In this blog post I wish to articulate what I take to be the primary objection to Kieran Setiya's account of intentional action, as described in the first half of his book, Reasons without Rationalism. I begin by adumbrating a few of my own commitments, followed by a summary of Setiya's position, and I conclude with critical remarks.
I hold that intentional action is prototypically goal-directed action. On this view, the type of goal-oriented behaviour a cat engages in when it stalks a bird counts as intentional. By contrast, purely reactive behaviour, such as when a cat reflexively withdraws its paws away from a sharp object, is non-intentional. In sum, I take it to be paradigmatic of intentional action that it is purposive rather than merely reactive.
My primary reason for adopting the present definition of ‘intentional action’—one that conceives of it in terms of goal-directed action—is my belief that it closely matches our quotidian conception. Ordinarily, we identify an agent’s intention with the aim, purpose or goal they have in mind when carrying out some action. Moreover, I maintain that an agent may perform an action with a certain goal in mind even if that agent does not (or cannot) conceive of that goal as such. To conceive of a goal as such requires that one possess and deploy the concept of a goal. Thus, an account of intentional action that requires that an agent conceive of their goal as such would preclude non-linguistic animals—that lack such concepts—from acting intentionally. By contrast, to have a goal in mind is to be aware of one’s goal in the same sense in which one may be aware of the content of one’s perceptual experience. Since non-linguistic animals may be aware of the content of their perceptual experiences, there is nothing in the present account of ‘having a goal in mind’ that precludes its application to non-linguistic animals.
My second reason for defining ‘intentional action’ in the way that I have is that it roughly corresponds with that of Anscombe in her landmark text, Intention. Admittedly, Anscombe is not committed to the claim that intentional action just is goal-directed action since she holds that an agent may act intentionally even though she has no goal or end in view. However, she does take goal-directed action as the paradigm case of intentional action, such that there would be no such thing as intentional action if we did not sometimes act with an end in view. This is a subtlety in Anscombe’s account that I cannot fully explore here. But it is sufficient for our present purpose to note that Anscombe and I agree with respect to there being a conceptual connection between intentional action and goal-directed action. Significantly, Anscombe and I both concur that one may correctly ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals. She puts the point as follows:
The conception of intentional action employed in this blog post—one that defines intentional action in terms of goal-directed action—differs from that of Setiya, who sees the two terms as picking out fundamentally different domains of agential activity. According to Setiya, an agent φs intentionally only if that agent has the higher-order desire-like belief that she is φing for a reason. Setiya’s requirement seems to build on Anscombe’s insight that “intentional actions are ones to which a certain sense of the question ‘why?’ has application.” In specifying precisely what that sense is, Anscombe notes that “this question is refused application by the answer: ‘I was not aware I was doing that’.” Setiya takes this to suggest a conception of intentional action according to which an agent must know that she is performing a certain action in order to count as performing that action intentionally. (I will refer to this as the knowledge requirement for intentional action.) However, after considering Davidson’s example of the teacher who intends to make 10 copies, but is unsure if he is pressing hard enough to successfully do so, Setiya concludes that the knowledge requirement is too strong. The assumption seems to be that since there are times we do not know that we are successfully performing an action we are intentionally performing, such knowledge cannot be a necessary condition for intentional action. He therefore falls back to a belief requirement, according to which one acts intentionally only if one believes one is performing said action.
Setiya’s makes a second modification to Anscombe’s knowledge requirement. He claims that one not only believes that one is performing a certain action, but that one also believes that one is performing it for some specific consideration that one takes as one’s reason (insofar as one is performing it for a reason at all). This leads him to distinguish between two aspects of what it means to take the consideration that P as one’s reason to φ. The “practical” aspect involves a desire-like attitude towards the proposition: the consideration that P is my reason to φ. The attitude in question is “desire-like” in that it motivates one to φ. The “epistemic” aspect of taking the consideration that P as one’s reason is the non-observation based belief that the consideration that P is my reason to φ. The practical and epistemic aspects combine to form what Setiya refers to as a “desire-like belief”:
In an astonishing display of pluck, Setiya describes his approach as a “simple psychological theory” (Italics mine), according to which “taking something as one’s reason is a matter of taking one’s belief in that reason to play a causal-motivational role in explaining one’s action”. Whatever the merits of such an account of intentional action, it is clear that it precludes the possibility that non-linguistic animals may act intentionally. The requirement that one believe that one’s belief that P is playing a “causal-motivational role in explaining one’s action” is not one that non-linguistic animals (and even a few philosophers) can meet. Moreover, Setiya’s account precludes the possibility that intentional action is prototypically goal-directed action since a wide range of goal-directed actions (e.g., those performed by non-linguistic animals and pre-linguistic human infants) involve no such second-order beliefs. This clearly puts Setiya at odds with the account of intentional action we find in Anscombe, and (therefore) out of step with what I have been calling the philosophically orthodox conception. I believe this represents a problem for Setiya’s account because when he criticises Anscombe and advocates of the belief-desire model for their accounts of intentional action, it is not clear that he is talking about the same thing as those he criticises.
