Abstract
Several authors have argued that the things one does in the course of skilled and habitual activity present a difficult case for the ‘standard story’ of action. They are things intentionally done, but they do not seem to be suitably related to mental states. I suggest that once manifestations of habit are properly distinguished from exercises of skills and other kinds of spontaneous acts, we can see that habit raises a distinctive sort of problem. I examine certain responses that have been given, as well as responses that could be given on behalf of the standard story to the problems presented by habitual activity. These responses rely on the idea of a kind of intention that does not ensue from conscious thought or deliberation. I raise three different objections to this line of response. The conclusion is that habit explains aspects of human behavior that cannot be accounted by ascribing intentions of any kind.
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Notes
The idea that intentions can be acquired otherwise than on the basis of deliberation can be found, in some form or other, in Searle (1983: 84-85), Mele (1992: 177, 184, 137-140); Mele and Mozer (1994: 227); the idea is also implied in Enc (2003: 214), can be traced in Davidson (1978: 43). But these authors do not address specifically habitual activity, as opposed to various kinds of spontaneous and non-premeditated acts. Below I shall focus on the more recent statements of this idea in Clarke (2010) and Fridland (forthcoming), which are directed specifically to the idea of habit.
The reason for this use of ‘act’ (noun) is this. Actions are manifestations of habit or exercises of skill only under some specification(s). But the same specification/ thing one does, say making a cup of tea, can be habitual for some people but not for others, and can only be habitual for a person after the habit has been formed. So ‘is habitual’ predicates actions under some specification, that is, acts. It is a standard claim that a corresponding point holds for ‘is basic’ (Hornsby (1980: 69); Enc (2003): 54). This allows me to speak of habitual (or skillful/basic) acts.
Enc (2003) is considered the most comprehensive account of basicness on behalf of the standard story.
On the notion of subsidiary action, see Searle (1983: 84-85); Ruben (2003: chs.2-4); Valaris (2015). The conception of activity above relies on some criterion of what counts as a simple, non-complex action, for otherwise every action would count as an activity. Clarke does not address this question (indeed, some points made in section [7] imply that he has no means to answer it). Ruben says that he relies on reader’s intuitions here, but latter in his book he provides a discussion of simple actions and their non-actional parts (Ruben 2003: 63–65, 141–147). Notice that on this conception activities are (composite) particulars, not (types of) activity like drinking and swimming. This conception also differs from a conception on which any action-part, however small, is made of activity. See Hornsby (2013) for a discussion of these distinctions.
Just as with other dispositions, habit does not necessitate its manifestation when the relevant circumstances obtain. Hence the modal force of a habit ascription is not that of a conditional ‘If c obtain, S a-s’, but is best conveyed by a habitual sentence: ‘S a-s in c’ (Fara (2005) argues that this is the case with dispositions generally). However, to the extent that the idea of habit is obtained from our understanding of certain uses of habitual sentences, this claim does not amount to any theoretical advance.
Pollard (2006, 2008: ch.4) argues at length that manifestations of habit are typically intentional acts. The idea that manifestations of habit are typically things done for reasons draws significant support from the growing literature on automaticity and virtue (Snow (2009), for instance), as well as the literature on automaticity and moral responsibility generally.
On habit explanations, see Pollard (2006) and Alvarez (2010: 185-90). Alvarez says that habit explanations provide a ‘reason-why’ explanation, as opposed to providing the ‘reason for which’ or ‘in the light of which’ one acts. I think this is correct, but we should keep in mind that we do not usually explain manifestations of habit by giving a habit-explanation.
Other well-known discussions of the idea of automaticity as a theoretical construct in psychology are Bargh (1994), and Saling and Phillips (2007). I find the discussion of Moors and De Houwer more illuminating, if only because they consider the implications of the causal/explanatory aspect of automaticity for action-theoretic discussions, especially in their (Moors and De Houwer 2007).
Various philosophers have considered the relation between attention and habit. But we must keep in mind that “habit” and “attention” are used in very different ways. When habit is construed as a genus that encompasses bodily skills, the claim that habit dispenses with attention is highly questionable.
