Abstract
Mere capacity views hold that agents who can intervene in an unfolding movement are performing an agentially controlled action, regardless of whether they do intervene. I introduce a simple argument to show that the noncausal explanation offered by mere capacity views fails to explain both control and action. In cases where bodily subsystems, rather than the agent, generate control over a movement, agents can often intervene to override non-agential control. Yet, contrary to what capacity views suggest, in these cases, this capacity to intervene does not amount to agential control or action. I illustrate this with a case study of how passive breathing, a mere behavior, is misclassified by mere capacity views. I end by revisiting the central alternative to mere capacity views: causal control views. Advances in our understanding of how agents exert control over unfolding movements indicate that the nature of control is characterized by ubiquitous, small-scale causal interventions.
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Notes
A further distinction of note is presented in Hyman (2015) between voluntary and involuntary movements. Despite often being conflated with action, voluntary movement need not be an action: for example, being carried to bed can be a voluntary movement, but need not be an action. The authors here discussed focus their debate on the concept of action, with one of them, Levy (2013) focusing on the narrower category of voluntary action. But as accounts of action, I will argue, the mere capacity views all fail. It may be considered whether the account can alternatively explain the notion of voluntariness, rather than that of a movement’s action status. Evaluating this would exceed the scope of the present discussion, however, which only seeks to evaluate whether capacity views explain action. I thank an anonymous referee for this interesting suggestion.
The question of the conditions under which the (capacity for) intervention is attributed to the agent is left somewhat vague in some accounts of control. Frankfurt speaks of a ‘readiness’ to bring about adjustments (Frankfurt, 1978), Di Nucci of the ‘ability’ to make adjustments (2011), Zhu of ‘underlying structures’ (2004). Throughout the paper, I will rely on examples in which the intervention is clearly attributable to the agent in virtue of being an action to avoid ambiguous cases. I sketch some remarks by Buehler to illustrate the causal control theorist’s view on attributability in Sect. 5.
In Frankfurt’s own words: “Given a bodily movement which occurs under a person’s guidance, the person is performing an action regardless of what features of his prior causal history account for the fact that this is occurring. He is performing an action even if its occurrence is due to chance. And he is not performing an action if the movements are not under his guidance as they proceed.” (1978, p.159).
Both Frankfurt and Zhu highlight the role of agential control improving the chances of success of a particular movement. One may object that it is plausible that an agent may intentionally intervene in an unfolding movement to decrease the chances of success. As the focus on improving the chances of success does not strike me as an essential aspect of the capacity view, I set aside the objection during what follows. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
See also “The crucial point is that I could pay them mind and, by so attending, change what happens. I control them, not in the sense that I directly and consciously produce the movements from moment to moment, but rather in the sense that I could alter what occurs and in particular could desist from or change the nature of the movements (e.g. from dancing to running) if it became at all important for me to do so.“ (Steward, 2012, p.51), as well as her discussion of agency as two-way power in Steward (2020, 2022).
Of course, we may nonetheless note differences between passive breathing and digestion, such as the capacity to intervene in the movement. For example, one may consider it a voluntary movement, as the agent could inhibit the movement if it was undesired (See Hyman, 2015 for a discussion of whether voluntary movement is best defined as a movement that is not involuntary). Not all voluntary movements are actions (see footnote 1). The important point here is that even if passive breathing were a voluntary movement, it would not be a (voluntary or involuntary) action.
I review a third position, namely that of causal control views, in Sect. 5.
I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this astute observation.
Note that an agent can nonetheless permanently control their breathing simply by taking adequate breaths that do not critically endanger the oxygen saturation of their blood. It is only when stopping one’s breathing leads to inadequate oxygen saturation that the agent’s control is overridden.
Phagophobic agents, afraid of swallowing but not intent on starving to death, typically do not attempt this.
See Irving and Glasser (2020) for a detailed discussion on the passive nature of such mind-wandering.
One may worry here that directing one’s attention is better understood as a mental action, separate from that of driving downhill. Yet we see that the action status of driving downhill is changing based on whether the agent attends to the task: this is because attending to the downhill drive and its trajectory is a necessary part of the action of driving downhill. Were attention not a part of the movement of driving downhill, this change in action status would remain inexplicable. Cf. Bermúdez (2017), Bermúdez & Felletti (2021), Pacherie & Mylopoulos (2021) for a more in-depth discussion of the intricacies regarding attention and cognitive control’s interplay with motor suppression in habitual and skilled actions.
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful for having received a tremendous amount of support in developing this project. I thank Hong-Yu Wong, Krisztina Orban, Chandra Sripada, Daniel Gregory, Denis Buehler, Gregor Hochstetter, Wesley Sauret, Alfred Mele, Stephen Butterfill, Elisabeth Pacherie, Sarah Moss, Ishani Maitra, Sarah Buss, Michelle Dyke, Marcela Herdova, Julian Saccone, Florian Teichmann, Selina Guter, Klaus Corcilius, Michael Wacker, Chiara Brozzo, Roberta Locatelli, Ann Whittle, Gabrielle Kerbel, Margot Witte, Mica Rapstine, Sean Costello, Aaron Glasser, Paul de Font-Reaulx, Elizabeth Beckman, Sarah Sculco, Lorenzo Manuali, Joxelyn Wang, as well as audiences at SSPP, ESPP, GSWG, the UMICH ME- WIP, the PONS forum and the APA central. Finally, I thank three anonymous reviewers. Their generous and helpful comments helped improve the paper significantly.
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Hendrickx, M. Agentially controlled action: causal, not counterfactual. Philos Stud 180, 3121–3139 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-02033-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-02033-2