From causation to conscious control

ABSTRACT

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of conscious control. As a result, experiments suggesting that we lack conscious control over our actions cannot be properly evaluated. Joshua [Shepherd, J. 2015. “Conscious Control Over Action.” Mind & Language 30 (3): 320–344. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12082; Shepherd, J. 2021. The Shape of Agency: Control, Action, Skill, Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press] aims to fill this gap. His proposal is grounded in the standard causalist account of action, according to which, simply put, bodily movements are controlled by the agent if and only if they are caused, in the right way, by the relevant psychological states. In this paper, I argue that the proposal does not succeed in distinguishing between mere causation and actual control; it does not solve the problem of deviant causation. On the basis of my criticism, Anscombean action theory promises to offer a valuable perspective. It suggests that an important function of consciousness is to integrate an action into a rational whole. If this is on the right track, it supports Shepherd’s overall claim that the importance of consciousness for action control is often underestimated, because this contribution of consciousness may often go unnoticed in experimental settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Control; intentional action; deviant causation; consciousness; causal theory of action; G. E. M. Anscombe

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the audience at the workshop Automaticity and Bias in Thought and Action in Dortmund, Olivier Burtin and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful and challenging questions and comments. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton Religion Trust.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In his (2015) Shepherd uses the term ‘intention’. In this paper I will stick to the notion ‘plan-state’, which he uses in his (2021).

2 Of course, throwing dice, depending on how capacity is exactly defined, may involve a certain capacity.

3 I am not alone in drawing this conclusion. Mele and Moser (1994, 62), who came up with the dice example, also think Mike, even if he succeeds, has no control over his action.

4 Research does show that as expertise grows, the variety is reduced in task-relevant dimensions of movement (see Fridland 2017, 1552–1553). One does not need to be an expert to act intentionally, however. If a person hits bullseye relatively reliably and repeatedly, we have no reason to think that she did not control hitting bullseye on a particular occasion.

5 It goes beyond the scope of this paper to go into how general categories should exactly be understood and how they are related to particulars. For my argumentation, it is sufficient to recognize that for a specific intentional action to count as that action, it has to live up to a certain form.

6 This also explains why comprehensiveness is a dimension of expertise (or capacity or skill). If an agent’s general practical knowledge of a certain type of intentional action, for example to hit a homerun, is more extensive, e.g. she knows how to consider the circumstances and knows which details matter, she will be able to hit a homerun under different circumstances, and not only when the conditions are ideal (see also O’Connell 2020, 684–685). In other words, one agent may have more control over a type of intentional action, i.e. being able to bring it about successfully under a large variety of circumstances (these agents are skilled / have expertise), but an agent with less control over the action type can still have control over the action in specific (favorable) circumstances. Think of the student who can only give a great presentation if the circumstances are advantageous. Interestingly, this suggests that control over action should not be seen as control regardless of the circumstances, as Shepherd (2014; 2021) seems to suggest, but that control over action depends on the circumstances as well, even for experts: if it wasn’t for a good ball and bat, no one would be able to hit a homerun, and (almost) no one would be able to give a great presentation when the technology is not working well or the audience is discussing the weather.

7 An interesting question of course is whether Bo, the expert baseball player, does intentionally hit a homerun, given that the percentage of batted balls that became homeruns is not very high. The website Baseball America reports a percentage of 3.4% (Cooper 2021). See Small (2012, 166–175 & 187–193) for a more detailed discussion of the relationship between know-how, intentional action, and luck. Paul (2009) has argued that Anscombean action theory suffers from its own, formal, kind of causal deviance: non-observational knowledge, which is central to Anscombe account, does not allow us to distinguish between the action’s intended aim on the one hand and foreseen side effects on the other. Even though I do not have the space in this paper to address this worry in full, I agree with Van Miltenburg’s (2011) analysis: we need to recognize that Anscombe’s action theory involves a specific kind of non-observational knowledge, practical knowledge, on the basis of which we can distinguish between the intended aim and foreseen side effects. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for addressing this worry.

8 I do want to point out, however, that on such an account of intentional action, we will not have the problem of deviant causation. The unnerved climber let go of the rope by accident, because even though he has general practical knowledge of how to let of a rope (I assume), he had no practical knowledge of loosening his hold while loosening it, and because of that his letting go was not caused by this knowledge. He did not let go of the rope in order to get rid of the extra weight. Of course, he will probably come to know that he did, but that is something he has to discover (Kalis and Ometto 2019). The same goes for lucky batter Frankie. Frankie says to himself to ‘just believe’ and intends to ‘swing hard, and hit a home run!’ (Shepherd 2014, 398; 2021, 14). On the basis of Anscombe’s theory we can explain why Frankie’s homerun is nothing more than an accident, and why it matters that Frankie only has these thoughts: standing there with his bat, he does not really know what he is doing; he does not know what the means-end structure of hitting a homerun is, which steps he has to take to make sure that he hits the ball in the right way. Since he does not have such general practical knowledge of hitting homeruns, he cannot have specific practical knowledge either. That is why, even if he does manage to hit one, it is nothing more than a lucky accident.

9 Similarly, Grünbaum (2012) has analyzed Milner and Goodale’s (1995) experiments in detail and argued that there is no reason to think that the subjects are not acting intentionally and consciously under a different description.

10 This, in my view, is also the right interpretation of Shepherd’s arm moving example (2015, 331). Even though you may have the impression that conscious states and processes hardly contribute to the movements – there are no conscious interventions – you are still consciously moving your arm.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Templeton Religion Trust under Grant TRT 0119.

Notes on contributors

Lieke Joske Franci Asma

Lieke Asma is a philosopher (PhD.) and psychologist (MSc.). Since April 2018, she is employed at the Munich School of Philosophy, where she was part of a research project on the relationship between implicit motives and human flourishing. In July 2021, she received an individual research grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for the project Implicit bias: What are we missing?.