More importantly, the fact that Setiya’s account of intentional action (1) denies the prototypical connection between intentional action and goal directed action, and (2) precludes the ascription of intentions to non-linguistic animals, suggests that his account is revisionary with respect to our quotidian conception. This presents Setiya with the following dilemma. On the one hand, if his account of intentional action is supposed to coincide with our ordinary usage of the term, then his theory implies that the vast majority of competent English speakers are simply mistaken when they ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals. This may of course be the case, but we would need very compelling reasons for thinking that this is so along with an error theory of some kind. Setiya provides neither. On the other hand, if his account is not supposed to coincide with our ordinary usage of the term, then the relevance of his account is called into question. Why should we be concerned with this new concept Setiya is attempting to introduce? Moreover, why does he risk confusing the reader by using the expression ‘intentional explanation’ to refer to this novel conception, without the least indication that he is using it in an unconventional way?
I hold that intentional action is prototypically goal-directed action. On this view, the type of goal-oriented behaviour a cat engages in when it stalks a bird counts as intentional. By contrast, purely reactive behaviour, such as when a cat reflexively withdraws its paws away from a sharp object, is non-intentional. In sum, I take it to be paradigmatic of intentional action that it is purposive rather than merely reactive.
My primary reason for adopting the present definition of ‘intentional action’—one that conceives of it in terms of goal-directed action—is my belief that it closely matches our quotidian conception. Ordinarily, we identify an agent’s intention with the aim, purpose or goal they have in mind when carrying out some action. Moreover, I maintain that an agent may perform an action with a certain goal in mind even if that agent does not (or cannot) conceive of that goal as such. To conceive of a goal as such requires that one possess and deploy the concept of a goal. Thus, an account of intentional action that requires that an agent conceive of their goal as such would preclude non-linguistic animals—that lack such concepts—from acting intentionally. By contrast, to have a goal in mind is to be aware of one’s goal in the same sense in which one may be aware of the content of one’s perceptual experience. Since non-linguistic animals may be aware of the content of their perceptual experiences, there is nothing in the present account of ‘having a goal in mind’ that precludes its application to non-linguistic animals.
My second reason for defining ‘intentional action’ in the way that I have is that it roughly corresponds with that of Anscombe in her landmark text, Intention. Admittedly, Anscombe is not committed to the claim that intentional action just is goal-directed action since she holds that an agent may act intentionally even though she has no goal or end in view. However, she does take goal-directed action as the paradigm case of intentional action, such that there would be no such thing as intentional action if we did not sometimes act with an end in view. This is a subtlety in Anscombe’s account that I cannot fully explore here. But it is sufficient for our present purpose to note that Anscombe and I agree with respect to there being a conceptual connection between intentional action and goal-directed action. Significantly, Anscombe and I both concur that one may correctly ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals. She puts the point as follows:
Since I have defined intentional action in terms of language—the special question ‘Why?’—it may seem surprising that I should introduce intention-dependent concepts with special reference to their application to animals, which have no language. Still, we certainly ascribe intention to animals. The reason is precisely that we describe what they do in a manner perfectly characteristic of the use of intention concepts. . . . the cat is stalking the bird in crouching and slinking along with its eye fixed on the bird and its whiskers twitching. . . . Just as we naturally say ‘The cat thinks there is a mouse coming’, so we also naturally ask: Why is the cat crouching and slinking like that? and give the answer: It’s stalking that bird; see, its eye is fixed on it. We do this, though the cat can utter no thoughts, and cannot give expression to any knowledge of its own action, or to any intention either.Since Anscombe is the locus classicus of the contemporary discussion of intention, I take her usage of the term to have the greatest claim to philosophical orthodoxy. Of course, we may find the need to make adjustments to her conception along the way; but I think one can hardly go wrong (from a methodological point of view) in taking her as a starting point. Moreover, I will take Anscombe’s observation that we ordinarily ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals as a touchstone for determining whether or not a particular theorist is working with the philosophically orthodox conception of ‘intentional action’. My reasons for this are far from arbitrary. It rests on the thesis that those theorists who deny the ascription of intentions to non-linguistic animals are actually working with a very different concept (and are therefore talking about something quite different) to those who affirm such ascriptions. When this fact is combined with a certain lack of self-awareness with regards to the differences in the concepts being deployed, the upshot is that theorists on both sides are often simply talking past each other. The preceding claim is not one I can fully defend here; so a dogmatic statement of my position will have to suffice. However, the central criticism I will be advancing against Setiya in this post does not depend on the undefended assumption.
