Jensen Rasmus Thybo - The phenomenology of embodied subjectivity

Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

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The dominant view is that actions are essentially brought about and guided by the agents intentions. Intentions are mental states that represent the agents performance of action. They are conceived as propositional attitudes. Having an intention involves taking up an action-initiating attitude Mele ( For some movement to count as an action, it must be brought about by the agents intentions in the right sort of way, i.e., non-deviantly. Theorists disagree over how this should be cashed out, but the debate need not concern us here. Suffice to say that it rules out cases of the following sort. I have my rifle trained on the prime minister, whom I intend to shoot. I am very nervous and sweating profusely as a result of my plan. My finger slips, my rifle goes off, and a bullet lodges in the prime minister. In this case, my intention to shoot the prime minister brings about my shooting of her. However, the shooting is not an action I perform, but something that happens accidentally. It is not an action because whilst it is brought about by my intention to shoot, my intention does not bring about the shooting in the right way.

There is a further distinction between types of intention that corresponds to the difference between two sorts of explanation one might give of agency. Agency is a personal level phenomenon only animals, qua animals, can be agents. However, there are subpersonal mechanisms that underlie the performance of action. We can therefore distinguish between an explanation of agency, which will be an explanation at the personal level, and an explanation of the mechanisms that underlie agency, which will be an explanation at the subpersonal level. Correspondingly, a distinction is drawn between personal and subpersonal intentions. Personal intentions are the sort of state that may enter into explanations at the personal level. They are, in principle, available to consciousness (even though the subject may not, in fact, be conscious of all of them), and can figure in her practical reasoning. Subpersonal intentions may enter into explanations of the mechanisms that underlie action. They are, in principle, unavailable to consciousness, and are incapable of figuring in the subjects practical deliberations. Instead, they are components of hypothesized subpersonal mechanisms, responsible for executing action. One may hold that actions essentially involve one sort of intention without holding that they essentially involve the other. Thus one may think that personal intentions are essential for agency without supposing that the mechanisms that underlie action involve subpersonal intentions. Conversely, one may hold that subpersonal intentions are essential components of the mechanisms that underlie action without thinking that personal intentions are necessary. I take it that the dominant view of agency is intended to be a personal level explanation of action. It is an account of what agency a personal level phenomenon essentially is, rather than an explanation of the mechanisms that underlie it. It follows that we should understand the dominant view as claiming that actions are essentially brought about by the subjects personal intentions, and that this claim is neutral with respect to the question of whether subpersonal intentions are essential for action.

I will argue that habit and attention play important roles in action, and that this cannot be properly captured by the dominant model.

I will begin by considering two cases that illustrate the contribution of attention and habit. Case 1 illustrates the fact that that an agents habit of -ing plays a role in producing her subsequent episodes of -ing behaviour. It is because I habitually cycle to work a certain way that I set off along this route when I am not paying attention. Case 2 illustrates attentions role in keeping ones actions on track. It is because I am paying attention to what I am doing that I successfully cycle to the picnic spot. My attentiveness blocks the performance of the irrelevant i.e., unrelated to my current task habitual action of cycling work-wards. A satisfactory account of agency must be able to capture these facts. I will first discuss how the dominant view might account for habit, before considering the role of attention.

The dominant view claims that every action is essentially brought about by intentions that represent its performance, or the performance of some other relevant action(s) e.g., actions that are components of the one performed. The dominant view must therefore explain the contribution of habit in these terms.