Empirical Psychology on Free Will

Theoretical and Practical Transitions

Let us refer to all belief-yielding psychological transitions (e.g., the transition from a perceptual experience to a belief) as theoretical transitions, and all intention-yielding psychological transitions (e.g., the transition from a desire to an intention) as practical transitions. A transition qualifies as psychological, on the present view, only if it has representational content. The distinction between theoretical and practical transitions hinges on the recognition of two distinct kinds of representational content. The first is associated with psychological states that represent a certain state of affairs as being the case and are legitimately deemed faulty if the state of affairs in question is not the case. The second is associated with psychological states that do not represent a certain state of affairs as being the case and which are therefore not deemed faulty if the state of affairs in question is not the case.

I maintain that a psychological state is good just in case it is not legitimately deemed faulty, and bad otherwise. The conditions under which a specific psychological state is legitimately deemed good or bad constitutes that state’s correctness conditions. Thus, I hold that goodness and badness (i.e., goodness conditions) are the primary and most basic form of correctness conditions for a psychological state. Moreover, I hold that truth is simply one instance of the good, relative to psychological states that represent a certain state of affairs as being the case (i.e., those that fall under the umbrella of theoretical transitions). A psychological state represents truly just in case it represents a particular state of affairs as being the case and the state of affairs in question really is the case.

Because of the important role played by the notion of truth in our ordinary discourse, we often find it necessary to speak about truth in ways that set it apart from other forms of goodness. Truth is primus inter pares. In this regard, the concept of truth is analogous to the concept of the human; for while human beings are considered a type of animal, the important role played by the notion of the human in our ordinary discourse often requires that we speak about humans in ways that set them apart from all other animals. Hence, just as we may juxtapose humans and animals, although strictly speaking, humans are a type of animal), so too we may juxtapose the true and the good (although, strictly speaking, truth is a type of goodness).

The juxtaposition of humans and animals is legitimated by the fact that humans have a special characteristic (i.e., the ability to respond to reasons as such) that all other animals lack, and this characteristic plays a special role in our ordinary discourse. Similarly, the juxtaposition of truth and goodness is legitimated by the fact that truth has a special characteristic (i.e., its identification with states of affairs that are the case) that all other forms of goodness lack, and this characteristic plays an important role in our ordinary discourse. Hence, we may refer to the correctness conditions of a psychological state that represents a particular state of affairs as being the case as truth conditions, and I will describe all other psychological states as having goodness conditions.

It is often observed that the specification of the content of a perceptual experience or perceptual belief is worded in terms of a that-clause. One may, for instance, see that there is an apple on the table, or believe that there is an apple on the table. By contrast, the specification of the content of a desire or intention typically takes the form of a to-clause. One may desire to eat an apple or intend to eat an apple. However, while such grammatical details are suggestive, they are far from conclusive. For example, Myles Brand observes that the content of an intention may often be specified in terms of a that-clause; a claim he illustrates with the example: “Richard intends that he vote in the next election.”(Italics mine)

I believe that a more philosophically interesting way of unpacking the difference between theoretical and practical transitions is to note that an ideal rational agent that holds a belief (i.e., a psychological state resulting from a theoretical transition) to the effect that S obtains, when confronted with conclusive evidence that S does not obtain, will revise her belief, whereas an ideal rational agent with an intention (i.e., a psychological state resulting from a practical transition) to bring S about, may retain this intention even in the face of conclusive evidence that S does not obtain.

One upshot of the claim that theoretical and practical transitions have different kinds of content is that the content of a theoretical transition could not feature in a practical transition, and vice versa. Dennis Stampe commits himself to such a view when he notes that it is impossible to transition from the propositional content of a belief to the content of an intention. He writes:

Starting from It would be good if p, and perhaps Only my doing A will make it the case that p, by what logic do we pass to I will do A? All that seems to follow is that It would be good to do A—and this neither denotes an action nor the content of an intention; further premises would yield I ought to do A, but to believe that is not to do A. We confront a logical gap. And it cannot, it seems, be bridged by the addition of further beliefs.

Here, Stampe observes that practical and theoretical transitions are distinct types of transitions with their own respective types of content. Any attempt to reduce the content of an intention (or desire) to that of a belief or judgement is therefore moribund. In the discussion that follows I take Stampe’s observation, along with the definition of practical transitions as intention-yielding, seriously. A transition that is belief-yielding, but which happens to have practical content (i.e., happens to be about some action the agent is performing) does not qualify as a practical transition on this view.