The conception of intentional action employed in this blog post—one that defines intentional action in terms of goal-directed action—differs from that of Setiya, who sees the two terms as picking out fundamentally different domains of agential activity. According to Setiya, an agent φs intentionally only if that agent has the higher-order desire-like belief that she is φing for a reason. Setiya’s requirement seems to build on Anscombe’s insight that “intentional actions are ones to which a certain sense of the question ‘why?’ has application.” In specifying precisely what that sense is, Anscombe notes that “this question is refused application by the answer: ‘I was not aware I was doing that’.” Setiya takes this to suggest a conception of intentional action according to which an agent must know that she is performing a certain action in order to count as performing that action intentionally. (I will refer to this as the knowledge requirement for intentional action.) However, after considering Davidson’s example of the teacher who intends to make 10 copies, but is unsure if he is pressing hard enough to successfully do so, Setiya concludes that the knowledge requirement is too strong. The assumption seems to be that since there are times we do not know that we are successfully performing an action we are intentionally performing, such knowledge cannot be a necessary condition for intentional action. He therefore falls back to a belief requirement, according to which one acts intentionally only if one believes one is performing said action.
Setiya’s makes a second modification to Anscombe’s knowledge requirement. He claims that one not only believes that one is performing a certain action, but that one also believes that one is performing it for some specific consideration that one takes as one’s reason (insofar as one is performing it for a reason at all). This leads him to distinguish between two aspects of what it means to take the consideration that P as one’s reason to φ. The “practical” aspect involves a desire-like attitude towards the proposition: the consideration that P is my reason to φ. The attitude in question is “desire-like” in that it motivates one to φ. The “epistemic” aspect of taking the consideration that P as one’s reason is the non-observation based belief that the consideration that P is my reason to φ. The practical and epistemic aspects combine to form what Setiya refers to as a “desire-like belief”:
Taking something as my reason is a kind of “desire-like belief”. It is a belief-like representation of P as my reason to act, and at the same time a decision to act on that reason, something by which I am led to do so.In order to avoid the charge of circularity, Setiya later modifies the content of the desire-like belief from the proposition: the consideration that P is my reason to φ, to the proposition: my belief that P is my reason to φ. In short, the desire-like belief is a second-order belief; it takes as its object the belief that P is one’s reason to φ.
In an astonishing display of pluck, Setiya describes his approach as a “simple psychological theory” (Italics mine), according to which “taking something as one’s reason is a matter of taking one’s belief in that reason to play a causal-motivational role in explaining one’s action”. Whatever the merits of such an account of intentional action, it is clear that it precludes the possibility that non-linguistic animals may act intentionally. The requirement that one believe that one’s belief that P is playing a “causal-motivational role in explaining one’s action” is not one that non-linguistic animals (and even a few philosophers) can meet. Moreover, Setiya’s account precludes the possibility that intentional action is prototypically goal-directed action since a wide range of goal-directed actions (e.g., those performed by non-linguistic animals and pre-linguistic human infants) involve no such second-order beliefs. This clearly puts Setiya at odds with the account of intentional action we find in Anscombe, and (therefore) out of step with what I have been calling the philosophically orthodox conception. I believe this represents a problem for Setiya’s account because when he criticises Anscombe and advocates of the belief-desire model for their accounts of intentional action, it is not clear that he is talking about the same thing as those he criticises.
More importantly, the fact that Setiya’s account of intentional action (1) denies the prototypical connection between intentional action and goal directed action, and (2) precludes the ascription of intentions to non-linguistic animals, suggests that his account is revisionary with respect to our quotidian conception. This presents Setiya with the following dilemma. On the one hand, if his account of intentional action is supposed to coincide with our ordinary usage of the term, then his theory implies that the vast majority of competent English speakers are simply mistaken when they ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals. This may of course be the case, but we would need very compelling reasons for thinking that this is so along with an error theory of some kind. Setiya provides neither. On the other hand, if his account is not supposed to coincide with our ordinary usage of the term, then the relevance of his account is called into question. Why should we be concerned with this new concept Setiya is attempting to introduce? Moreover, why does he risk confusing the reader by using the expression ‘intentional explanation’ to refer to this novel conception, without the least indication that he is using it in an unconventional way?
