agency over some of their omissions. For example, someone may follow through on a decision never to support a political party without doing anything in order to make themselves omit. A number of features appear to signal their agency: the omission is not just called intentional, it is also seen as an achievement and explained in terms of the reasons for the decision. Some philosophers have tried to debunk the appearance and argue that agency over omissions always proceeds from agency over actions (on the model of Ulysses ordering his crew to tie him to the mast). Others have tried to uphold the appearance by understanding basic agency over omissions on the model of their theories of action (and most often on the model of causal theories). Against both groups, I argue for a vindication of the appearance in terms of a theory of sui generis basic agency over omissions. Basic intentional omissions are the behavioral outcomes of fluent control by their agents’ intentions. When an intention to omit fluently controls for the right omission, the omission is an intentional achievement performed because of the intention. The intention appropriately regulates the agent’s behavior so as to ensure the intended omission. We can therefore see basic agency over omissions as regulative and distinct from the agency exercised over actions.
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Notes
In this paper, I rely on the reader’s intuitive grasp of what counts as an omission. For those who would like a fleshed-out description, here is a sketch of how I think of them. Omissions are absences of given types of behavior in an agent’s entire behavior over a timeframe—see Ryle (1973) and Varzi (2007) for closely related views. The word “omission” in ordinary language is sometimes ambiguous between an absence of action and an absence of behavior. When we say that I omitted to raise my arm, do we mean that I did not perform the act of raising my arm or that my arm did not go up? The latter better captures the content of most of our intentions to omit. When I intend to omit raising my arm, what I (usually) intend is that my arm not go up.
The use of the words “intentional” and “intentionally” (on their own) as markers of agency should be taken with more than a grain of salt in light of the Knobe effect (Knobe 2003; Cova 2016). Their application to omissions is even less suggestive of agency than their application to actions: we are tempted to say that an agent intentionally omitted many things they were merely aware of not doing. (Conversely, see Sect. 3.3 for a discussion of possible basic intentional omissions not called intentional.) But we should not harbor similar doubts about the word “achievement” or about reason explanations. We are not more inclined to think that bad or imprudent side-effects are achievements or that they were motivated by reasons. Neither are we tempted to regard omissions of which the agent is merely aware as achievements with motivating reasons.
For other accounts of non-basic intentional omissions, see the work of Brand (1971) and Smith (1986). You might disagree that the omissions in some of these cases are intentional (or are omissions at all) because the agent has made it impossible not to omit (for example, Ulysses has made it impossible to jump ship). I think these omissions are nevertheless manifestations of agency. Someone who disagrees endorses an ability requirement on intentional omissions. See Clarke (2014, 90 sq.) for a nuanced version and discussion. I do not endorse such a requirement on basic intentional omissions (at least under any demanding reading of the possibility to do otherwise), in part because of Frankfurt-style cases (see note 25).
The characterization of omissions in note 1 means that omissions are not metaphysically basic. Omissions are patterns of absence in an agent’s behavior. However, this does not entail that omissions could not be basic in the order of agency, which is what matters here.
Another way for Sally’s omission not to be basic would be for her to omit something else in order not to support the Republican party. This alternative obviously kicks the can down the road.
Intentions to omit are intentions to avoid behaving in a given way for a timeframe that may be fixed (e.g., for a week), open-ended (e.g., until I have lost five pounds) or indefinite (forever). Sally’s intention is an example of the latter kind. Some intentions to omit are less strict in what they commit the agent to (e.g., the intention to keep one’s carbon footprint in check commits its bearer to reducing some behaviors but not avoiding them altogether). Beyond intentions to omit, all distal (as opposed to proximal) intentions mandate patterns of omission. For example, if I intend to pick up a friend at the airport tomorrow, I should not commit my car to the repair shop or lend it to my brother. I believe that these intentions may also fluently control for the relevant omissions. In other words, I may exercise my regulative agency to carry out my intention long before I act and get into my car to drive to the airport. Although this paper concentrates on intentions to omit, the regulative theory is meant to apply to these effects of distal intentions as well.
Mele provides ammunition for the skeptical view but does not endorse it. He does not make a point about agency, but about negative actions. Although he concludes that his survey “of alleged negative actions has, in all cases, turned up either nonactions or positive actions misdiagnosed as negative ones” (2003, 153), he leaves room for a role for intentions to omit in the shaping of behavior (see especially the example of Bob, p. 151). He might therefore agree with the specification of this role in this paper, and he may even agree that it constitutes a form of basic agency over omissions. I nevertheless reference his arguments here because they could lead one to doubt the existence of any kind of basic agency over omissions. I thank an anonymous reviewer for helping me clarify this.
The adverb ‘appropriately’ is of course an unsatisfactory placeholder meant to rule out deviant causal chains (Davidson 1980, ch. 4). I try to avoid a similar move in the regulative account of basic intentional omissions.
See note 1.
Prevention is straightforwardly at home within counterfactual theories of causation. But it has been accommodated within prima facie hostile process theories, under the form of metaphysically distinct relations, less fundamental than causation, yet robust enough to vindicate our explanation of John’s absence (Dowe 2000, ch. 6).
Sartorio also makes clear in an exchange with Randolph Clarke that she would see prevention as unnecessary for the omission to have been intentional (in Aguílar and Buckareff 2010, pp. 157–160), a point I agree with and am about to argue for. She proposes that the intentional absence of contrary intention is enough to make an omission intentional, and that the former absence is intentional in virtue of the agent’s voluntarily failing to form the contrary intention at the end of their deliberation (2009, p. 523). However, I find the latter part unsatisfactory, for reasons Clarke points out. What if the agent (voluntarily) fails to make up their mind? What if they form an intention to omit without deliberation?
