Keyboard Shortcuts?f

×
  • →Next step
  • ←Previous step
  • ↓Skip this slide
  • ↑Previous slide
  • mShow slide thumbnails
  • nShow notes
  • hShow handout latex source
  • NShow talk notes latex source

Click here and press the right key for the next slide.

(This may not work on mobile or ipad. You can try using chrome or firefox, but even that may fail. Sorry.)

also ...

Press the left key to go backwards (or swipe right)

Press n to toggle whether notes are shown (or add '?notes' to the url before the #)

Press m or double tap to slide thumbnails (menu)

Press ? at any time to show the keyboard shortcuts

 

The Problem of Action meets Habitual Processes

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (‘The Problem of Action’)

Why focus on this problem? Step back---what do we want from a philosophical story about action?
I suppose we want a framework that supports theorising about action in the behavioural and social sciences. Minimally, the framework should allow us to make all the important distinctions; enable us to formulate questions about how and why agents act; and support deriving predictions from hypotheses about the answers to these questions. That, at least, is the framework we (well, mainly you) are attempting to construct in thinking through philosophical issues in behavioural sciences.
It seems reasonable to expect that any such framework must solve The Problem of Action. So while solving this problem is not sufficient for our aims, doing so does seem to be necessary.

Standard Solution: actions are those events which stand in an appropriate causal relation to an intention.

‘deviant causal chains’ (Davidson, 1980, pp. 78--9)

Davidson’s original example (many elaborations have been offered, see Shepherd (2021, pp. 30--1) mentions three more): ‘A climber might want to rid himself of the weight and danger of holding another man on a rope, and he might know that by loosening his hold on the rope he could rid himself of the weight and danger. This belief and want might so unnerve him as to cause him to loosen his hold, and yet it might be the case that he never chose to loosen his hold, nor did he do it intentionally.’ (Davidson, 1980, p. 79)

Minimally, the action should not manifestly run counter to the intention; and neither should whether the action occurs be independent of what the agent intends.

Objection: some instrumental actions manifestly run counter to the agents’ intentions.

Why is this an objection?

Has been the source of much discussion ...

How do we know? From persistence following devaluation!

[ensure term is in glossary on the handout page: extinction]

Schwabe & Wolf (2010, p. figure 6)

Key is that these subjects did not frequently desire chocolate pudding. You can see this in the control group.
We cannot say there was no desire at all, but at least satiety produced a significantly reduced desire (as you’d expect). (Possible that some of the residual responding was habitual and therefore that the desire is even more reduced that the behaviour suggests.)
And this change in desire would have been the same for the stressed group, except it had no effect on their behaivour.
So their desires for the food are not influential. Therefore neither are their intentions to eat the food.

Sometimes your instrumental actions manifestly run counter to your intentions.

1. Preferences shape intention:
pathological cases aside, if there are two outcomes and you prefer one outcome to the other, and there are no reasons to pursue the other outcome, then you will not intend an action that brings about the less preferred action.

2. Where habitual processes dominate, you sometimes pursue less preferred outcomes. .notes. Where habitual processes dominate, preferences are irrelevant.

Therefore

3. Sometimes your instrumental actions manifestly run counter to your intentions.

another example—new study (popcorn)

Neal, Wood, Wu, & Kurlander (2011)

one new example ...
‘in a study conducted in a local cinema, participants with stronger habits to eat popcorn at the movies consumed more than those with weak habits, even when they disliked the popcorn because it was stale and unpalatable (Neal et al., 2011).’ p.right.grey-text (Wood & Rünger, 2016, p. 293)

Sometimes your instrumental actions manifestly run counter to your intentions.

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (‘The Problem of Action’)

Standard Solution: actions are those events which stand in an appropriate causal relation to an intention.

‘deviant causal chains’ (Davidson, 1980, pp. 78--9)

Davidson’s original example (many elaborations have been offered, see Shepherd (2021, pp. 30--1) mentions three more): ‘A climber might want to rid himself of the weight and danger of holding another man on a rope, and he might know that by loosening his hold on the rope he could rid himself of the weight and danger. This belief and want might so unnerve him as to cause him to loosen his hold, and yet it might be the case that he never chose to loosen his hold, nor did he do it intentionally.’ (Davidson, 1980, p. 79)

Minimally, the action should not manifestly run counter to the intention;and neither should whether the action occurs be independent of what the agent intends.

Objection: some instrumental actions manifestly run counter to the agents’ intentions.

Why is this an objection?

How do we know? From persistence following devaluation!

aside: you can also make this argument using AHS

the movements are actions, that is what is so distrubing about them (it’s not like parkinson’s, which involves an entirely different kind of loss of control)

(Della Sala, Marchetti, & Spinnler, 1991)

response 1

insist there’s an intention

What do you have to assume about intentions to avoid the objection and make the case align with the Standard Soultion?