14 comments:
Avery,
I just read the Setiya book, so this is interesting. But I'm not quite sure whether he is indeed committed to claiming that animals can't intentionally act. Couldn't he say that animals have such second-order attitudes implicitly? Perhaps the fact that animals cannot consciously hold such attitudes in mind is no barrier to their having such attitudes. It seems as though some views about belief/desire attribution will allow this (Davidson springs to mind).
Alex,
Thanks for stopping by.
My contention is not that Setiya would explicitly deny (in a self-aware manner) that animals are incapable of intentional action. My claim is only that such denial follows from his account (whether wittingly or unwittingly). On this score, my quotation from page 43 of Setiya’s book seems unequivocal: “...taking something as one’s reason is a matter of taking one’s belief in that reason to play a causal-motivational role in explaining one’s action.” If I understand this passage correctly, then one can act for a reason only if one believes of some self-ascribed belief B: ‘B plays a causal-motivational role in explaining my action’. However, the hyper-intellectualised nature of such a second-order belief (which, inter alia, requires the possession of the concept of a ‘causal-motivation role’) seems to preclude its possession by any non-linguistic animal.
As for the suggestion that an animal may have the required second-order belief implicitly, it is not clear how one can go about making sense of this claim in non-question-begging terms. For example, what evidence is there that a cat is capable (implicitly or otherwise) of having a second-order belief about another belief’s causal-motivational role? The problem is not one of conscious vs unconscious belief, but rather about beliefs that require the possession of concepts and cognitive abilities that we have no (non-question-begging) reason to attribute to non-linguistic animals.
Finally, I should point out that Davidson explicitly denies that animals have beliefs. (See his book: “Problems of Rationality”). So it is doubtful that the claim that animals may have an implicit second-order belief (of the kind Setiya envisions) is one that may be reconciled with the Davidson's account. Moreover, I would list Davidson among those philosophers who fail to preserve the legitimacy of our ordinary practice of ascribing intentions to animals (albeit for different reasons than Setiya). Consequently, Davidson is (by my lights) vulnerable to a similar criticism.
Avery,
This is a very interesting post. Thank you.
It's been a while since I read through Setiya's book, but I wonder if your criticism might be a bit quick. You note with respect to Anscombe that she takes goal-directed behavior as a paradigm case, since we do not always act intentionally with a goal in view. But then why can't Setiya make a similar move?
Let us distinguish between (a) full-blooded intentional action and (b) less-than-full-blooded intentional action. And let the former be the paradigm case.
On Anscombe's account, (a) requires a goal in view. But we can describe So-and-So's action as intentional even if it only satisfies (b), where (b) has a more relaxed requirement than (a), like that the agent is capable of acting with a goal in view but did not on this occasion (or something like this).
Similarly for Setiya's account, we can describe So-and-So's action as intentional in the full-blooded sense only if she takes her belief that p to play a causal-motivational role in explaining her action. But we can describe So-and-So's action as intentional in the less-than-full-blooded sense even if it does not satisfy this requirement. But then we have to give an account of the relaxed requirement for (b)-type intentional actions. Now, it seems that given the right sort of relaxation, Setiya's view may be able to account for the cat acting intentionally. Of course, he will not be able to make something like the capacity claim I mentioned above with respect to Anscombe's view, but it seems at least in principle open to him to give a relaxed requirement for less-than-full-blooded intentional action which non-human animals, like cats, can satisfy.
A move like this may allow him to escape your dilemma. And I suspect that our quotidian use of the concept of intentional action actually has some structure like this, where we distinguish between full-blooded and less-than-full-blooded intentional action, in our own case and in the case of non-human animals.
Hey Ben,
I think the proposal you make (on behalf of Setiya) is very interesting. Specifically, your distinction between “full-blooded” and “less-than-full-blooded” intentional action is quite helpful. Unfortunately, while it may help us to make sense of Anscombe’s position on the matter (with whom I’m largely in agreement), I think it does little to reduce the force of my criticism of Setiya.
Now my claim is that on our quotidian conception, goal-directed action is the paradigm case of intentional action (though, following Anscombe, I leave open the possibility of exceptional cases). Now, your suggestion seems to be that a similar move is available to Setiya. He may say that full-blooded cases of intentional action implicate a desire-like second-order belief, while leaving room for less-than-full-blooded cases that involve no such higher-order belief. At best, this set-up only preserves the idea that some intentional action is goal-directed. But what it fails to preserve is the quotidian idea that goal-directed action is the paradigm case of intentional action.
