Abstract
The dominant view holds that actions are essentially brought about by the agent’s intentions. Merleau-Ponty offers an alternative account, according to which actions are primarily initiated and guided by the agent’s apprehension of her environment. Intentions may still play a role in bringing about action, but they are not essential. In this chapter, I consider two important factors that contribute to our actions: habit and attention. I argue that neither can be satisfactorily accommodated on the dominant model, but Merleau-Ponty’s framework provides a nice explanation of them. This gives us some reason to prefer a Merleau-Pontyian account to the dominant view.
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Notes
- 1.
This distinction is due to Bratman (1984).
- 2.
See also, Rietveld’s discussion in this volume, which explores in some detail, the sort of freedom that is involved in our unreflective reference after.
- 3.
My description of Joan’s expert activity should not be taken to imply that all expert activity is characterised by flow, or requires attention.
- 4.
This phenomenon is well-documented. For example, cricketer Ken Barrington describes loss of form as follows: ‘Everything went wrong with my batting … You can’t change a habit instinctively. When you’re playing well you don’t think about anything and run-making comes naturally. When you’re out of form you’re conscious of needing to do things right, so you have to think first and act second. To make runs under those conditions is mighty difficult’ (Barrington 1968: 97f).
- 5.
See Romdenh-Romluc (2012) for a more detailed account of thought’s role in action.
- 6.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for raising this worry.
- 7.
Thanks to Rasmus Thybo Jensen for helping me to develop this point.
- 8.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for this objection.
- 9.
There are some, however, who dispute this – e.g., McDowell (1994).
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Romdenh-Romluc, K. (2013). Habit and Attention. In: Jensen, R., Moran, D. (eds) The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 71. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01616-0_1
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