Pollard (2008) proposes a specific interpretation of these two features, and uses them to provide a definition of habitual acts.
This use of “habit” is found in William James (1981: ch.4), as well as in many latter psychologists. Merleau-Ponty (1945): 166–172), as well as contemporary action theorists (Pollard 2006, 2008; Velleman 2007: 139), similarly use the etymological variants of habitus indiscriminatively. This use has a venerable philosophical history, habit and skill being two species of the traditional category of habitus.
For different accounts of the distinction between habit and skill see Ryle (1949); Annas (2011). These accounts differ in important respects from the account sketched here. The following paragraphs sum up aspects of an account of the distinction I develop elsewhere. Here I only describe some aspects of this distinction rather than defend it, because I merely want to sharpen the terms involved in the arguments below. I do not think anyone will disagree that there is a distinction between habit and basic bodily skills, even if its exact formulation might be a matter of dispute.
This is more akin to the problem discussed by Pollard (2006). But Pollard’s argument is muddled by his failure to distinguish between habit and bodily skill.
The objections raised below apply to various forms the standard story, but I shall simplify things by formulating these objections so as to address Clarke’s preferred version, outlined above. It is a good question how sub-personal explanations relate to explanations that appeal to automaticity. Although the idea of automaticity is central to Clarke’s paper, he has no much use for the term, so it is hard to tell what is his view on the matter. I will suppose that sub-personal explanations are explanations that invoke some kind of automaticity. Sub-personal states are not the objects of intention (baring unusual scenarios) or the focus of attention and awareness (baring unusual scenarios). However, I do not assume that all explanations that involve the broader idea of automaticity are sub-personal explanations.
Fridland is not in the business of defending the standard story. But the inference from the claim that one does not brush her teeth accidentally to the claim that this must be done “as a result of automatic intentions” would be a non-sequitur unless the truth of the standard story is assumed. Fridland argues that the operation of automaticity does not preclude the manifestation of intelligence in action. So while I am sympathetic to the concerns of that paper, I think that a lingering adherence to the standard story makes Fridland’s objective impossible to achieve.
For discussions of habitual action slips see Elian and Roessler (2003: 4); Roessler (2003: 388-389); Enc (2003: 154); Wu (2011: 63); Annas (2011: 101ff.). For a more extensive treatment see Toner et al. (2015) and Romdenh-Romluc (2013); Amaya (2013). Reason (1990) is the standard reference in psychological literature, but discussion of such slips goes back to William James (1981: 119).
See Amaya (2013) for how slips are to be distinguished from other kinds of mistakes in action.
Here I assume that both the whole habitual activity and one’s writing “action” ensue from an overarching intention. Of course, in the previous sections I argued that there is no reason to assume this, at least in the case of habitual activities. But here I am concerned with a different problem.
This suggests that Clarke is not entitled to the idea of a skilled activity as composed of instrumentally related subsidiary acts. In the absence of causation by intentions there is nothing to provide for their status as (distinct) acts in the first place; they are merely sub-basic things done (see Valaris 2015 for related concerns). The claim that these are indirectly intentional does not help, for any stretch of skilled bodily activity is indirectly intentional to the extent that it is guided by sub-personal processes activated by an overarching intention.
We should distinguish the claim that habit gives rise to present-directed intentions from the claim that habit often operates at the level of thought, that is, in the formation of future-directed intentions. Habit might function as a reminder of what to do in the circumstances at hand, without manifesting itself immediately in action. One’s habit of going to the opera each Friday does not preclude one’s forming a future-directed intention, on a Friday afternoon, to go to the opera tonight. This is not the kind of case at issue here, however. Notice also that the proposal under consideration does not concern the claim that present-directed intentions need not ensue from future-directed ones. This is the case of spontaneous action, which does not seem to require an intention with general content.
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I would like to thank Jen Hornsby and Pavlos Kontos for their assistance and advice.
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Douskos, C. Habit and Intention. Philosophia 45, 1129–1148 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9810-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9810-z