Consider the following example: Suppose it is part of our ordinary conception that mammals are animals with mammary glands. Now, I may take this to be the defining feature of mammals, while recognising that male mammals lack mammary glands. Of course I will need to give some rationale for doing so, like observing that the application of the label to male members of a particular species is parasitic upon the possession of mammary glands on the part of their female conspecifics. We may say that the male of the species is a mammal in a derivative sense (which is analogous to the point Anscombe makes about non-goal-directed actions being derivatively intentional). I could even resort to your suggested terminology and say that the male members of a species are mammals in a less-than-full-blooded sense.
Now, suppose that someone came along and said that mammals are paradigmatically animals that locomote on four legs. Admittedly, there is some putative appeal to this idea. Moreover, one may allow that certain animals which do not locomote on four legs (like bats, whales and humans) are mammals in a derivative or less-than-full-blooded sense. But this does not mean that the second proposed conception of a mammal coincides with the ordinary one. The problem with the second proposal is that it labels some animals that have mammary glands as mammals in a less-than-full-blooded sense, and therefore obscures the reason we called them mammals to begin with. (In this regard, it is important to note that the word ‘intention’ is ordinarily defined as one’s goal, purpose or end.) In brief, the second account fails to preserve the idea that mammals are paradigmatically animals with mammary glands (a fact suggested by the very word ‘mammal’).
Likewise, I maintain that Setiya’s account get’s things backwards. It labels as less-than-full-blooded intentional action the very behaviours that our ordinary conception would regard as full-blooded. He makes the paradigm case derivative. In this respect, Setiya’s account is the inverse of Anscombe’s, who regards goal-directed action as full-blooded (in agreement with our ordinary linguistic practice) and non-goal-directed action as only derivatively intentional.
Avery,
Thanks for the response.
"As for the suggestion that an animal may have the required second-order belief implicitly, it is not clear how one can go about making sense of this claim in non-question-begging terms."
I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by "question-begging" here. Setiya might say that the evidence that cats have implicit second-order beliefs is simply that they act, and such second-order beliefs are necessary for action. That seems like a perfectly sensible thing to say. You seem to think that there's something question-begging about this, but he's surely allowed to appeal to his own account in order to defend it from criticism?
So perhaps you could expand. If you're objecting to his account, the argumentative burden of proof is on your shoulders. If that's true, it seems that you can't charge responses to your objection as begging the question. I could put it this way: begging the question is normally something we say about arguments in favour of some proposal, not something we say about responses to objections, which are themselves not arguments for anything.
(On Davidson: I just meant to say that a Davidsonian picture was one that at least made implicit beliefs possible. No doubt there's room for argument as to which particular variants of that view would actually work out for Setiya.)
Alex,
Thanks for the follow up. You wrote:
Setiya might say that the evidence that cats have implicit second-order beliefs is simply that they act, and such second-order beliefs are necessary for action.
Unfortunately, the fact that cats ‘act’ is not enough to establish that they have the required second-order beliefs (implicitly or otherwise). In the context of the present discussion, we are only concerned with a certain subset of actions—namely, the intentional variety. Consequently, to establish that cats have the higher-order beliefs in question, one would need to show that they ‘act intentionally’ (in the sense that Setiya envisions). And therein lays the problem.
Recall, Setiya maintains that there are some goal-directed actions that fail to count as intentional. This suggests that there are some goal-directed actions that are not accompanied by the required second-order belief (for if all goal-directed actions were accompanied by the required second-order belief, they would ipso facto count as intentional actions). Now we do observe cats engaged in goal-directed action. However, since Setiya denies that all goal-directed action is intentional, this fact alone is not enough to establish that cats act intentionally (by Setiya’s lights) – i.e., that they have the required second-order belief.
In sum, the only way to show that cats have the required second order belief is to show that their goal-directed actions are intentional (based on Setiya’s criterion). But the only way to show that their goal-directed actions are intentional (based on Setiya’s critierion) is to show that they have the required second-order belief. Hence, the circularity.
{See below for the rest of my reply}
Now, let us turn to the question of burden of proof, and who has it. Three points are worth noting on this score:
First, we do observe cats engaged in goal-directed behaviour (e.g., stalking a bird), and we ascribe intentions to them when they do (e.g., it intends to catch it). This supports my thesis that intentional action is paradigmatically goal-directed action. However, as far as I’m aware, no one has ever observed a cat having the second-order belief that some belief is playing a causal-motivational role in its actions. Moreover, since cats lack language, they could not tell us if they did. Even so, we have had no problems describing their actions in intentional terms. This suggests that Setiya’s alleged higher-order beliefs have little (or nothing) to do with our ordinary intention-ascriptions.