Neal et al. (2011)

option (i) - the intention to eat the stale popcorn is more common in ‘high habit’ group ... but only in the cinema

Seems quite a silly suggestion.

‘strong-habit participants experienced the shift in motivation as a function of the food’s freshness. They rated the fresh popcorn as more likable than the stale, and thus they did not value the popcorn more than those with weak habits. [...]

‘Furthermore, tests of whether the habit effects depended on liking for the popcorn or current hunger revealed that these factors did not moderate the effects of habit strength on eating.’

(Neal et al., 2011, p. 1432)

option (ii) - there are other intentions, perhaps intentions to empty the bag, or intentions to grasp and place

Why think this? Seems like a move of desperation.
To be clear, the Objection cannot demonstrate that the Standard Solution is false. It just makes it seem implausible.
(From here, could go on to do the circularity thing: intentions are states that ditsinguish actions from things that merely happen to you; actions are distinguishes from events that merely happen to you by events.)

option (iii) - intentions are in the background ...

Let me explore this a bit more deeply

DanielKnoth [2022–23] Conjecture

(a) when the habit was originally formed, there existed some kind of intention and

(b) the habitual process, later on, is still linked to that original intention

[see also Bratman (1984) on ‘motivational potential’]

Great—potentially provides the distinction we need.
Distinguish cases where the habitual process is intentionally formed (e.g. exercise) and cases where it is not (e.g. popcorn)
Not straightforward that this gives the right answer about the stress case from Swalbe et al.
Fails in the story about (i) intentionally form exercises in the morning; (ii) new partner, intend to break the habit; (iii) but the force of habit is just too strong.

Neal et al. (2011)

option (i) - the intention to eat the stale popcorn is more common in ‘high habit’ group

option (ii) - there are other intentions, perhaps intentions to empty the bag, or intentions to grasp and place

old: stimulus–action + stimulus → action

new: stimulus–action + stimulus → intention → action

option (iii) - intentions are in the background

So that was response 1. Note that we explored three different ways of developing

response 1

insist there’s an intention

I remind you what the objection this is a response to was.

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (‘The Problem of Action’)

Standard Solution: actions are those events which stand in an appropriate causal relation to an intention.

‘deviant causal chains’ (Davidson, 1980, pp. 78--9)

Minimally, the action should not manifestly run counter to the intention;and neither should whether the action occurs be independent of what the agent intends.

Objection: some instrumental actions manifestly run counter to the agents’ intentions.

Why is this an objection?

How do we know? From persistence following devaluation!

response 2

deny instrumental actions are all actions

Issue: this cannot be arbitrary. you need some grounds for the denial.
What the Standard Solution requires is that intentions guide actions.
What the dual-process theory of instrumental action entails is that intentions can sometimes fail to guide instrumental actions.
It would not be a good response to insist that those instrumental actions cannot really be actions because intentions do not guide them. (That would seem to make the Standard Solution immune to any kind of objection at all.) You need grounds for saying this that do not presuppose the truth of the Standard Solution.

‘Among the things I did were

get up,

wash,

shave,

go downstairs, and

spill my coffee.’

(Davidson, 1971, p. 43)

Couldn’t any of these be consequences of habitual processes?

‘Among the things that happened to me were

being awakened and

stumbling on the edge of the rug.’

(Davidson, 1971, p. 43)

eating popcorn

pressing a button to watch a film clip

In conclusion, I will not say that the objection is decisive.
But I if you want to defend the Standard Solution, I think the objection provides a substantial challenge.
Further, if you were not particularly attached to the Standard Solution, then I think the objection provides sufficient reason to reject it.

What distinguishes your actions from things that merely happen to you? (‘The Problem of Action’)

Standard Solution: actions are those events which stand in an appropriate causal relation to an intention.

‘deviant causal chains’ (Davidson, 1980, pp. 78--9)

Minimally, the action should not manifestly run counter to the intention;and neither should whether the action occurs be independent of what the agent intends.

Objection: some instrumental actions manifestly run counter to the agents’ intentions.

Why is this an objection?

How do we know? From persistence following devaluation!

challenge

Discover why people act,
individually and jointly.

This leaves us with a problem.
The challenge for the whole course is to discover why people act, individually and jointly
To make this theoretically feasible, we want a shared understand of which things we are aiming to theorize about (it cannot be about movement generally because that would require physics rather than psychology, philosophy or economics).
The Standard Solution was our attempt to achieve that shared understanding. If we reject the Standard Solution, we reject the basis for our whole project.
But there is a compelling objection to the Standard Solution.