Abstract
The final chapter of the study argues that the disjunctive analysis of intention provides a distinctively plausible explanation of the intention-consequential (IC) requirements of practical rationality. Consistent with an analysis that sees intentions as optative attitudes accompanied by only minimal, negative doxastic conditions, I reject cognitive explanations of the IC requirements, arguing instead that they represent constraints on an agent’s project of self-forging, a project that is in an important sense orthogonal to her responses to everyday reasons. The chapter discusses the most prominent noncognitivist model, Michael Bratman’s grounding of the norms in the demands of self governance. The model, I argue, is vitiated by its normative functionalist framework, which, because it cannot, on pain of circularity, ground its explanation in features of intending, has to postulate a specific reason behind intention’s subjection to the requirements. However, because the norms are in place for all intentional agency, they cannot depend on specific aims or reasons, even reasons most of us have, but need to be grounded in intentional agency itself.
According to my constructive proposal, to postdeliberatively opt to perform certain actions is to “take personal responsibility” for them, thus providing an anchor for their attributability. It is a concern to provide such an anchor, I claim, that has conferred on intention the shape it has. The reason for intending’s subjection to the IC requirements is that their contravention renders responsibility-taking unintelligible: an agent who intends in violation of the IC requirements becomes opaque to himself, thus necessarily losing his hold on his own agency. This fact provides agents with a distinct kind of reason, one that is both stringent and, under certain circumstances strikingly weak, a conjunction of features which suffices as an answer to the scepticism expressed by Broome as to whether rationality can be shown to generate reasons. I then show how the notion of taking personal responsibility extends to cover cases of nondecisional intending. The explanation of this extension is, crucially, in part normative. It grounds in the deeply entrenched demand that persons deliberate on whether they are willing to see themselves as the realisers of their motivationally unrivalled wants*.
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Notes
- 1.
For its consequences for two issues I don’t take up here, the doctrine of double effect and intentional action, see Roughley 2007c and Roughley unpublished c.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Bratman argues at length against intention cognitivism, in particular against the positions of Wallace, Harman and Velleman (Bratman 2009a). Among his objections to Wallace are versions of my first and third worries.
- 5.
Cf. Section 7.3, note 58. As Bratman emphasizes, this is a different matter to meta-ethical noncognitivism. Perhaps some of the motivation for the latter might derive from the failure to distinguish it from noncognitivism about practical rationality and to work out a plausible version of the latter. Once we distinguish clearly between conclusive reasons judgements on the one hand and intentions on the other (cf. Sects. 8.5.2 and 8.5.3), we have two different questions whose relationship is up for grabs.
- 6.
It might be objected that this is only true for extrinsic, not for intrinsic wants*. As it is likely that there are very few things that we want* intrinsically, this could possibly turn out to be true. It would, however, exclude so many cases of wanting* that a discussion which parallels that of believing would be impossible. Conversely, in order to preserve the parallel, we ought also to exclude everything that is believed on the basis of other things believed. That doesn’t look like a very promising move either.
- 7.
I argued in Section 7.2.2 that there are certain constellations in which such a lack of awareness may be a failure of practical rationality.
- 8.
The noncognitivist about intention rationality is thus faced with a task parallel to that faced by the noncognitivist about moral judgements. Compare Bratman’s remarks on Gibbard’s expressivist meta-ethics (Bratman 2008, 96).
- 9.
Searle’s self-referential conception of intention, according to which it is a feature of intention’s content that it be realised as a causal result of the agent having the attitude with that content, is an attempt to get to grips with the same feature (Searle 1983, 85ff.).
- 10.
Bratman repeatedly compares his two-tier planning theory to rule utilitarianism (Bratman 1987, 64; 2009c, 418; 2012, 77). The analogy with contractarianism is, I think, more precise here, as the contractarian claims to demonstrate the instrumental rationality of “morality”, a claim in the face of which he has to show that it is rational for individuals not only to introduce norms, but also for them to see those norms as rationally binding them in individual cases. Utilitarianism is typically uninterested in the first step, that is, in generating moral norms out of the self-interest of individuals, instead confronting them with an overarching perspective of the interest of the collective.
- 11.