On Types of Explanation: Ben’s Reply to Me

The following is Ben's reply to my post, On Types of Explanation: My Reply to Ben.

Thanks for the reply. Let me clarify what I meant to say in my own post about two points germane to the issue between us.

First, I did not mean to suggest that there cannot be different kinds of explanation, where a difference in kind marks, say, a difference in the sorts of considerations that fill in explanatory gaps (e.g., law-governed particles vs. psychological states). Nor did I mean to rule out differences in kinds of explanation where this marks the fact that there are different standards involved (e.g., due to differences in the background understanding of the recipient of the explanation). This last point is relevant to the issue of whether justification is a kind of explanation, which I will return to below. What I did want to stress is that these differences need not mark different concepts of explanation (e.g., folk-psychological vs. scientific). I did not mean to say, on the one hand, that there is only one type of explanation, and then, on the other, speak of different kinds of explanation. What I wanted to say is that there is one concept and different ways of falling under it.

I think this is all compatible with saying that our scientific practices and folk-psychological practices of explaining phenomena in the world appeal to different ‘storehouses’ of explanans. What I want to insist on is that the activity of explaining is in all cases formally similar (the explanation is offered by one who aims to thereby plug a gap in someone’s understanding). The appeal to different sorts of information does not make different kinds of explanations different in this regard. And neither does a difference in what it takes to plug the gap in understanding. One reason why I think this picture is helpful is that it allows us to explain differences in types of agent (e.g., non-rational vs. rational; reasons-responsive vs. responsive to reasons as such) according to differences in parameters on adequate explanation.

The second point I would like to clarify has to do with justification. By a 'justified agent' you take me to refer to the agent the explanation is about--as you put it, the explanandum. But--and this is crucial here--in some cases this agent may also be the recipient of the explanation. So we may speak of a 'justified agent' in the following two senses, call them third personal and first personal.

From the third personal point of view, we speak of an agent as justified when we can articulate an explanation of her behavior that appeals to her take on the situation and that plugs a gap in our normatively-loaded background understanding—i.e., a background understanding that includes things like norms governing formations of beliefs and intentions. When we speak of a 'justified agent' from the third personal point of view, this does not entail (i) that the agent can recognize reasons as such nor (ii) that the agent has a justifying reason for her behavior. Presumably, the agent has at least a motivating reason (a consideration that that motivates her behavior) and our explanation is in terms of this (e.g., what plugs the gap is the agent’s supposed representation of an approaching poacher). Moreover, as we are the sorts of agents who can receive explanations that fill gaps in a normatively-loaded background understanding--i.e., justifications--the agent's motivating reason may justify her behavior to us. But the agent herself need not have a justifying reason because she need not be the sort of agent who can have a normatively-loaded background understanding.

In the first personal case, a 'justified agent' is both the object and recipient of the explanation of her behavior. So the distinction between the one performing the behavior and the one normatively situating the explanation of this performance collapses. An explanation of one's own behavior that satisfies a gap in a normatively-loaded understanding of the situation entails that the agent (i) can recognize reasons as such and (ii) has a justifying reason for the behavior.

So in the first personal case the object and recipient both are relevant to the standards in terms of which a proper justifying explanation is given. In the third personal case this is not so. And this difference between the two cases explains why the capacity for reflection is necessary for having justifying reasons. The 'justified agent' who first personally explains her behavior to herself by plugging a gap in her normatively-loaded background understanding--i.e., articulates a justifying reason for her behavior--manifests her capacity for reflection. We can say that she has a justifying reason. The 'justified agent' whose behavior is third personally explained does not necessarily manifest a capacity for reflection. And this is why this second agent might not have a justifying reason. Nevertheless, we can speak of the agent as justified because we can articulate a consideration that plugs a gap in our normatively-loaded background understanding when we look at things from the agent’s point of view. And we can assume that agents other than ourselves have justifying reasons because we can speak of them as justified in this third personal way and assume that they, like us, can receive justifying explanations. So my view does not commit me to a suspect solipsism.