You could resist my construal of the example if you rejected any distinction between overdetermination and backup causation in cases of prevention. I do not think that such a view is tenable. However, that might not signal an important and substantial disagreement about basic intentional omissions. Such a view of causal prevention would, I think, lead to a rebranding of the regulative theory as a version of the causal theory and it might leave the account below more or less intact.
The argument here is about the relation between intention and omission. It may well be that, to explain the omission, the reasons had to cause the intention. What is not necessary is that the intention, in turn, caused the omission.
A functional theory of the content of intentions would justify the assumption. But the answer to our questions about intentional omissions would now lie in the theory of intentions. I expect that a proponent of this view would have to flesh it out along lines parallel to the regulative theory of basic intentional omissions. My main reason not to pursue this option is that an informative theory of intentional omissions is better able to mark important distinctions in the ways in which our intentions to omit influence our behavior. See Sect. 2.2.
The example in Sect. 1.2 of the election cycle in which Sally never even considered a Republican vote is a case in which she never got on such a track. The problem of necessity is a limiting case of the continuity problem.
“Generally, there is much less that an intention not to act must do in order to succeed than is required of an intention to act” (2014, p. 80). We might also read this quote not as a statement about the proper role of an intention to omit but about its causal role. I would agree with this reading: the causal role of an intention to omit is more modest than the causal role of an intention to act. However, we would be led back to the question of whether or not the causal role of an intention to omit entirely captures how it seeks to govern the agent’s behavior.
Clarke himself might combine the objection considered here with his nuanced ability requirement on omissions to account for the example. He might say that Max performed a basic intentional omission up until the failure, and that he did not perform any omission afterwards because he had lost the ability to eat cake when the other customer walked away. It would therefore not matter that the condition continued to apply. I am not sure we can rely on the ability requirement, though, because it remains possible for Max to seek another piece of cake. His intention might prevent him from doing that, but the failure at the bakery shows that it nevertheless suffers from a crucial weakness. In any case, note that the ability requirement does not help with the example of Max at the lunch spot.
I add (i) because (on most understandings of counterfactuals) (ii) is trivially true of necessary omissions. Without (i), my intention to catch a movie would control for your not traveling faster than the speed of light.
The grey area is the upshot of a threshold placed on a graded relationship. You might prefer to think of degrees of agency proportional to degrees of control.
Notice that this does not mean deliberate choices about how. The tools may be perfectly familiar. But even familiar tools are deliberately and actively deployed.
What about times when S sleeps? I think anyone inclined to deny that S may manifest their agency while asleep should also be inclined to deny that their intentions rationalize any present behavior while they sleep. S might retain all sorts of intentions, some of which would be directed at the here and now if they woke up, but none of which currently are. Anyone inclined to endorse the question as a possible objection should conclude that (RTO) does not apply while S sleeps.
How does (RTO) handle a Frankfurt-style case where a third party stands ready to force the agent to omit to A but never actually has to because the agent omits to A on their own (Frankfurt 1969)? (RTO) disregards the third party and concludes that the agent performed a basic intentional omission (which I think is the right verdict). The same is true for any other backup (or actual) cause of the omission (such as Sally’s penchant for the opponent). To understand why, consider that (Control) appeals to counterfactuals that are themselves chosen in terms of other counterfactuals. What matters to control is what would happen if the agent would A if she did not intend not to A. In terms of possible worlds, we look at worlds selected because of what would happen there if the agent did not have the intention (so because of what happens at further counterfactual worlds). The intuitive idea is to look only at counterfactual circumstances where the intention could make a difference and to ask whether it would. This means that (Control) looks exclusively at counterfactual circumstances in which all other actual and backup causes of the omission (the Frankfurt-style third-party, Sally’s liking for the opponent) are absent or ineffective. It is in those circumstances that it is possible for the intention to omit to make a difference to the outcome. If it would make a difference to the outcome in those circumstances (in the right, fluent, way), then it means that the intention (fluently) controls for the omission, and therefore that the agent performs a basic intentional omission at the actual world.
I thank Roger Teichmann for the example.
Potential causes of breaches are even harder to determine when an intention does not come with a clear list of the behaviors to avoid. For example, the intention to behave like a gentleman is, in part, an intention to omit an elusive list of behaviors.
If you prefer to think in terms of degrees, control and agency diminish as the environment becomes more challenging.
For skepticism, see (Mele 1997).
Note that the claim is not about means of action but about means of control for the occurrence of some type of event (i.e., about the kind of action Frankfurt attributes to Fred). We can actively produce some bodily outcomes with non-actional means (e.g., contractions of muscles we know nothing about), but we cannot actively control for outcomes without (actual or counterfactual) actional means.
Salmon (1994) calls it the causal nexus, Sober (1983) the causal landscape and Strevens (2013) the web of causal influences. Philosophers who defend interventionist views of causation often share the commitment to a two-level picture but do not use causal language to describe the fundamental level, for example because it lacks the temporal directionality of causation (Woodward 2003). We might speak of a web of nomic relations instead.
The same happens when distal intentions commit us to patterns of omission that we had no fear of breaking (e.g., not lending the car when I intend to pick up a friend at the airport).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of my PhD dissertation committee, Ned Block, David Velleman and Michael Strevens, as well as audiences at New York University, the 2010 Arche/CSMN and Oxford graduate conferences and the Institut Jean Nicod. Many thanks to Thomas Blanchard, Timothy Chan, Michael De, Collin Marshall, Philip Pettit, Carolina Sartorio and Roger Teichmann as well as two anonymous reviewers for this journal.
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Lusson, P.A. A regulative theory of basic intentional omissions. Synthese 199, 8399–8421 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03168-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03168-7