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Decomposing the Will
There is growing evidence from the science of human behavior that our everyday, folk understanding of ourselves as conscious, rational, responsible agents may be radically mistaken. The science, some argue, recommends a view of conscious agency as merely epiphenomenal: an impotent accompaniment to the whirring unconscious machinery (the inner zombie) that prepares, decides and causes our behavior. The new essays in this volume display and explore this radical claim, revisiting the folk concept of the responsible agent after abandoning the image of a central executive, and "decomposing" the notion of the conscious will into multiple interlocking aspects and functions.
Part 1 of this volume provides an overview of the scientific research that has been taken to support "the zombie challenge." In part 2, contributors explore the phenomenology of agency and what it is like to be the author of one's own actions. Part 3 then explores different strategies for using the science and phenomenology of human agency to respond to the zombie challenge.
Questions explored include: what distinguishes automatic behavior and voluntary action? What, if anything, does consciousness contribute to the voluntary control of behavior? What does the science of human behavior really tell us about the nature of self-control?
Part 1 of this volume provides an overview of the scientific research that has been taken to support "the zombie challenge." In part 2, contributors explore the phenomenology of agency and what it is like to be the author of one's own actions. Part 3 then explores different strategies for using the science and phenomenology of human agency to respond to the zombie challenge.
Questions explored include: what distinguishes automatic behavior and voluntary action? What, if anything, does consciousness contribute to the voluntary control of behavior? What does the science of human behavior really tell us about the nature of self-control?
- GenresPhilosophyPsychology
367 pages, ebook
First published March 1, 2013
28 people want to read
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Andy Clark
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 10, 2022
This might be an interesting collection of papers to some people, but I found the majority to be uninteresting. This is because I found that the questions motivating these papers take on board assumptions that I'm more interested in directly, assumptions I wish to be examined and challenged. The questions include: Does the fact that often we act automatically threaten whether we have free will? Is having conscious control over our behaviors necessary for having free will? Can psychology and cognitive science provide solutions to such questions, e.g., by showing we're often ignorant of our motives and so our apparently consciously motivated behaviors were in fact automatic or motivated by forces outside conscious control?
But these questions presume a certain definition of free will. Having forces outside our conscious deliberation control our behaviors is a threat to free will only when we define freedom in terms of having conscious control. I would've found it interesting to examine, in detail, why freedom ought to be defined that way. It seems that that shouldn't necessarily be the case; freedom can also be understood in terms of our capacity to transcend from previous ends or values that drove the ways we aimed to control our behaviors in the past.
Independently of the fact that this anthology focuses on a narrow phenomenon that could be referred to by free will that I'm not interested in, a lot of the papers just didn't have anything substantial to contribute. Many of them just rehash common sense ideas, but now cited with psychological studies to support them. For example, a number of these papers deal with the ideas that we have freedom because we're capable of regulating our emotions (chapter 11); that we have freedom because there's a categorical difference between being awake and being unconscious or asleep, and this contrast lets us see we have control when awake (chapter 9); that freedom might be located in our long-term practice and commitments, rather than our decisions at a particular moment in time (chapter 3); that parts of our cognitive processing must happen automatically in order for us to be able to execute intended actions skillfully so automaticity isn't a threat to freedom (chapter 13); that there are different kinds of experiences that make us feel that we have ownership and responsibility over our experiences, like controlling our bodily limbs v. being able to explain an experience or fit it into a narrative we identify ourselves with (chapter 7).
There were only two chapters I found interesting. In chapter 17, Proust examines whether mental actions are a distinct kind of action from bodily action. In arguing in favor for their being distinct, she proposes an plausible account of the structure of mental action, into which the possibility of our conscious control figures in a curious way. According to Proust, mental actions are individuated by sets of normative requirements, which our mental activity must satisfy to count as a type of mental action. For example, to remember something, we must summon to mind a fact or event that is factual; or to plan something, we must come up with actions we could take that would accord with our projects and desires. These normative requirements constitute the mental action; we may contrast these requirements with particular goals or aims which the mental action may instrumentally serve (e.g., I may remember my first impression of a friend in order to write about it in my letter to him).
This means there are two junctures at which we may fail in performing a mental action. We could fail to satisfy our instrumental goal or these constitutive, normative requirements. The first failure amounts to performing the mental action and failing to have it serve a role that we intended for it, while the second failure amounts to failure to perform the action whatsoever. Proust argues that we are intrinsically sensitive to the possible success or failure both components. For the second, we are consciously aware of these normative requirements, and we have metacognitive feelings of whether our mental activity satisfied them. For example, when I try to remember my first impression of my friend, a certain image comes to mind immediately and with great vividness; these phenomenological details of the process are perhaps typical of veridical memory, and so their presence lets me feel that this mental activity is indeed a memory. This feeling is metacognitive in the sense that it is about a cognitive state (rather than about an object or part of the content of some state).