Again, as we have discussed in earlier posts, this does not mean that we illicitly import desires or beliefs about the situation when considering the situation from the agent’s point of view. Rather, we take up what we assume to be the agent’s own psychological representations of the situation (though we can be wrong about what psychological states we suppose the agent to have). But given that we are the sorts of creatures who understand the world in terms of norms, we can situate the supposed representations of the agent in a normative context. Perhaps we can also abstract away from the normatively-loaded understanding through which we usually view the world. We might then articulate a mere explanatory reason, or mere motivating reason. I think this is plausible. But the point I want to insist on is that there seems to me to be a clear way in which we can articulate justifying reasons for other agents and not thereby commit ourselves to the claim that those agents have justifying reasons at all. The reason we can do these two things is that we can take up their perspective in the context of our own normatively-loaded understanding. Since the adopted perspective is theirs (including their supposed representation of the situation) it is apt to talk of the reasons being their reasons. But since the normative background is ours, it is at the same time apt to talk of them not having these reasons.

I hope this clarifies some of what I meant. Thinking about your remarks has helped me to get clearer on things in my own mind.

On Types of Explanation: My Reply to Ben

The following is my reply to Ben's post, On Justification and Explanation: Ben's Reply to Me:

In your post, you express some reservations about my distinction between two types of explanation. I suspect that there is no canonical answer to the question: is there a single type of explanation? Usually, whether or not we decide to distinguish between two or more subclasses that fall under a general heading will depend on our goals and the level of specificity necessary for achieving them. You prefer to keep things general; restricting yourself to a single conception of explanation; one that applies unequivocally to all replies to why-questions.

However, I believe the question presently at hand demands a greater level of specificity than that offered by your broad account of explanation. Presumably, even you would concede that there are important differences between the two examples of explanation you mention; namely, an explanation of why water boils and an explanation of why a monkey climbs a tree. The explanation of why water boils only appeals to considerations that display the regularity characteristic of the type of laws described by the physical sciences. However, the explanation of why a monkey climbs a tree includes considerations that do not display the same kind of regularity – namely, psychological processes or events. Our folk psychology may be seen (inter alia) as a storehouse of criteria for the attribution of psychological states; it encodes norms governing psychological processes and events. No such storehouse is necessary for the explanation of water boiling; the special function served by our folk psychology has no bearing on such explanations. This, no doubt, constitutes an important difference between the two explanations; one that I believe is salient to the question of agency and our reason-giving practises.

Now, it seems to me that when you say that justification is a “special sort of explanation”, you thereby concede that there is more than one type of explanation. Consequently, there seems to be some tension between your claim that there is only one type of explanation and your claim that justification is a special kind of explanation. You take as your point of departure the claim that explanation is a matter of filling in gaps in the understanding. But this raises the question: gaps in whose understanding? Initially, your answer is gaps in the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is being given (as opposed to the person the explanation is about - i.e., the explanandum). This suggests one possible diagnosis of why it was tempting for you to conclude that the explanations of a monkey’s behaviour and the behaviour of water molecules are, in all salient respects, the same. After all, in both cases, there is a gap being filled in the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is given. Consequently, if the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is being given is the only salient factor vis-a-vis the kind of explanation given, then it would follow (from the fact that the person to whom an explanation is given is always an agent of a single broad type – namely, a rational agent) that there is only one type of explanation.

However, later in your post you seem to reject (albeit implicitly) the assumption that the person to whom an explanation is given is the only relevant factor vis-a-vis the type of explanation given. For example, you claim that in order to be justified, an agent must have the capacity to recognise reasons as such. Moreover, you take justification to be a type of explanation. But notice, if explanation is simply about filling in gaps in the understanding of the person to whom the explanation is being given, then there would be no need for a justified agent (i.e., the person that a particular explanation is about) to recognise reasons as such. Thus, your claim that justification requires that the justified agent (i.e., the explanandum) be able to recognise reasons as such entails that the person to whom a particular explanation is given is not the only salient factor vis-a-vis the type of explanation given. The upshot is that it does not follow from the fact that the explanation of a monkey’s behaviour and the explanation of the behaviour of boiling water both fill in gaps in someone’s understanding (namely, the person to whom the explanation is given), that the respective explanations are of the same kind.

Once we dispense with the offending assumption – namely, the assumption that the person to whom an explanation is given is the only determinant of the nature of an explanation – we are now in a position to recognise that the object of an explanation may also determine the nature of the explanation given. This brings us back to the point with which I began this post; namely, that since the object of explanation in the boiling water example lacks psychological states and the object of explanation in the monkey example possesses psychological states, the types of explanations at play in the two cases are different. I unpack this claim by noting that the first kind of explanation only appeals to considerations that display the regularity indicative of the laws described by the physical sciences, while the second kind of explanation - i.e., folk psychological explanations - appeals to considerations that fail to display the same kind of regularity - namely, psychological processes and events.