I introduced the characterisation of Bratman’s position as “dispositional-normative functionalism” in Section 7.3 to distinguish it from Zangwil’s “pure” normative functionalist position. As it is the normative dimension of Bratman’s theory that is decisive in what follows and as the compound epithet is rather clumsy, I shall in what follows usually refer to his position simply as “normative functionalism”.
- 12.
The debate that Bratman enters by broaching this topic, particularly in the articles collected in Structures of Agency (2007a), began as a debate about compatibilist options on free will (the initial protagonists being Frankfurt and Watson), but shifted its focus. “Self-government” is a term used by the early Dewey to pick out the basic capacity for moral responsibility (quoted in Watson 1996, 261).
- 13.
Frankfurt proposes these criteria in his “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” (1971), “Identification and Externality” (1976) and “Identification and Wholeheartedness (1987). In “Identification, Decision and Treating as a Reason” (1996), Bratman argues against the sufficiency of any of these criteria. I claim in Section 8.5.1 above that Frankfurt’s use of “decision” is designed to pick out something quite different to our everyday concept of deciding.
- 14.
As remarked in Section 7.2.2, Bratman’s primary focus is on contraventions of the requirements on intention-belief consistency and subordinate intending, rather than on intention-intention consistency.
- 15.
Kantian conceptions of the relationship between the self and morality are perhaps the model here, as the Kantian – certainly Christine Korsgaard – takes it that self-governance actually involves adherence to the moral law, a law that one gives oneself (cf. Korsgaard 1996, 98).
- 16.
Compare Bratman’s description of the way certain attitudes “speak for the agent because they help constitute and support the temporal extension of her agency” (Bratman 2005, 208). Both supporting and helping to constitute are gradable concepts.
- 17.
Parfit’s solution to this problem in the sphere of personal identity involves setting a threshold beyond which we stipulate that there is sufficient psychological connectedness and therefore see ourselves as justified in talking about the same person (Parfit 1984, 206).
- 18.
The Huckleberry Finn case is usually, and with good reason, discussed in terms of the moral worth of Huck’s behaviour. In discussions such as Bennett’s and Arpaly’s, the topic is the relationship between Huck’s value judgement and the reasons of which he is unaware; whether he intended to turn Jim in and, if so, whether he maintains that intention after not doing so, are not in view. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Arpaly’s use of the example is part of an extended argument for a very different conception of rationality to that at issue here, a conception that essentially picks out responsiveness to reasons, where the reasons in question are in part moral reasons. Cf. Arpaly 2003, 125.
- 19.
The structure of the adequacy conditions on a noncognitivist theory of intention rationality mirrors that of certain noncognitivist meta-ethical positions, most prominently Hare’s view that moral judgements are unique combinations of the exercise of our capacities for “freedom” and “reason” (Hare 1963, 1ff., 111).
- 20.
The claim that not all the relevant features are attitudes, the denial of the claim that rationality supervenes on the mind, was first argued for in Section 7.2.
- 21.
“Agency” can also be understood more broadly to also include what I called subintentional actions, such as scratching one’s head absent-mindedly (Sect. 5.1.3). Such cases, in which agents pursue purposes, understood as mere wants*, need not have the feature we are after (cf. also the reflections on non-human animal agency in Sect. 2.6). Correspondingly, the IC requirements have no purchase.
- 22.
Marya Schechtman (2004) talks of “self-control” and “self-expression”.
- 23.
Bratman has argued that, whereas the ascription of intentions aims primarily at action explanation, it is the classification of actions as intentional that aims at assigning responsibility (Bratman 1987, 124f.). In as far as “intentionally φ-ing” covers the kinds of case described in the second and third sentences of the paragraph to which this footnote refers, the concept of φ being done intentionally covers more cases of φ-ing for which an agent is responsible than does the concept of φ-ing because one intends to φ. This is, however, compatible with the anchoring claim for individual cases – indeed, it presupposes it.
- 24.
For this reason, Bratman is right to reject Stoutland’s claim that intending requires that the intender be prepared to take “full responsibility” for her action (Bratman 2014, 62). As Bratman puts it, intending’s “role in practices of accountability” is “not essential to what intending is”. However, because accountability is only one of two dimensions of responsibility, it doesn’t follow that responsibility and intending are not essentially connected.
- 25.