Proust argues that this sensitivity towards the normative requirements that constitute a type of mental action is automatic. We can't help but have certain metacognitive feelings. So we aren't agents over whether we judge, remember, or imagine something (or have any particular mental action). But we can be agents over whether we pursue some overall action, into which a mental action may figure or serve instrumentally. For example, I am an agent over writing a certain letter to my friend, and remembering my first impression of him serves this action. So in this qualified way, we can perform mental actions agentially.
Proust also points out that often we switch into performing some mental action when we face a challenge or error in performing some prior bodily action. For example, if I am jumping rope, but then the rope snaps, this may prompt me into deliberating over what to do next, a certain mental action. So often we engage in mental actions without the phenomenology of intending to do so; by definition we do not intend for these errors that trigger mental action to occur.
I was especially interested in this chapter because if metacognitive feelings are genuine psychological phenomena, it is fascinating that there could be a pre-reflective feeling that does so much intellectual or conceptual work for us. It might be tempting to think it'd take in-depth reasoning or thought to figure out whether some normative requirements that define a type of action are satisfied. Usually we think that automatic feelings can only be about concrete matters; we feel cold when it's snowy, or feel a warm glow when a friend hugs us. So if Proust's account is correct, an automatic feeling can perform the role that such an effortful judgment would. This opens the further question: What other kinds of complex feelings exist -- which are complex in the sense that they are about abstract objects, like the nature of our own mental states? I've been playing with the tentative idea that it can occur automatically to us whether an object we imagine is real or make-believe, and this might be understood as an automatic feeling of the same level of complexity as the metacognitive feelings Proust deals with.
I also enjoyed chapter 15. Vierkant distinguishes between mental agency defined as our being capable of applying our beliefs and desires to shed new light on a situation (i.e., forming judgments and appraisals); vs. defined as our being capable of manipulating our very own minds, so that new beliefs and desires become salient. He argues that the latter has been undervalued and is in fact necessary to self-control, which is intuitively a paradigmatic expression of mental agency. For example, I may be tempted to cancel a phone call with my brother because it is snowing outside, and I prefer to play in the snow; I need to exert self-control to keep to my plans. Some thinkers might conceptualize this self-control in terms of my reminding myself of my beliefs about my brother and my commitment to support him, and then letting the beliefs shed new light on my situation. Vierkant argues instead this self-control ought to be conceptualized in terms of my manipulating my beliefs and desires. I may step outside in my short sleeves, for example, and make myself feel very cold, which deters me from desiring to go outside. This manipulates my mind into a state such that it is more natural or easy to stick with my original plans.
Vierkant's idea is pretty commonsense, but I appreciate this distinction he draws between two forms of mental agency. The form of mental agency he emphasizes opens the way to think about freedom in terms of freedom from previous beliefs and desires that might tie us to particular behaviors. This touches upon the distinction I mentioned earlier in this review about different ways of thinking about freedom.
As a whole, this book might be interesting to people who are invested in the traditional free will - determinism debate, or who are sympathetic to understanding freedom in terms of having conscious control over ourselves. People who are in contrast more sympathetic to a traditional, existentialist take on freedom might find these papers beside the point.
But these questions presume a certain definition of free will. Having forces outside our conscious deliberation control our behaviors is a threat to free will only when we define freedom in terms of having conscious control. I would've found it interesting to examine, in detail, why freedom ought to be defined that way. It seems that that shouldn't necessarily be the case; freedom can also be understood in terms of our capacity to transcend from previous ends or values that drove the ways we aimed to control our behaviors in the past.
Independently of the fact that this anthology focuses on a narrow phenomenon that could be referred to by free will that I'm not interested in, a lot of the papers just didn't have anything substantial to contribute. Many of them just rehash common sense ideas, but now cited with psychological studies to support them. For example, a number of these papers deal with the ideas that we have freedom because we're capable of regulating our emotions (chapter 11); that we have freedom because there's a categorical difference between being awake and being unconscious or asleep, and this contrast lets us see we have control when awake (chapter 9); that freedom might be located in our long-term practice and commitments, rather than our decisions at a particular moment in time (chapter 3); that parts of our cognitive processing must happen automatically in order for us to be able to execute intended actions skillfully so automaticity isn't a threat to freedom (chapter 13); that there are different kinds of experiences that make us feel that we have ownership and responsibility over our experiences, like controlling our bodily limbs v. being able to explain an experience or fit it into a narrative we identify ourselves with (chapter 7).