Second, most competent English speakers are ignorant of Setiya’s requirement for intentional action. However, this has not prevented them from ascribing intentions to animals and other people in a perfectly competent manner. This also suggests that Setiya’s alleged higher-order beliefs have little (or nothing) to do with our ordinary intention-ascriptions.
Third, we have good conceptual, philosophical and even scientific grounds for thinking that cats simply lack the cognitive capacity to entertain the thought that a certain belief is playing a causal-motivational role in its actions. For example, the content of Setiya’s proposed second order belief (one involving the causal role of mental states in relation to other mental states and bodily movements) seems to require a theory of mind far beyond that of a cat. Moreover, the ability to self-ascribe beliefs in the way Setiya envisions seems to require a much more robust sense of self than that had by cats (which cannot even pass a mirror test). While I do not take these considerations to be conclusive, they do speak strongly against the thesis that cats have the required second-order belief.
When the claim that our ordinary intention ascriptions have little (or nothing) to do with higher-order beliefs of the kind Setiya envisions is combined with a lack of independent evidence (scientific or otherwise) that cats have such higher order beliefs, I believe this is sufficient to put the burden of proof squarely on the shoulders of those who insist that our ordinary practice of ascribing intentions to animals presuppose that they have higher-order beliefs.
Avery,
I don't think I've made my point sufficiently clear, since some of your response seems to miss the mark.
First, by "act", I meant "intentionally act": that was sloppy of me, so I'm sorry. So my claim was that the evidence Setiya could point to in favour of cats having the second-order beliefs in question is that we can observe them to intentionally act. (As when, for example, we see them stalking birds.) So when you write:
"no one has ever observed a cat having the second-order belief that some belief is playing a causal-motivational role in its actions"
The appropriate response for Setiya might be that we observe them having such beliefs every single time we see them intentionally act - which by your lights, is pretty often.
(You might wonder how it is that *we know* that animals intentionally act. I don't have an answer to this, but it seems too epistemic to matter to Setiya's metaphysical thesis.)
"most competent English speakers are ignorant of Setiya’s requirement for intentional action. However, this has not prevented them from ascribing intentions to animals and other people in a perfectly competent manner."
Isn't this just the paradox of analysis as applied to Setiya? I don't see any special problem for him here.
"we have good conceptual, philosophical and even scientific grounds for thinking that cats simply lack the cognitive capacity to entertain the thought that a certain belief is playing a causal-motivational role in its actions."
Indeed - as I said, precisely what I'm suggesting is that such beliefs are implicit in their actions, and that it is irrelevant to this whether or not they are able to explicitly entertain such thoughts.
(I should repeat here that I don't buy Setiya's account. But I do think that almost any plausible account of action is going to have to say something similar to what I'm suggesting.)
Avery,
Thanks for the reply. I just have a couple of remarks in response.
First, the distinction I suggest is borrowed from Velleman's distinction between full-blooded and less-than-full-blooded agency. I'm not entirely certain the distinction is happy in the context of intentional action, but I suspect that it (or something like it) is applicable in (most? all?) cases where the relevant concept is analyzed by reference to a paradigm (and then admits of exceptions, like in Anscombe's account as you present it). One question we might want to ask is whether and in what way (two questions, I suppose) Setiya's account of intentional action is meant to fit the model ascribed to Anscombe (i.e., a paradigm with exceptions). I want to suggest that whether he intends it to or not, it seems possible that it might (be made to) fit this mold. And in that case he can ascribe intentional actions to animals, albeit in the less-than-full-blooded sense.
My second remark pertains to how this might help Setiya defuse your dilemma. I think that, as stated, it allows him to handle the first horn.
'[I]f his account of intentional action is supposed to coincide with our ordinary usage of the term, then his theory implies that the vast majority of competent English speakers are simply mistaken when they ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals.'
Now, if I am right, then the distinction allows him to do the two things you want him to: (1) talk about our quotidian concept of intentional action and (2) ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals.
As you point out in your response, this still does not amount to taking goal-directed action as a paradigm (at least not obviously). So you might deny that he is in fact satisfying (1), above. But, then, I wonder if your apparent criteria for talking about our quotidian concept aren't a bit unfair. If Setiya can ascribe intentions to many of the same creatures as Anscombe can, then why deny that he is talking about the same concept? It seems that you might have two criteria in mind for talking about our quotidian concep: that we be able to ascribe intentions to the same creatures (i.e., ourselves and some non-linguistic animals) and that the account be similar to Anscombe's. I am dubious of the second criterion, because this just seems to pronounce that a certain view (granted, a very influential one) is right. The first at least goes some distance to providing grounds for some such pronouncement. But, then, again, if Setiya's account can ascribe intentions to many of the same creatures, it too has these grounds for claiming to be the right view. And this is why I think that the distinction, if it really can be taken on board by Setiya, helps to rebut your criticisms.