Watson’s view of the relationship between aretaic evaluation and accountability seems to entail that normative ethical judgements are judgements of virtue plus accountability. But one reason why normative ethical, as opposed to virtue-ethical, conceptions have appealed to many authors is precisely the minimal demands of character assessment involved in holding someone responsible for contravening a norm.
- 26.
In legal contexts, the question of the agent’s character can come into play on a third level, the level of sentencing. At this level, it is sometimes appropriate to ask whether the legally problematic action was “out of character”.
- 27.
Both Wellman and Moses see the full-blown concept of intention as requiring the capacity for “planning” (Wellman 1992, 290ff.; Moses 2001, 82). Planning, i.e. generating subordinate intentions on the basis of initial intentions and beliefs, often acquired as one goes along, is one central feature of deliberation, but not the whole story. Coming to initial intentions is also an important component process.
- 28.
How important this is will become clear in Section 10.5.2.
- 29.
This story, in contrast to Bratman’s narrative of creature construction, consists partly in empirical claims about the ontogeny of human persons and is as such falsifiable by research in developmental psychology.
- 30.
This is, I think, a further folk psychological seed of Existentialism (cf. Sect. 8.2.4), i.e. another feature of our self-understanding that Sartre picks up on, but to which he gives overdramatic metaphysical expression. He expresses his version of the point in his famous slogan that we are “condemned to be free” (Sartre 1946, 27).
- 31.
An overdramatised version of this claim plays a central role in Nietzsche and his followers.
- 32.
But compare Section 10.5.2.
- 33.
Nicholas Southwood’s claim that the requirements of rationality are “the demands of our first-personal standpoints” is, as far as I can tell from his relatively brief elucidatory remarks, fairly close to the position I am advocating. However, his claims that “having a first-personal standpoint is a matter of being accountable to oneself” and that rationality is a matter of “what we owe to ourselves” (Southwood 2008, 28ff.) confound the attributability and accountability dimensions of responsibility. The IC requirements don’t formulate duties to oneself, but strictures on the intelligibility of our own practical stands and thus on their capacity to anchor attributability.
- 34.
Note that they would only do so if requirements of rationality only apply to those alternatives they specify that their addressees have the ability to satisfy. Otherwise the option that the agent drop her initial intention would not be removed from the demand’s scope simply because it is unrealisable. This is perhaps not as clear as it may at first appear. Does it have to be under the control of the agent whether she has beliefs with the contents specified in the doxastic conditions of EC, SI and IBC?
- 35.
If the IC requirements are reason-providing, this follows from EC. For those who, like Broome, believe that rationality necessarily supervenes on the mind, the worry isn’t – or at least isn’t primarily – reasons for action, but reasons, for instance, for subordinate intentions.
- 36.
I expressed my doubts about this implication in Section 7.2.3 with respect to cases of sudden permanent forgetting. However, I don’t want to insist on the point here. Cf. note 34 above.
- 37.
Broome has doubts as to whether etiquette generates reasons at all (Broome 2008, 96). One ground for such doubts may lie in the worry that, if all reasons can be weighed against each other in some quantitative manner, etiquette-based reasons may, if there are enough of them, end up outweighing moral reasons. Applied to my diagnosis of the source of rational requirements: might not enough cases of potential agential incoherence end up justifying a racist action? It’s difficult to see how that might work for rationality-based reasons, as these are going to be severely limited for each individual agent. More generally, I don’t think that quantitative weighing is an appropriate model for all practical deliberation.
Another ground for such doubts may lie in concerns that the existence of a practice plus some form of subjective endorsement or acceptance is insufficient to make the practice reason-generating, as there are clearly morally bad practices. Buying into a practice of persecution of some minority doesn’t generate reasons to persecute anyone. Like the previous point, this is a big topic. But even if such a general model for the generation of practice-dependent reasons is plausible, it would be compatible with their being exclusionary conditions for its applicability, such as the moral badness of the practice.
- 38.
In distinguishing intention from the intentional, Bratman argues that intention has not been “shaped by our concern” with responsibility (Bratman 1987, 125). I am claiming that the source of the concept of intention is exactly such a concern.
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Roughley, N. (2016). The Intention-Consequential Requirements and Anchoring Attributability. In: Wanting and Intending. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 123. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7387-4_10
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