There were only two chapters I found interesting. In chapter 17, Proust examines whether mental actions are a distinct kind of action from bodily action. In arguing in favor for their being distinct, she proposes an plausible account of the structure of mental action, into which the possibility of our conscious control figures in a curious way. According to Proust, mental actions are individuated by sets of normative requirements, which our mental activity must satisfy to count as a type of mental action. For example, to remember something, we must summon to mind a fact or event that is factual; or to plan something, we must come up with actions we could take that would accord with our projects and desires. These normative requirements constitute the mental action; we may contrast these requirements with particular goals or aims which the mental action may instrumentally serve (e.g., I may remember my first impression of a friend in order to write about it in my letter to him).
This means there are two junctures at which we may fail in performing a mental action. We could fail to satisfy our instrumental goal or these constitutive, normative requirements. The first failure amounts to performing the mental action and failing to have it serve a role that we intended for it, while the second failure amounts to failure to perform the action whatsoever. Proust argues that we are intrinsically sensitive to the possible success or failure both components. For the second, we are consciously aware of these normative requirements, and we have metacognitive feelings of whether our mental activity satisfied them. For example, when I try to remember my first impression of my friend, a certain image comes to mind immediately and with great vividness; these phenomenological details of the process are perhaps typical of veridical memory, and so their presence lets me feel that this mental activity is indeed a memory. This feeling is metacognitive in the sense that it is about a cognitive state (rather than about an object or part of the content of some state).
Proust argues that this sensitivity towards the normative requirements that constitute a type of mental action is automatic. We can't help but have certain metacognitive feelings. So we aren't agents over whether we judge, remember, or imagine something (or have any particular mental action). But we can be agents over whether we pursue some overall action, into which a mental action may figure or serve instrumentally. For example, I am an agent over writing a certain letter to my friend, and remembering my first impression of him serves this action. So in this qualified way, we can perform mental actions agentially.
Proust also points out that often we switch into performing some mental action when we face a challenge or error in performing some prior bodily action. For example, if I am jumping rope, but then the rope snaps, this may prompt me into deliberating over what to do next, a certain mental action. So often we engage in mental actions without the phenomenology of intending to do so; by definition we do not intend for these errors that trigger mental action to occur.
I was especially interested in this chapter because if metacognitive feelings are genuine psychological phenomena, it is fascinating that there could be a pre-reflective feeling that does so much intellectual or conceptual work for us. It might be tempting to think it'd take in-depth reasoning or thought to figure out whether some normative requirements that define a type of action are satisfied. Usually we think that automatic feelings can only be about concrete matters; we feel cold when it's snowy, or feel a warm glow when a friend hugs us. So if Proust's account is correct, an automatic feeling can perform the role that such an effortful judgment would. This opens the further question: What other kinds of complex feelings exist -- which are complex in the sense that they are about abstract objects, like the nature of our own mental states? I've been playing with the tentative idea that it can occur automatically to us whether an object we imagine is real or make-believe, and this might be understood as an automatic feeling of the same level of complexity as the metacognitive feelings Proust deals with.
I also enjoyed chapter 15. Vierkant distinguishes between mental agency defined as our being capable of applying our beliefs and desires to shed new light on a situation (i.e., forming judgments and appraisals); vs. defined as our being capable of manipulating our very own minds, so that new beliefs and desires become salient. He argues that the latter has been undervalued and is in fact necessary to self-control, which is intuitively a paradigmatic expression of mental agency. For example, I may be tempted to cancel a phone call with my brother because it is snowing outside, and I prefer to play in the snow; I need to exert self-control to keep to my plans. Some thinkers might conceptualize this self-control in terms of my reminding myself of my beliefs about my brother and my commitment to support him, and then letting the beliefs shed new light on my situation. Vierkant argues instead this self-control ought to be conceptualized in terms of my manipulating my beliefs and desires. I may step outside in my short sleeves, for example, and make myself feel very cold, which deters me from desiring to go outside. This manipulates my mind into a state such that it is more natural or easy to stick with my original plans.
Vierkant's idea is pretty commonsense, but I appreciate this distinction he draws between two forms of mental agency. The form of mental agency he emphasizes opens the way to think about freedom in terms of freedom from previous beliefs and desires that might tie us to particular behaviors. This touches upon the distinction I mentioned earlier in this review about different ways of thinking about freedom.
As a whole, this book might be interesting to people who are invested in the traditional free will - determinism debate, or who are sympathetic to understanding freedom in terms of having conscious control over ourselves. People who are in contrast more sympathetic to a traditional, existentialist take on freedom might find these papers beside the point.
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