Alex,
Thanks for the clarification. I think I now have a better grasp of your main contention.
First off, you dismiss my criticism that there is a lack of empirical evidence for Setiya’s higher order belief in animals by noting that the belief may be only “implicit”. This suggests that on your understanding of an “implicit” belief, it is not something subject to empirical observation. It is something more along the lines of a theoretical posit; a piece of philosophy that is articulated to meet some set of philosophical desiderata. Have I got this right?
If so, then I don’t see how you could be entitled to the claim that we can observe a cat act intentionally (which is the crucial premise in your argument on behalf of Setiya). Now, it may be agreed on all sides that when we observe a cat stalking a bird, we are literally observing the cat engaged in goal-directed behaviour. Since, by my lights, engaging in goal-directed behaviour is sufficient for acting intentionally, it follows that when we observe a cat engaged in goal-directed behaviour, we literally observe the cat act intentionally. The upshot is that observing a cat acting intentionally is perfectly unproblematic on my account.
It is precisely on this point that Setiya and I disagree. By Setiya’s lights, observing a cat engaged in goal-directed activity is not sufficient for observing the cat act intentionally. This follows from the fact that there are times when the cat is engaged in goal-directed activity but is not acting intentionally (a possibility Setiya clearly allows). On such an occasion, there is something missing from the goal-directed action, something necessary for the goal-directed action to count as intentional action. What is missing, according to Setiya, is a higher-order belief of a certain kind.
Now, if your claim that “implicit” beliefs are unobservable is correct (at least with respect to non-linguistic animals), then this higher-order belief is not something we can observe. This means we cannot tell that a cat’s goal-directed action is intentional by observing that it is accompanied by the relevant higher-order belief. Moreover, by Setiya’s lights, we cannot tell that the cat’s actions are intentional by observing that it is goal-directed since being goal-directed is not sufficient for the cat’s actions being intentional. This leaves us with no means of telling whether or not a cat’s actions are intentional. A fortiori, it means that we cannot see that a cat is acting intentionally.
Alternatively, the present criticism may be expressed in terms of a dilemma: the relevant higher-order belief must be either observable or unobservable. One cannot have it both ways. If it is observable, then it should be detectable by scientist, in which case the objection I raised in my previous comment stands. If it is unobservable, then there is no way for us to know if a particular goal-directed action is accompanied by the relevant higher-order belief. This follows given the fact that some goal-directed actions are not accompanied by the relevant second-order belief. Since a cat’s goal-directed behaviour is only intentional when it is accompanied by a higher-order belief (which we are now assuming is unobservable), there is no way to observe that the cat is acting intentionally. At best, we can only observe that the cat is engaged in goal-directed action and then guess that the action is accompanied by the relevant higher order belief. Consequently, it appears that a crucial premise in your argument on behalf of Setiya is simply unavailable.
Ben,
Thanks for these very insightful comments and questions. Let me just make a few clarifications. You write:
“It seems that you might have two criteria in mind for talking about our quotidian concept: that we be able to ascribe intentions to the same creatures (i.e., ourselves and some non-linguistic animals) and that the account be similar to Anscombe's.”
You’re half right. Anscombe is not my criterion for the quotidian concept. Our ordinary linguistic practice is my criterion for the quotidian concept. As it happens, I do think Anscombe employs our quotidian concept. But it is important to get clear that I don’t think it is our quotidian concept simply because Anscombe employs it. (I believe the order of explanation goes in the opposite direction; Anscombe uses it because it is our quotidian concept).
This is why I think it remains problematic that Setiya cannot preserve the intuition that goal-directed action is the paradigm case of intentional action. It is not because he disagrees with Anscombe. (I actually bring up Anscombe to make a different point.) It is that in so doing, he is eo ipso employing a different concept (or at least so I claim). Here is where my “mammal” analogy is helpful. Even though the concept (M1): “animals that prototypically locomote on four legs”, may be made to pick out exactly the same set of animals as the concept (M2): “animals that prototypically have mammary glands” (once one has made allowances for the relevant exceptional cases), this does not mean that (M1) and (M2) are the same concept. (M1) and (M2) may have the same extension, but they do not have the same intension.
This also highlights why I believe Setiya’s proposed conception is problematic. I claim that it obscures why we call intentional actions ‘intentional’, just as (M1) obscures why we call mammals ‘mammals’. Just as being a mammal is conceptually tied to having mammary glands, being an intention is conceptually tied to having a goal, aim or purpose; and this is a fact that Setiya’s conception simply doesn’t register. In so doing, I maintain that he offends against the ordinary notion of an ‘intention’.
