Agency and the Self

Hello Flickerers! I am really grateful to Thomas for putting together this wonderful series and for inviting me to be one of the participants. In my actual posts, I'll be trying to lay out a particular view about people's ordinary understanding of agency and its relationship to philosophical theories, but I thought it might be a good idea to start out just by giving a few brief hints about the puzzle I'll be taking on and the strategy I'll pursue for resolving it.

If there is one thing we can say for sure about the theory of agency, it is that the topic is terribly confusing. One can look at individual cases and have pretty clear intuitions about them, but when we try to step back from those individual intuitions and make sense of them in a broader theoretical framework, the result is often not particularly convincing. 

 

What I want to suggest is that the root of this difficulty lies in our understanding of the self. When we think these matters over at an abstract theoretical level, we often draw in one way or another on a explicit theory about the nature of the self. Yet, I will argue, our intuitions about individual cases are generated by an implicit understanding of the self that is radically different from the one we endorse at this explicit level. The result is that our abstract theories never really fit comfortably with the intuitions we have about individual cases. 

 

More specifically, when philosophers are discussing the self at an abstract theoretical level, they tend to describe the mind as a collection of mental states. The basic idea is that people have states with certain contents and of various types (beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, etc.). Actions are then to be explained in terms of these states and the way they interact with each other. 

 

I want to suggest that the more implicit understanding of the self that generates our ordinary intuitions about agency looks radically different from this picture. In particular, recent studies suggest that people have two importantly different ways of making sense of the self. 

 

1. People sometimes see the self as having an essence. That is, in addition to all of your more superficial features, they think that you have an essence  -- who you truly are, deep down inside -- and that this essence sometimes calls you to behave in ways that are very different from what would be picked out by your more superficial desires. It might thought at first that we can spell out this notion in terms of something about people's mental states and the way they are related to each other, but I will argue that this view is mistaken. The essentialist conception of the self is just radically different from the mental state conception, and it will not be possible to somehow spell out the former in terms of the latter.  (For a few papers on this essentialist conception, see here and here.)

 

2. People sometimes see the self as a featureless point. That is, they think that you have a self -- the person you really are -- that is distinct from all mental states and simply 'has' these mental states. The thought is then that your decisions are not just the product of a causal process involving your beliefs, desires and so on. Rather, there is this further thing -- you yourself -- which takes these states into consideration and then arrives at a decision. (For a few papers on this featureless point conception, see here and here.)

 

There appears to be a real tension between these two pictures, but more importantly, there is a tension between each of them and the picture of the self people often endorse when they are doing philosophy. 

 

As a result of this, I will suggest, philosophical work on agency is often characterized by a peculiar tension between intuition and explicit theory. One considers a case and immediately has a particular intuition about it. Then one tries to justify this intuition in terms of facts about beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions. Yet the intuition itself was not derived from a consideration of these mental states; it was derived from a more intuitive conception of the self (either as an essence or as a featureless point). Thus, any attempt to capture the intuition in this sort of framework will leave us with a theory that conflicts with our intuitions when we turn to some other type of case. 

 

Okay, I will be the first to admit that all of this has been terribly nebulous and abstract, but I promise that I'll be fleshing it out in more detail in the days to come. Stay tuned for the next post!

Comments

[David Shoemaker]

Very much looking forward to the posts, Josh! I hope to be able to participate in the conversation.

[Paul Torek]

Not so nebulous though, upon reading the (excellent) linked papers. I didn't need much convincing, I guess, that people use these two viewpoints (moralized essence, and featureless-point). The real action, in my view, comes in how to compare/reconcile these viewpoints to the ontologies widely accepted in philosophy.

[Joshua Knobe]

David,

Thanks! My thoughts on the self have definitely been shaped by your work, so it will be really excited to have you in the mix.

Paul,

Thanks for these kind words. Ultimately, I will be arguing that it is not possible to reconcile people's ordinary intuitive framework with the kind of frameworks that have been more prevalent in philosophy. So the claim will be that there really is a tension here.

[Shelley]

Hello Josh!
I have learned a great deal from your post here and papers to which you've linked, as well as your interview with me last month at D & D. Thank you very much.

I hope that my question and comment will add to the ensuing discussion in some way or other. I have not yet read all of the articles to which you linked. But I wanted to ask you about some remarks made in the "Value Judgments and the True Self" article. You and your co-authors wrote:

"This general tendency to see 'unwanted' mental states as more reflective of the true self seems worthy of further investigation as it suggests that the true self is seen as something that is discovered or emerges rather than as something that can be constructed or willfully defined."

Have you and/or your colleagues done studies that revolve around the constructed or inessential self, as opposed to the true or authentic self? That is, have you and/or your colleagues done studies with people who don't think there is a true self, including people who think that the self and its agency are constructed within a set of social and political constraints?

I apologize if this question seems out of order in some way.

Best,
Shelley

[Joshua Knobe]

Hi Shelley!

This comment gets right to the heart of the issue I'll be discussing. Just as you say, if you look at philosophers or at other people who engage in explicit thought about these issues, it immediately becomes clear that many of them do not believe in a true self. Yet, despite that, I will argue that these people's intuitions about agency are shaped by a conception of the self that remains essentialist. Thus, there is a tension in such cases between explicit beliefs about the self and a more implicit conception that shapes intuitions.

[Shelley Tremain]

Josh,
thank you for your response to my query. I won't ask for additional explanation until I read your upcoming posts. Best, Shelley