Avery,
Thank you for your response, especially the clarifications about in what way you were appealing to Anscombe's account and the nature of your conceptual objection to Setiya's account.
Let me press you a bit here on your reading of Setiya. I glanced back through Setiya's book, and I noticed that he talks about explaining rational action in terms of ends.
'Being moved to act by an intention of this kind is, I think, the fundamental form of practical teleology: acting for the sake of an end.' (51)
And he cites Anscombe in support of the claim that acting in order to X is acting with the intention of X-ing. This seems in the spirit of your requirement that intentional action be goal-directed, and it suggests that Setiya takes his view to be congenial to this point (both in general and as found in Anscombe).
Now, in your original post, you wanted to deny that Setiya's view (with its second-order belief) can ascribe intentions to non-linguistic animals. If we agree that he can appeal (at least in principle) to some relaxed requirement such that non-linguistic animals have less-than-full-blooded intentions, then this is no longer a reason to think that he is analyzing a concept different from our quotidian one (and we, I think, can notice that both your and Anscombe's views may fit this same two-tiered structure in attributing intentions to non-linguistic animals and us in exceptional cases).
Now I want to put pressure on the claim that his account is 'out of step with' the philosophically orthodox notion of intentional action as goal-directed action. It seems to me that some of what he says in the book endorses this very view. And if we couple the view as given in the book with the two-tiered view I have been suggesting, then he may have a view that allows for goal-directedness as such (i.e., as found in human infants and non-linguistic animals) as a requirement for intention. But his paradigm case of intentional action will have it that full-blooded intentions involve a second-order belief (and so go beyond goal-directedness as such). However, even the paradigm case, I want to suggest, does not deny the centrality of goal-directedness.
Ben,
I think this exchange is very helpful in terms of getting at the heart of what I take to be problematic about Setiya's account.
First, to be clear, my suggestion is not that Setiya deliberately sets out to deny the paradigmatic connection between intention and goal-directed action. On the contrary, part of what makes my criticism interesting is that it attempts to highlight an unexpected consequence of Setiya’s view. (Similarly, my claim that Setiya is really inventing a new concept is tongue-in-cheek since I don’t really believe he sets out to do so.) As such, the fact that Setiya explicitly endorses (pays lip service to?) the paradigmatic connection between ends and intentions is no refutation of my claims. The question is whether his account has the consequence that I claim it does – namely, obscuring what makes intentional actions the kind of actions that they are.
Significantly, Setiya impugns the traditional belief-desire model of intentional action because it fails to explain Belief:
Belief: When someone is acting intentionally, there must be something he is doing intentionally, not merely trying to do, in the belief that he is doing it.
However, I do not believe that the fact that the belief-desire model (which happens to coincide with the form of intentional explanations in our folk psychology) fails to explain Belief constitutes a legitimate objection. Moreover, by making Belief the standard for assessing whether or not a theory of intention is satisfactory, I believe Setiya does violence to our quotidian conception.
Let us grant, for argument’s sake, that Setiya’s framework can be made to accommodate goal-directed action in general (including when such actions are performed by animals). Even so, it will be in spite of rather than because of Belief. This is significant because Setiya is making something foreign to our quotidian conception the standard for evaluating theories of intentional action. You see, my problem with Setiya’s view is that it shines the spotlight on the wrong place. He makes reflective action a necessary condition for intentional action. One upshot of this failure is that belief-desire explanations (which have always been the orthodox form of folk-psychological action explanation) can no longer be regarded as intentional explanations.
Once again, the mammal analogy is helpful: Suppose someone defined a mammal as (M3): “an animal with mammary glands that locomotes on four legs.” (M3) clearly accommodates our ordinary intuition that mammals have mammary glands. However, it still fails to correspond with our ordinary concept of a mammal. The problem is that it adds something foreign to the concept (i.e., locomoting on four legs). Similarly, defining intentional actions as “goal directed action that satisfies Belief” still fails to coincide with our ordinary concept of an intentional action.
Finally, I should add that everything I have said thus far is consistent with the possibility that Setiya has identified a legitimate category of actions – let us say “reflective actions”. Moreover, reflective actions may even be a sub-set of intentional actions. But to say that what Setiya has in mind just is intentional action (in the quotidian sense) is to mischaracterise the quotidian concept.
Avery,
(Sorry for the late reply, I've been a little busy.)
You have me correctly in you first paragraph: by implicit belief, I mean one that we need to posit for theoretical reasons, rather than one we can independently observe. Your most recent comments on this seem to make good sense, I'll need to think about it some more. Thanks for the exchange.
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